Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she'll be happy. But fate - or more exactly, the Fates - have other plans. Eve owes them a favour, and they've just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy - previous hunters have been sent mad in the process. As if that's not problem enough, it turns out that the only way to stop her is with an angel's sword. And Eve's no angel...
It took me a long time after reading [b:Industrial Magic|125925|Industrial Magic (Women of the Otherworld, #4)|Kelley Armstrong|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171907387s/125925.jpg|121282] to continue on with this series; Industrial Magic had been so painful that it was difficult to convince myself to spend more time with the series even though I had enjoyed the first two books so much. Luckily, Haunted is a major improvement over the last book even though it still isn't [b:Bitten|11918|Bitten (Women of the Otherworld, #1)|Kelley Armstrong|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1306101770s/11918.jpg|2606334] quality.
I really liked a lot of the concepts in this book. The rules of being the ghost of a supernatural creature, the mechanics of the supernatural-ghostly dimension, the villian's unique characteristics and the way she used her partners/victims - all of these elements were well explained and well-used in the narrative to create a story that was actually fresh and interesting. I didn't have any problems with believing or understanding the characters' motivations, which was something that made the past two books weak for me.
My main complaint was how non-threatening Eve and Kristof Nash were. Previous books had painted a darker picture of them from other peoples' points of view, but that didn't really come through here. It may have been in the interest of making the protagonist likeable, but I would have preferred them to be a little more gritty. Eve does mention people she's killed and suggests killing innocent people to capture the villain, but it feels like it's wrapped up in puppies and rainbows.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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31 August, 2011:
Finished reading
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31 August, 2011:
Reviewed