Grave Importance
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A charmingly witty fantasy adventure starring Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, who must solve a dangerous medical mystery at a secret French spa for mummies.
Oasis Natrun: a private, exclusive, highly secret luxury health spa for mummies, high in the hills above Marseille, equipped with the very latest in therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr. Greta Helsing, London's de facto mummy specialist, it sounds like paradise. But when Greta is invited to spend four months there as the interim clinical director, it isn't long before she finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skills to solve.
A peculiar complaint is spreading among her mummy patients, one she's never seen before. With help from her friends and colleagues -- including Dr. Faust (yes, that Dr. Faust), a sleepy scribe-god, witches, demons, a British Museum curator, and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney -- Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust...
...and before the fabric of reality itself can undergo any more structural damage.
Praise for the Dr. Greta Helsing Novels:
"An exceptional and delightful debut, in the tradition of Good Omens and A Night in the Lonesome October."―Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-award winning author
"Shaw balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and cast of lovable misfit characters. These are not your mother's Dracula or demons."―Shelf Awareness
Dr. Greta Helsing Novels
Strange Practice
Dreadful Company
Grave Importance
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shaw's delightful third novel featuring Dr. Greta Helsing (after Dreadful Company) is a quirky medical mystery that takes the reader to the streets of New York and Rome; a secret, exclusive French spa for mummies; and Dr. Faust's hospital in Hell. Greta is invited to become the interim medical director for the spa, Oasis Natrun, but her enjoyment in working with its high-tech setup is overshadowed by the dangerous fainting fits suddenly plaguing several of her physically fragile undead patients. Romance abounds as relationships begun in earlier books between Greta and the vampyre Sir Francis Varney and between the vampires Edmund Ruthven and Grisaille and a tender new connection flourishes between two Earthbound angels, grounding Shaw's community of outcasts. The creative worldbuilding around magically enhanced mummy medicine and mystical Egyptology hits just the right note, and her bold story engages the powers of Heaven, Hell, and everything in between while maintaining a character-centered, intimate approach that keeps the reader deeply involved. Readers will hope they haven't seen the last of Greta and her crew.
