Review: "Unholy Ghosts" by Stacia Kane

I'll warn you now, this is going to be short and sweet tonight.  I don't have much time to write a review tonight but just wanted to get something down before I start the next book in this series.  Therefore, I'm going to give you the back cover synopsis...


The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen, and the living are under attack. The powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. 


Enter Chess Putnam, a fully-tattooed witch, freewheeling ghost hunter. She's got a real talent for banishing the wicked dead. But Chess is keeping a dark secret: she owes a lot of money to a murderous drug lord named Bump who wants immediate payback in the form of a dangerous job that involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in lust for a rival gang leader and a dangerous attraction to Bump's ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.


I had a hard time getting into this book at the beginning.  Not due to the story line but because of the way they speak.  Everyone except Chess seems to have this "Downside" dialect that sounds like they all learned English from... well, I don't even know, but it's bad.  I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I wasn't so distracted by that.  About half way through the book I started to get more used to it and things were starting to pick up between Chess and the couple new guys in her life.  She's battling a very powerful ghost along side Terrible, her drug lord's enforcer.  Of course she also has a side deal going on with a neighboring drug dealer.  Chess is definitely a troubled heroine.  She's tough and independent but obviously has some major drug abuse issues.  The names in this series are hard to get over too... Chess, Terrible, Bump, Brain... really?  I know we usually have some weird names in some of these books, but these coupled with everything else... if this series didn't come highly recommended to me I might have given up half way through.  All that being said, I'm glad I stuck it out.  Very suspenseful second half and I'm getting over most of the issues I had with it early on.  Definitely curious to see where things go from here... hence the quick review tonight to get started on the next one.