Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison
ISBN: 9780060572969
I was given this book as a gift.
The Hollows book #1
First, the back blurb:
“All the creatures of the night gather in ‘the Hollows’ of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party…and to feed.
Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining—and it’s Rachel Morgan’s job to keep that world civilized.
A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she’ll bring ’em back alive, dead…or undead.”
It’s been a while since I’ve read a back blurb that said so very little about the book, and by now I should know to be suspicious when that happens. It’s taken me three tries to get past page fifty of this book. The opening chapter is killer, as a skank-dressed Rachel Morgan stands outside a bar complaining about how her boss hates her and keeps giving her joke jobs (she works for an organization said to be like the FBI but it comes off a lot more like the IRS) then whining about all the jobs she’s messed up lately. She assaults a man for buying her a drink (after mentioning, a lot, how much like a hooker she looks) and later as she uses disguise charms and potions to get around EVERYONE can see through them (so really, what’s the point?). Readers should get used it this inconsistent way of storytelling because the book constantly goes back and forth between trying to convince us that Rachel is one of the best at her job, then showing her make loads of really poor decisions.
In fact inconsistent is about the best way to describe the whole book, though halting and frustrating also fits. After bagging the tax-evading leprechaun she’s after Rachel decides to shove her job where it belongs, accept a bribe from the criminal she just caught and go freelance. For unconvincing reasons a living vampire, Ivy, and a pixie name Jenks join Rachel. And despite her boss admitting that he’d been trying to force her to quit for years (why he didn’t just fire her, I’m not sure) he then proceeds to spend a lot of money hiring people to kill her. Typically they fail due to sheer luck or other people saving Rachel, rather than her own skills. Half the time Rachel herself doesn’t even notice death spells or people moving in to attack.
Rachel, in turn, decides the best way to get her now ex-boss off her back is to try to bust a huge drug cartel case that he’s working on before he does. There’s also a very uncomfortable side plot involving a lesbian attraction between Ivy the vampire and Rachel. It’s uncomfortable because Rachel is genuinely scared of Ivy’s attraction to her, but Ivy’s attraction appears to be built on things completely outside of Rachel’s control. Rachel is Ivy’s roommate and trying to find a way for their scents to never mingle, to never talk to her about her family or other vampires (although Rachel, super agent that she is, seems to know next to nothing about them when they’re around) seems like expecting a woman to maim herself to prevent people on the street from finding her attractive.
As for the world building, a bioengineered tomato launched the supernaturals’ takeover and made science illegal, which raises more questions and ends up coming off more silly than serious (especially to readers of SF as well). Humans are almost prisoners to the supes, but still portrayed with derision, totally missing out on an interesting source of conflict (which really sums up the drama of the book, it’s all forced, and the natural sources are glanced over and ignored). There’s a whole language Rachel uses, but in the end it feels false because of a lack of supporting detail. When there is detail of the greater world of Harrison’s world it lacks the lush richness of genre powerhouses like Laurell K. Hamilton and Ann Rice.
Almost everything in the book comes off as stodgy and flat, and a complete inability to connect with or care about the main character makes me more than willing to let my book allowance relax a little by skipping out on the rest of this series. There’s just too much crammed into this book with no context, atmosphere or charm, as if there’s an attempt to make up for the lack of texture with fight scenes and drama that the main character had to be an idiot to get into in the first place.
