Dead Witch Walking (Hollows, #1)

by Kim Harrison

[celinenyx]

Third reread

My original (long) review can be found below. It has been nearly seven years since I last read Dead Witch Walking, and it's still one of my favourites. When I read it I remember the excitement I felt when I was first introduced to the world of Rachel Morgan, the Hollows, and the high-paced mash-up of supernatural creatures that is urban-fantasy. Dead Witch Walking, to me, is the perfect balance of action, banter, character development, drama, and world-building. Though it is a chunky 400-page novel, I have read it in a single day. While the plot felt new to me as I had forgotten nearly everything about it, the characters feel as familiar and real to me as they did years ago.

Second reread

Reread this for a challenge. This is the book that got me into urban fantasy. Before that, I had only read epic fantasy, and I had no clue there were so much more kinds of fantasy there, just waiting for me to discover them.

Rachel is an IS (Inderland Security) runner, but lately things aren't really working out for her. She hasn't had a good run in weeks. So, at again a horrible tag she decides to quit. But she takes the best runner the IS has, Ivy Tamwood, a living vamp, with her. The IS, not so pleased with this, puts a price on her head. So now Rachel has to do everything to avoid being killed by fairy assassins and other evils...

This book is plain awesome. All supernatural beings came out of the supernatural closet during "the Turn", when the whole world was in chaos because of a virus that spreaded through tomatoes. Now, the "Inderlanders" live next to humans, but there is still a lot of suspicion and distrust.

Our protagonist, Rachel Morgan, is an earth witch, and a kick-ass heroine. She can defend herself quite well without her charms, and it feels great to have a heroine that can take care of herself. She is a bit ignorant, but she has her pixy and vamp partners to keep her out of trouble.

We see her grow in Dead Witch Walking from a I-can-do-all-of-this-by-myself-attitude to accepting that sometimes, you just need your friends, and you have to trust on other people. She is still not completely comfortable with living with a vampire that craves her blood, but we see definite progress.

All characters are so complex and have their own lives and problems. This series has one of my favourite side-characters ever: the tiny pixy Jenks, with a not so tiny attitude. His straightforwardness is hilarious. He just makes my day any time.

The story is incredibly fast paced, everything takes place in a couple of days, and there is so much going on. There are a lot of questions unanswered but there wasn't a big cliffhanger ending. There is a lot of stuff left for the rest of the series, and I can't wait to reread those as well.