Dead Witch Walking by Kim HarrisonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Time taken to read - 4 days
Publisher - Harper Torch
Pages - 416
Blurb from Goodreads
All the creatures of the night gather in "the Hollows" of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party... and to feed.
Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining - and it's Rachel Morgan's job to keep that world civilized.
A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring 'em back alive, dead... or undead.
My Review
To be honest, I am a bit torn with this review, there are things I liked about this tale and things I didn't. Rachel Morgan is our main character, a runner for a company called Inderland Security (I.S.), a supernatural law enforcement agency. She has been given some pretty rubbish cases to chase up and has had enough. However, no one leave the agency by choice as Rachel will soon learn and spends the tale trying to get herself out of the contract that is put upon her head. With the help of Jenks (a fairy) and Ivy (a living vampire) she goes about tackling the task and needing all she has to stay alive.
The book has a mix of everything, even werewolves however, I think because there is so much breadth there wasn't enough depth. Ivy came across as a really interesting character yet she was in the background a lot. The spells seemed interesting enough but again your left with a lot of questions, did I mention, Rachel is a witch. She seems to be a kick butt kind of girl but has a lot of insecurities and makes some very questionable mistakes and impulse choices. Her whole relationship with Ivy confused me as they are colleagues and friends yet there is so much distrust and questionable dialog between them, in fact some of the dialog itself either annoyed me or made me snigger.
I thought the transformation spells and part of the book covering that was really well done but again, some of the interactions and dialog with the characters didn't flow naturally. That said "Go Turn yourself" or "Do you hear me you sodden sack of camel dung? Tag! You're it!". This is what I mean by being torn, some of it irked me and some made me laugh.
I think had the book had a glossary that may have helped a bit too. We know half the population of humans were wiped out by genetic bioengineering which resulted in a virus. Therefore all the species and creatures came out to live amongst humans however there was a lot of questions left for that too, well I had them anyways. An on the fence 3/5 for me this time, I would certainly read more in the series in the hope of getting the answers, hearing more of Ivy and seeing how the story plays out.
Books that have some good points but that are otherwise deeply flawed are the most frustrating to me. The wasted potential is so unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteThe type of dialogue that you quoted would annoy me too.
I had not noticed that before, time it takes to read. That's awesome. It does say something
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this book when I read it, but haven't yet gotten further into the series. It was lighter than I expected it to be, but I thought it was a fun read. I'm sorry you didn't like it more.
ReplyDeleteI've only read this book in the series as well. Many bloggers I trust have told me that the series gets better as it goes along. Now I just need to find the time to get going on the series. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, a new follower of yours as well. :D
I've had my eye on this series for some time. That dialogue would annoy me though. Thanks for your honest thoughts. This installment sounds both good and not so good.
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