Thursday, March 24, 2011

Pale Demon

by Kim Harrison, 439 pages

This is the 13th book in the Hollow series, which is set in a world where humans are the minority.  When a batch of genetically engineered tomatoes manages to kill almost all of the human race, witches, vampires, weres and other supernaturals come out of the closet.  Bureaucracy, politics and power struggles between the races become a background for the series, and in the middle, trying to establish her own independence is a witch, Rachel Morgan.

In this book, Rachel has three days to get across the country and appeal her shunning at the annual witches convention.  If she fails to convince her peers of her innocence, she will be banished to the Ever-after like the demon she is accused of being.  Backed by her partners Ivy and Jenks, and charged with the protection of Trent, an elf who causes more trouble than he's worth, she heads west doing her best to dodge assassins and stay out of the clutches of a cannibalistic day-walking demon.

Harrison loves to stack the deck against her characters and watch them struggle to survive.  Every friendship is hard earned and love is more likely to end in betrayal than a happy ending.  Each victory comes with a price, and Rachel is forced to balance survival and doing the right thing.  I'm a sucker for those life and death, good vs. evil story lines, and this book has the added bonus great imagination.

No comments:

Post a Comment