Gather the Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

Crescent City #2

Fate decides where you go when you die. She makes damn sure you get there.

Renaissance Raines wound up dead, resurrected, and then abandoned—stuck in the shadows between the worlds of the living and the dead. She’s now a psychopomp, one of the guides who lead the souls of the recently departed through the Seven Gates of the Underworld. But when a young boy named Ramses St. Cyr manages to escape the moment of his foretold death, she finds herself at the center of a deity-thick plot unfolding in the streets of New Orleans.

It seems someone helped Ramses evade his fate, someone willing to risk the delicate balance of life and death just to steal a little slice of power for themselves. And when the Underworld’s newest psychopomp finds the one responsible, there’s going to be all kinds of hell to pay. Because there are scarier things than death in the Crescent City, and Renaissance Raines is one of them.

ISBN: 9781328876713
Format: Hardcover / Trade Paperback / Ebook

About the Author

Bryan Camp is a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and the University of New Orleans’ 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.

Praise for Gather the Fortunes

The savory second book in Camp’s Crescent City series (following The City of Lost Fortunes) is that rare, welcome sequel that can be enjoyed just as easily as a standalone story. […] Camp crafts a journey through New Orleans’s spirit underworld that’s whimsical as well as grim and sometimes horrific. 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 review)

Camp’s prose is suspenseful and rich with feeling, highlighting an incredible heroine. 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 review)

Though it can be read as a standalone, 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…this fast-paced urban fantasy.

—Booklist (starred review)

A brainy, awesomely resourceful heroine makes her way through a supernatural doppelgänger of New Orleans to track down a missing soul and, in the process, save both her world and ours from unimaginable catastrophe. […] 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

Gather the Fortunes has more than a few tricks up its sleeve…a series of dazzling adventures…Gather the Fortunes finds the balance between engaging fiction and thematic gravity, taking time for all the middle places, too.

—Locus

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

Praise for Bryan Camp

A deft and expansive fantasy imbued with real magic and wild plot turns.

—Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble, on The City of Lost Fortunes

A phantasmagoric murder mystery that wails, chants, laments, and changes shape as audaciously as the mythical beings populating its narrative. […] The engaging style, facility with folklore, and, above all, impassioned love for the city its characters call home keeps you enraptured by the book’s most chilling and outrageous plot twists.

—Kirkus (starred review), on The City of Lost Fortunes

There isn’t a dull page as Jude determines who his real friends are. Anne Rice fans will enjoy this fresh view of supernatural life in New Orleans, while fans of Kim Harrison’s urban fantasy will have a new author to watch.

—Booklist (starred review), on The City of Lost Fortunes

A masterly game played by gods and monsters, a devastated city trying to rebuild, and compelling characters struggling to find their place in a strange world are all pieces of this fantastic and enthralling puzzle of a story. […] Camp’s thoroughly engaging debut is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, with the added spirit of the vibrant Big Easy.