A Dream Within A Dream: Gather the Fortunes Blog Tour: Review + Giveaway

Gather the Fortunes (A Crescent City Novel #2)

Author: Bryan Camp
Release Date: May 21, 2019
Publisher: John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Description:

Renaissance Raines has found her place among the psychopomps—the guides who lead the souls of the recently departed through the Seven Gates of the Underworld—and done her best to avoid the notice of gods and mortals alike. But when a young boy named Ramses St. Cyr manages to escape his foretold death, Renai finds herself at the center of a deity-thick plot unfolding in New Orleans. Someone helped Ramses slip free of his destined end -- someone willing to risk everything to steal a little slice of power for themselves.

Is it one of the storm gods that’s descended on the city? The death god who’s locked the Gates of the Underworld? Or the manipulative sorcerer who also cheated Death? When she finds the schemer, there’s gonna be all kinds of hell to pay, because there are scarier things than death in the Crescent City. Renaissance Raines is one of them.

Praise for GATHER THE FORTUNES:

"Camp’s prose is suspenseful and rich with feeling, highlighting an incredible heroine. VERDICT: Full of magic and numerous mythologies but still tied to the lush New Orleans setting, this Crescent City is one readers will not want to leave." —Library Journal, STARRED

"Savory...Renai’s second outing is as raucous as her first, and the magic is just as double-edged and slippery... Renai is a real standout of a heroine, a powerful African-American woman cutting through bad or desperate situations in living and dead realms of increasing chaos, armed with snark, courage, and a storm of magic drawn from deep within her. This will be a feast for all lovers of urban and dark fantasy." —Publishers Weekly, STARRED

"The second Crescent City book (after The City of Lost Fortunes, 2018) once again displays Camp's ability to weave different mythological beliefs in fascinating ways. Readers will relate to Renai as she learns her most trusted guides are unreliable in this fast-paced urban fantasy." —Booklist, STARRED

"In this second installment of his Crescent City urban fantasy series, Camp raises the stakes and broadens the scope of his alternate world...the richness and inventiveness of Camp's vision and the vivacity, warmth, and compassion of his leading woman keep you alert to whatever's happening next. As with the real New Orleans, once you leave this creepier but just as colorful variant, you'll be eager to go back." —Kirkus Reviews

"What a joy it is to return to Bryan Camp's weird, dark, vivid, gorgeous magical New Orleans. Highly recommended!" —Sam J. Miller, award-winning author of Blackfish City

“The magic and mythological heft of Bryan Camp’s debut doesn’t lose any momentum in Gather the Fortunes. He captures the essence and resilience of a still healing New Orleans by digging into the parts of a city too often ignored by the well-to-do and powerful. If The City of Lost Fortunes was a love letter to New Orleans then its next installment is an Earl King blue’s song.” —Brent Lambert, editor at FIYAH Magazine

You can purchase Gather the Fortunes at the following Retailers:

Gather the Fortunes is the fabulous second book in the Crescent City series and one that fans of the first installment are going to absolutely love. Unlike many others books in a series, I think you can pick this novel up without having read the first book in the series and be just fine. There are some references to characters and things that happened in the first one, but nothing that would be too confusing for a new reader.

Just like the first novel in this series, I adored this story. Everything about was incredibly well done. The characters, especially our main character Renaissance Raines, were all well rounded and complex. Renai is a fantastic heroine - she's smart, sassy, and does what she believes to be the right thing. The secondary characters were also rounded and had unique personalities that allowed them to be realistic. Although this book isn't written in the first person POV, which is my favorite, I really loved the author's writing style. Everything about the story and writing - the setting of New Orleans, the detailed descriptions and vivid imagery that brought everything and everyone to life in front of my eyes, and just the storytelling in general - was remarkable. Even to the point where I didn't mind that it wasn't written in the first person POV, which is a big deal for me personally.

The plot was incredibly fascinating and I loved getting to see both sides of New Orleans - the living and the Underworld. I felt like I was right there alongside Renai as she goes about her business. I really enjoyed getting to know even more about the mystical/paranormal side of the city including all of the Gates and the several non-human characters that inhabit it. I seriously loved it all. The plot was well done and had a quick pace, which kept me eagerly reading each page to see what was going to happen next. I'm so glad that I was able to join this blog tour and do a review of the book because I don't think I would've found out about this series otherwise, and I'm so happy that I did. If you haven't read the first book in the series, I definitely recommend that you do so. I highly recommend this book and the series to fans of fantasy, paranormal, supernatural, and those who love New Orleans.

Photo Content from Bryan Camp

Bryan Camp is a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and the University of New Orleans’ Low-Residency MFA program. He started his first novel, The City of Lost Fortunes, in the backseat of his parents’ car as they evacuated for Hurricane Katrina. He has been, at various points in his life: a security guard at a stockcar race track, a printer in a flag factory, an office worker in an oil refinery, and a high school English teacher. He can be found on twitter @bryancamp and at bryancamp.com. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and their three cats, one of whom is named after a superhero.