What do you think?
Rate this book
Boston Technowitch #1
Ghost Garages
Urban fantasy and cozy mystery mix amusingly in this first novel in the Boston Technowitch series. … Some aspects of Pepper’s life are a little absurd …. But if you can handle them, the quirks and over-the-top bits add a lot to the fun, for a very entertaining start to a new series.
— Locus, October 2017
Pepper Karalis, Boston's only technowitch, doesn’t spend a lot of time hanging out with other witches.
Most of the time, she's too busy working at a coffee shop and raising her twins to bother with magic, although it's there when she wants it.
But then she runs across the ghost of a murdered woman in a neighborhood parking garage — the first of many. The ghosts are raising tempers everywhere, and Boston's other witches are certain Pepper's to blame, even though she's doing everything she can to banish the ghosts.
Now she needs to find the real killer and clear her name before the other witches decide they have to stop her permanently…
— Locus, October 2017
Pepper Karalis, Boston's only technowitch, doesn’t spend a lot of time hanging out with other witches.
Most of the time, she's too busy working at a coffee shop and raising her twins to bother with magic, although it's there when she wants it.
But then she runs across the ghost of a murdered woman in a neighborhood parking garage — the first of many. The ghosts are raising tempers everywhere, and Boston's other witches are certain Pepper's to blame, even though she's doing everything she can to banish the ghosts.
Now she needs to find the real killer and clear her name before the other witches decide they have to stop her permanently…
345 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 30, 2017
About the author
Erin M. Hartshorn
26 books22 followers Erin M. Hartshorn did her graduate work in fish olfaction (and yes, she’s heard all of the jokes about how fish smell) before turning to words to make her living. Her freelance business makes others’ words look good through copyediting, proofreading, and indexing. Her fiction has appeared both online and in print, placed in the PARSEC short story contest, earned honorable mentions and semifinal status in the Writers of the Future contest, and been shortlisted for the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Award for science-fiction novellas. She also publishes mysteries under the pen name Sara Penhallow. Erin lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and their two kids, who are gradually being inculcated in the joy of all that is science fiction and fantasy. She can be found on her website at www.erinmhartshorn.com/blog or on Twitter @ErinMHartshorn
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 29, 2018
Fantastic story about magic, relationships, and ghosts. The opener to a series, it moves along at a good pace with well placed anecdotes about parenting, work, and family. Pepper is a character I'll gladly follow book after book.
July 22, 2017
Alot of urban fantasy featuring witches, vampires, werewolves (the mainstays of the genre) focus on young, single, romance-seeking main characters with lots to learn about power and the fantastical world and a (sometimes nonexistent) dayjob that leaves them basically with no distracting duties or responsibilities.
Not so for Pepper, the main witch character of Ghost Garages. She's got six year old twins, a baby daddy who is upsetting their finely balanced relationship, a rival assistant manager at the coffee shop where she works angling for the manager job....and oh yes, the rest of the Boston area witches blaming her for a sudden influx of hate and anger in the shape of ghost girls appearing in parking garages.
Don't get me wrong, I love urban fantasy as a genre, but it's refreshing to come across this particular manifestation: a woman who's discovering her own power but also has to juggle which twin picks the nightime books and how she's going to get a painting deposit back from a sketchy contractor.
The ways Pepper uses her electromagnetic powers was fun...and the story mostly focused on mundane details of life in a non-apocalyptic way, until it was disturbing (the source of the ghost girls) and hints (in the shape of trolls in the T and mystic pronouncements by her mentor) of greater issues.
Details of Boston were great, but at time I felt Pepper was reacting to the ghosts and people getting angry as if this were a small town and she knew everyone and where everyone lived, so i was left without a sense of Boston as a city and frustration of figuring out where evil lurks in a big place. I also was a bit hazy on the way magic worked, not one of my favorite things. It seemed people could do just about anything and "draw power" from each other and various sources. Sometimes Pepper's a little silly about her power; like trying to make her cell phone a battery when even I knew that wasn't going to end well for her cell phone.
And of course, I wanted more Haris. I mean who wouldn't? Haris was an awesome romantic foil and I loved how Haris provided the "sparks" to help defeat some evil. But the pulling away after being a whole-hearted stalker didn't ring true to me, and neither did Pepper's insta-attraction followed by kind of thinking about Haris not at all through most of the book except when Pepper needed Haris. Definitely needed more thinking about Haris.
I'll most likely move on to the next book in the series, there's a few clever little cliffhangery developments at the end of the book in regards to Pepper's children and Pepper's best friend that I hope will reveal more ties between the magic and the mundane parts of Pepper's life.
Not so for Pepper, the main witch character of Ghost Garages. She's got six year old twins, a baby daddy who is upsetting their finely balanced relationship, a rival assistant manager at the coffee shop where she works angling for the manager job....and oh yes, the rest of the Boston area witches blaming her for a sudden influx of hate and anger in the shape of ghost girls appearing in parking garages.
Don't get me wrong, I love urban fantasy as a genre, but it's refreshing to come across this particular manifestation: a woman who's discovering her own power but also has to juggle which twin picks the nightime books and how she's going to get a painting deposit back from a sketchy contractor.
The ways Pepper uses her electromagnetic powers was fun...and the story mostly focused on mundane details of life in a non-apocalyptic way, until it was disturbing (the source of the ghost girls) and hints (in the shape of trolls in the T and mystic pronouncements by her mentor) of greater issues.
Details of Boston were great, but at time I felt Pepper was reacting to the ghosts and people getting angry as if this were a small town and she knew everyone and where everyone lived, so i was left without a sense of Boston as a city and frustration of figuring out where evil lurks in a big place. I also was a bit hazy on the way magic worked, not one of my favorite things. It seemed people could do just about anything and "draw power" from each other and various sources. Sometimes Pepper's a little silly about her power; like trying to make her cell phone a battery when even I knew that wasn't going to end well for her cell phone.
And of course, I wanted more Haris. I mean who wouldn't? Haris was an awesome romantic foil and I loved how Haris provided the "sparks" to help defeat some evil. But the pulling away after being a whole-hearted stalker didn't ring true to me, and neither did Pepper's insta-attraction followed by kind of thinking about Haris not at all through most of the book except when Pepper needed Haris. Definitely needed more thinking about Haris.
I'll most likely move on to the next book in the series, there's a few clever little cliffhangery developments at the end of the book in regards to Pepper's children and Pepper's best friend that I hope will reveal more ties between the magic and the mundane parts of Pepper's life.
May 8, 2017
Magic
I read this book in a single sitting .... it's beautifully written, completely absorbing, utterly convincing and the characters are so well drawn. The world perfectly fits a gripping mystery that leads to a breathtakingly and terrifying climax. Pepper is amazing - the way she finds the strength to face her fear of what her magic can do and navigate her way through ignorance and hate to confront a very real ghost from her past is spellbinding. I can't wait for the next book in the series.
I read this book in a single sitting .... it's beautifully written, completely absorbing, utterly convincing and the characters are so well drawn. The world perfectly fits a gripping mystery that leads to a breathtakingly and terrifying climax. Pepper is amazing - the way she finds the strength to face her fear of what her magic can do and navigate her way through ignorance and hate to confront a very real ghost from her past is spellbinding. I can't wait for the next book in the series.
May 14, 2017
Enjoyable witching romp with a modern-day twist.
Take Merlin and whichever of his opponents you like, casting wards and spells, zapping each other across their chosen field of battle - then move it to current day, add electricity and electronics - filter in every ancient god of whatever, and you have a great story with modern twists enough to satisfy any technogeek. Or someone who likes reading about challenges and adversity overcome. Hoping the next story in this series arrives soon!
Take Merlin and whichever of his opponents you like, casting wards and spells, zapping each other across their chosen field of battle - then move it to current day, add electricity and electronics - filter in every ancient god of whatever, and you have a great story with modern twists enough to satisfy any technogeek. Or someone who likes reading about challenges and adversity overcome. Hoping the next story in this series arrives soon!
June 12, 2017
Different type of of urban fantasy
The main men are two faces of internet, the 'nice guy' husband and the entitled villain. The story is imaginative and well written. Looking forward to the next book.
The main men are two faces of internet, the 'nice guy' husband and the entitled villain. The story is imaginative and well written. Looking forward to the next book.
January 1, 2018
Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over
This is my second time reading Ghost Garages this year, an unusual event for me, but my reaction is the same in that I enjoyed the story a lot…enough to have already recommended it to my sister who loves urban fantasy. Though I knew what was coming this time, the story kept me engaged and had lovely connections to the novella Dreamwalker I received through the author’s newsletter and read more recently.
Urban fantasy has grown to be a broad genre, but this novel has some fun elements that are rare if not unique. The main character, Pepper, is a single mom of twins with a magic that functions through technology rather than despite it. I quite enjoyed the mix of magical and normalcy. In the midst of a magical crisis affecting all of Boston, she has to manage childcare, her children’s wish for a more traditional family, and her ex-boyfriend/kids’ father pressuring her for the same. That’s not even mentioning the stress of her mother feeling she’s wasting her life, or the job pressure from a competitive coworker and a flaky boss.
The contempt and suspicion of the other Boston witches she knows felt a little overblown, but more in a “get over yourselves” or “open your eyes” way than because it was unrealistic. I’ve known people who would react exactly like that, ignoring how Pepper is struggling to save the whole city by herself so they can persist in believing her the cause, and if not because of a deliberate act, then it has to be accidentally her fault.
As if that isn’t enough, she has to balance cryptic speeches from a Lung dragon who happens to be the twins’ godfather and demands from other magical creatures she didn’t even know existed until her first encounter with the ghost near her home. I loved the trolls in the T mainly because they were so very not human, and the description of how the world functioned around them in blissful ignorance despite avoiding where they stood in a crowded station felt very real.
Then there’s the muse, who isn’t her muse, but who is attracted to her in a way that sets her magic to blowing fuses and lights quite dramatically. Haris is just as uncomfortable about this situation as she is, but neither of them are willing to reject the attraction, something that does not make her family issues any easier.
The murder mystery builds nicely, with a good balance of discovery and confusion, but this is not a detective novel in any way. Pepper is going about her business trying to solve everyone’s problems without admitting to how she’d accepted the responsibility, and as she does, she learns things that point to the reasons behind the problems.
It’s evidence for how well built the story is that I’m struggling to convey what I enjoyed and what specifics drew me in without spoilers, so I’ll say only it’s a complicated world blended smoothly into the Boston I remember from previous visits. The feel of the place was very rich for me down to the buskers and how people interact differently depending on the time of day and whether they’ve got their fix (at least where the coffee shop she works in is concerned). And speaking of the coffee shop, how she blends her personal needs with the needs of the store is just one more example of her ingenuity.
The book is complete by itself, leaving nothing critical unresolved, though there are some threads left dangling and a real kicker in what is, for all practical purposes, an epilogue. Ghost Garages is a real turning point for Pepper. She begins as someone who ignores her magic in favor of keeping a low profile, and by the end, she realizes the training she’d been offered and rejected would have made all this much easier. I’m interested in finding out how she copes with the changes in her magic, her decisions regarding that magic, and the looming family crises as well. Luckily, book 2 is already available.
This is my second time reading Ghost Garages this year, an unusual event for me, but my reaction is the same in that I enjoyed the story a lot…enough to have already recommended it to my sister who loves urban fantasy. Though I knew what was coming this time, the story kept me engaged and had lovely connections to the novella Dreamwalker I received through the author’s newsletter and read more recently.
Urban fantasy has grown to be a broad genre, but this novel has some fun elements that are rare if not unique. The main character, Pepper, is a single mom of twins with a magic that functions through technology rather than despite it. I quite enjoyed the mix of magical and normalcy. In the midst of a magical crisis affecting all of Boston, she has to manage childcare, her children’s wish for a more traditional family, and her ex-boyfriend/kids’ father pressuring her for the same. That’s not even mentioning the stress of her mother feeling she’s wasting her life, or the job pressure from a competitive coworker and a flaky boss.
The contempt and suspicion of the other Boston witches she knows felt a little overblown, but more in a “get over yourselves” or “open your eyes” way than because it was unrealistic. I’ve known people who would react exactly like that, ignoring how Pepper is struggling to save the whole city by herself so they can persist in believing her the cause, and if not because of a deliberate act, then it has to be accidentally her fault.
As if that isn’t enough, she has to balance cryptic speeches from a Lung dragon who happens to be the twins’ godfather and demands from other magical creatures she didn’t even know existed until her first encounter with the ghost near her home. I loved the trolls in the T mainly because they were so very not human, and the description of how the world functioned around them in blissful ignorance despite avoiding where they stood in a crowded station felt very real.
Then there’s the muse, who isn’t her muse, but who is attracted to her in a way that sets her magic to blowing fuses and lights quite dramatically. Haris is just as uncomfortable about this situation as she is, but neither of them are willing to reject the attraction, something that does not make her family issues any easier.
The murder mystery builds nicely, with a good balance of discovery and confusion, but this is not a detective novel in any way. Pepper is going about her business trying to solve everyone’s problems without admitting to how she’d accepted the responsibility, and as she does, she learns things that point to the reasons behind the problems.
It’s evidence for how well built the story is that I’m struggling to convey what I enjoyed and what specifics drew me in without spoilers, so I’ll say only it’s a complicated world blended smoothly into the Boston I remember from previous visits. The feel of the place was very rich for me down to the buskers and how people interact differently depending on the time of day and whether they’ve got their fix (at least where the coffee shop she works in is concerned). And speaking of the coffee shop, how she blends her personal needs with the needs of the store is just one more example of her ingenuity.
The book is complete by itself, leaving nothing critical unresolved, though there are some threads left dangling and a real kicker in what is, for all practical purposes, an epilogue. Ghost Garages is a real turning point for Pepper. She begins as someone who ignores her magic in favor of keeping a low profile, and by the end, she realizes the training she’d been offered and rejected would have made all this much easier. I’m interested in finding out how she copes with the changes in her magic, her decisions regarding that magic, and the looming family crises as well. Luckily, book 2 is already available.
September 4, 2017
3.5 stars
Wow. Now this was a very different type of of urban fantasy, and it was much more enjoyable than I actually expected.
Pretty imaginative and well written with nice a modern-day twist. Going to read the second book soon.
Wow. Now this was a very different type of of urban fantasy, and it was much more enjoyable than I actually expected.
Pretty imaginative and well written with nice a modern-day twist. Going to read the second book soon.
October 8, 2017
Unique urban fantasy with likable characters. Love the use of technology and magic. Overall a good read!
June 30, 2019
Très très sympa et original. Une héroïne avec des enfants et qui utilise les courant électriques.
December 5, 2020
Interesting read. Too many of the characters were unlikable though. Will be reading the next book in the series to see how the characters develop. I recommend giving this book a try.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews