Dead Witch Walking Book Review
Last month I read Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison. The book follows Rachel Morgan, a witch who works for the IS (the FBI for the supernatural). Rachel quits her job and teams up with a vampire, Ivy, and a pixie, Jenks. If you'd like a more in depth summary of the book, I will link the book's Amazon page here.
Do not read any further unless you like spoilers.
Dead Witch Walking is the first book in The Hollows series. I became interested in this series through my mom, who was reading a collection of short stories based on characters that appear throughout the series. I like series about the supernatural, so I decided to give the first book a go.
There are parts of this book that I really enjoyed and parts that I didn't like so much. I'll start with the things that I liked then work my way into the things I didn't like. I love the characters in this book. Harrison does a great job developing their traits and flaws and creating unique voices for each of them. My favorite character so far is Jenks. I haven't read many supernatural series that include pixies. I think Harrison did a fantastic job describing all of the different types of Inderlanders. The plot of the book was original. I thought the tomato epidemic was interesting, and I liked how the different characters interact with the fruit. For instance, Nick likes the Inderlander world, but despite this, he is still human and we see how uncomfortable he is when there is a tomato in Rachel's kitchen.
Now onto the things that I didn't like. Rachel doesn't like vampires. That much is obvious. But when Harrison continues to tell us over and over again that Rachel doesn't like vampires and how uncomfortable she is around Ivy, it gets repetitive. I'm not an experienced writer myself, but I know there are methods to show Rachel's dislike without having to repeat the same phrases. The same thing happens with Francis. Both Rachel and Jenks continuously repeat how much of loser he is throughout the book. Secondly, I didn't like the scene at the beginning of the book where Ivy almost kills Rachel because she doesn't know the signs of attracting a vampire. It seemed very out of place the entire time I read it. It doesn't make sense to me that Ivy, a vampire that has sworn off draining the blood out of living creatures, wouldn't do her best to make sure this sort of situation doesn't happen. I'm sure you could argue that vampires in this world have more difficulty controlling their bloodlust, but I'm still not buying that as an excuse. Lastly, I found Rachel's immediate acceptance of Nick to be unrealistic. It seems strange that someone who shuts out everyone around her instantly opens up to a human, even after the tragedy they both entailed in the animal fight club.
Overall, I did enjoy this book. I would like to give the second book a read to determine if this is a series I want to continue investing my time in. I give this book 3.8/5 stars.
Have you read Dead Witch Walking? Let me know what you thought of the book in the comments below! See you guys on Friday!
Shannon
Check out my previous post here.
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