Joanne Walker is a very reluctant shaman. After coming into her powers as an adult less than a year ago, she’s been through all sorts of crises and catastrophes as she tries to master her abilities before things get out of hand. This bizarre change in her life has thrown a major monkey wrench into the comfortable existence she’d created for herself. Now, instead of happily fixing cars as a mechanic for the Seattle Police Department, she’s a beat cop. Instead of being one of the guys, her relationships with most of her coworkers is somewhere between strained and confused, thanks to the inexplicable supernatural events that always crop up in her vicinity. And let’s not even get into her complex interactions with her boss, Captain Michael Morrison. It’s all enough to make her wish she’d never awoken as a shaman for the modern era.

Things get really ugly, however, when a sleeping sickness strikes Seattle, starting with many of Joanne’s closest friends, placing them in comas she can’t break. Who or what could be targeting these people, and what’s their connection to Joanne? Worse, Coyote, Joanne’s spirit guide, is missing and presumed sulking, captured, or dead after a previous adventure, leaving her mostly in the dark. Joanne has to race to protect her remaining friends, and stop whatever’s putting people to sleep before it gets to her . . . and it’s getting closer every time she closes her eyes. All this, and she has to sort out her complicated feelings for Morrison, and reconcile them with the new guy in her life, who seems too good to be true.

Coyote Dreams is the third book in Murphy’s series, The Walker Papers, and we’ve seen a steady growth of the character over these stories. One can only hope, however, that Joanne continues to embrace her powers and destiny, because after what she’s been through, it’s clear she’ll have to adapt or die. At least this time around, we get a lot more insight into why she remained blocked for so long, even if the explanation is a little convoluted and steeped in symbolism. But watching her grow as a person is half the fun. That, and watching her come to terms with how she deals with the people around her. Joanne’s most definitely a flawed protagonist, which is ironic; she’s supposed to heal other people, but in many ways she needs healing even more than they do.

I’m afraid I did find myself skimming at times, whenever the book went into long, loving descriptions of dreamscapes, internal gardens, and symbolism writ large. But that’s mainly because I’m a plot and characterization kinda guy. I’m happy when people are saying and doing things. Show me a pretty garden, and I want to see who’s doing what to whom in it. C.E. Murphy, however, writes some gorgeous descriptions, and she plays up to her strengths in this regard. And given that a good portion of this book (and series) take place in dreamscapes and astral plains, she knows how to make it work. It’s all very beautiful.

What I really enjoy about this series, something we see even more in this book, are the character relationships. Joanne has forged an unusually strong bond with Gary Muldoon, a seventy-three year old cab driver who’s gradually taken on a role as mentor, friend, and father figure, and all I can say is the world needs more supporting characters like that. Gary is a strong character who brings a lot to the story. Meanwhile, you have Joanne’s nemesis/possible interest, Captain Morrison. Put Joanne and Morrison together, watch the sparks fly as they butt heads over and over. And as long as they work together, they’ll never be together, which makes their relationship all the more complicated. Someday, perhaps they’ll come to an understanding, but it won’t be anytime soon.

The plot itself for this book is fairly straight-forward, but getting from start to finish still puts Joanne through a few wringers. Murphy keeps up the sense of urgency with well-placed character bits from those indirectly affected by what’s going on. The resolution seems a little weak, but then again, not everything can be solved with high explosives and a cast of thousands.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Coyote Dreams, and I’m quite assuredly looking forward to the next in the series. C.E. Murphy delivers a strong mixture of characterization and narrative, augmented by the afore-mentioned beautiful descriptions, and her heroine continues to travel down an intriguing road of self-discovery. This series is one of the strongest to come out of the Harlequin Luna imprint.