Reviewed by tellemonstar on
Every Which Way But Dead wasn’t was good as the first two Hollows books. Parts of it were really good, especially the last third where the plot really thumped along, but as a whole, it just wasn’t quite as good.
As much as I admire her ballsy-ness, Rachel is more than just a little stupid sometimes. Intentionally or otherwise. She keeps going on about how Nick was summoning demons and such, but she doesn’t really seem to have to much trouble doing it herself, and then complains about how the demons keep coming to her. But I enjoyed the inclusion of Ceri – she’s an interesting character and knows an awful lot of things due to her being the familiar of Algaliarept. I thought Rachel’s outsmarting of Al was well-done, although I was a little confused during the reading of it. It wasn’t until after the fact when Rachel sort of explained it to herself/Ceri that what happened actually made sense. This series suffers from some editing issues.
What I really enjoyed about Every Which Way But Dead was the explanation of how vampires and scions work in Harrison’s world, and the intricacies of vampiric politics in general. It certainly explained how Ivy became the way she is, and why Piscary was able to have such a big influence on her behaviour in the first place. I also enjoyed Kisten’s actual personality coming through and showing his full personality without the influence of Piscary. He and Rachel make a nice pairing.
One particular plot point that worked well was trying to figure out who was really the bad guy in this book – Trent, Lee (Stanley Saladan) or someone else. As much as Trent can be kind of a jerk, I don’t think he is truly evil. He certainly has very flexible morals, and doesn’t appear to mind destroying things that are in his path, but I don’t think he is truly evil. Lee on the other hand, is perfectly capable of being properly evil.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 4 June, 2013: Finished reading
- 4 June, 2013: Reviewed