I don't read as much urban fantasy as I used to and, although I've dabbled, horror has never been my thing. But on a recent trip to the bookstore I found myself browsing the adult horror section on the off chance that something might catch my eye. Selene Shade: Resurrectionist for Hire, the first in what appears to be an ongoing series by Victoria Dalpe, did just that.

It certainly falls on the horror side of urban fantasy, no doubt. There are dark rituals, rapes, eviscerations, and an attempt to bring carnivorous, soul-sucking creatures through a viscous, sentient door from another plane so they can conquer the Earth. Here, witches, necromancers and vampires are real, walking and living among us. More to the point, there are certain rare people who can reunite souls of the deceased with their bodies, creating a "half-life" creature that is more than a zombie, less than a regular person; they return with their memories and emotions intact and, in many cases, can pick up their lives where they left off, although their moods are muted and they have to eat rodents to survive.

The eponymous Selene Shade is one such resurrectionist, working alone in the city of Goat Hill since her friend and mentor Dot Wraith passed on. (Yes, some of the surnames in the book are a little too on the nose.) Selene is drawn into an ongoing police investigation in an attempt to stop a serial killer, who appears to be raping young resurrectionists to death in a particularly brutal, ritualistic fashion. Through the investigation, she meets (and dates) a copy who's also a vampire, she is reunited with a somewhat catty witch, and she's kidnapped and beaten up (just a bit) by a group of misguided necromancers. Selene also has a young protege who has a lot of power but poor taste in boyfriends.

There's a lot going on in this book.

It starts slowly, with occasional tangents into some sort of fantasy-demon realm that, initially, don't make much sense in the context of the book. Don't worry, it will all become clear.

I wasn't sure how much I would like a book with zombies -- excuse me, "half-lifes" -- as the main characters, but it turns out they're not. Although our protagonist raises them for a living, they actually play a fairly low-key role in the plot ... appearing as needed, providing some key twists in the storyline, but never dominating the text. Instead, you'll spend most of your time with Selene, who's socially awkward and not really sure of the morality of what she does, as well as the aforementioned vampire cop, Detective William Marlow. (The story is told from a first-person perspective when Selene's on the page, third-person when she is not.)

And, by the time I was about a third of the way through the book, I realized I was quite enjoying it -- thoroughly absorbed in the story.

It does go off the rails a bit toward the end, as Selene's young assistant evolves somewhat abruptly from insecure bumpkin to evil queen wannabe, and a climactic "battle" goes a bit over the top. The ending feels out of place, like we've suddenly switched genres midstream rather than naturally evolving into something more suitable to the preceding chapters. But, even so, I found myself enjoying the interactions among diverse factions in the Goat Hill community's magical populations (as well as the "normal" humans who never seem quite sure how to handle their existence). There will definitely be some fallout from the various actions at the end of the book, and I find myself curious how things will develop from here.

Let's see what Dalpe has for us next.