Shy Trans Banshee is the sequel to Bored Gay Werewolf and it follows said titular werewolf, this time in London, where he and his supernatural-fighting friends are trying to pick up the trail of a missing colleague. Brian and his friends Nik and Darby are running a secretly supernatural shop whilst trying to work out what happened to the previous proprietor. They’re not getting anywhere, but then they find that fortune tellers are being kidnapped, and then they meet Maeve, an Irish trans woman who seems shy at first, but also has something she’s not telling them.
Bored Gay Werewolf was a fun book satirising manosphere-type guys with a slacker protagonist. The sequel picks up with Brian still lazy, but now much more able to control the werewolf side of his life, and the narrative has morphed into more of a ‘monster hunting friends’ situation than just focused on Brian. He is still the perspective through which the narrative is focused, but now there’s his friends and new friend Maeve, who is the shy trans banshee of the title (it is funny that the final word of that phrase isn’t revealed for a long time in the book, which is a bit frustrating when reading).
I like the fun, irreverent vibe of this book, which is similar to the previous one, and it makes the supernatural mystery solving element more enjoyable for me, as someone who isn’t a huge fantasy fan but does like sweary queer books. I was glad that the ‘Americans in London’ jokes weren’t too overdone (I’m realising now that this is an ‘American Werewolf in London’ book), though there was the odd detail that was weird for me as a British person (it’s strange to have a side character being described as UKIP when they’ve not really been prevalent or used as a descriptor in quite a few years).
I’ve seen other reviews mention that they wanted more Maeve, and I agree. I think that though she’s crucial to the plot, it would’ve been great to see more of her as a character and also delve more into what it is actually like for her to be a “shy trans banshee”. Maybe some way of having her perspective added into the narrative as well as Brian’s at some point would’ve helped. There’s an offhand joke from Brian at one point about the intersection between being gay and being a werewolf, and I do think that the quirky titles of the series don’t quite get the exploration in terms of that intersection, especially in Maeve’s case.
As the second in what is clearly a series (the book ends obviously prepared for another sequel), Shy Trans Banshee is a fun queer supernatural story that perhaps has a bit more style over substance at times. I think the pivot from the first book being more obviously satirical to this one being more of a quipping-friends-solving-a-mystery means that the humour is different and the engagement with the real world not as gripping (compared for example to books like Juno Dawson’s Her Majesty’s Royal Coven books, which very clearly integrate magic in to the real world and into real world issues). However, I did enjoy the characters and will read the sequel to find out what happens to them next.
Fiendfully Reading 
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