The Turn (Hollows, Prequel) (The Peri Reed Chronicles)

by Kim Harrison

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

It is so great to be back in The Hollows. I love this series so much. Now, I did miss Rachel, Jenks and the gang, but that doesn’t mean that we go into this story without knowing anyone. We do see Quinn and Al (I love that we have Al as he was a favorite secondary character of mine, second only to Jenks, who will always be the best sidekick ever).

So this story is a prequel and so the story is set in the 60s. We start off with Trisk trying to get an interview for a job after graduating. You have to remember how things were back in the 60s for women in the workplace. They had to work twice as hard as men to get the recognition that they are deserved. Add to that Trisk is a dark elf, she is frowned upon even more. As if that wasn’t enough, she has quite the rivalry with Kal. He is a light elf male from a prestigious family. He’s done everything in his power to knock her down. He cheats off her and she is the one who goes down saying she cheated off him.

When the Enclave asks her to go work in a human research lab to keep an eye on what the humans are doing, she finds that it is best offer she is going to get. It at least is letting her do what she loves, research and development in genetics. The story jumps three years and she has developed a “fuzzy” tomato that is drought and pest resistant. She was going to feed the world and rid it of starvation. That is until things go very wrong.

I really enjoyed this story. Not only did I get to spend time with characters that I loved. I loved seeing Al again. He was himself and I’m so glad to see him again. There are other great secondary characters. Ms. Harrison does such a great job with secondary characters. In this story, we have Daniel, a human researcher that worked with Trisk. He was working on a virus that would help the military by making everyone sick, but the virus can’t reproduce outside of a lab, so people get sick, but they wouldn’t die from it. Give it a few days and they’re fine. Help the military take people down with less death.

There is also a pixie, because you can’t have a Hollows story without a pixie. Here we have Orchid. Her species is having a ton of difficulties because humans tearing down their forests. They are spread so thin it is hard to find a mate. She was living with Kal and when he goes to California to check Trisk’s work (boy did that piss her off), Orchid goes with him to hunt for a mate.

I haven’t any idea if there will be more books to follow this one. I don’t think so, but I would love to learn more about Trisk and Orchid. I think it would also be great to see more of how things go during and just after The Turn. I loved being back in this world and it makes me want to revisit the series on audio.

Narration
I’m so glad that they stuck with Marguerite Gavin for this book. She narrates all but one of The Hollows series, so it was perfect to have her back, even if this book is mostly new characters. I love Gavin’s narration. She does a great job with male and female voices. I love listening to her voice Al. She does an amazing job with pixies too. She is a favorite narrator for me. I have searched out books with her narrating and will continue to do so. If you haven’t tried her yet, I highly recommend you check her out.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.