A Fistful of Charms

Jun 162008
 

The fourth installment in this series opens three or so months on from the last book, and true to form, opens straight in to the action. Rachel is in deeper trouble with the Demons and due to her decision to keep a secret from Jenks, she and Ivy are without the little pixie and his family. Her ex-love Nick comes back into the scene and she feels obligated to help him out, along with Jenks’ son who went with Nick when he left. They have to travel beyond The Hollows and deal with the mundane world along with everything else and Rachel has to make some hard decisions.

I love the titles of this series, I really do! As I’ve read each book in the series, I keep expecting the quality of writing and plot to start dropping and it just hasn’t, if anything it has gotten better. Jenks’ absence in the beginning is like a huge void and you realise just how well the three main characters work together, as dysfunctional as they can be. The plot runs very smoothly, each event happening in good time rather than feeling overly rushed or too slow and again you get tidbits of history about each of the main cast that rounds them out even more. One of the things I’ve liked about Rachel’s character is how she started looking at things very black and white – white is good and black is evil. To survive, she’s slowly learned that things just aren’t as cut and dried as she thought and that some of the choices she’s had to make may not be ‘good’ but don’t make her ‘evil’.

I know I’ve said it before but I couldn’t help but pick up the fifth book straight away once I was finished with this one. I’m not sure what I will do afterwards as it is the last one I own and there is only one more that has been published at the moment!

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

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Every Which Way but Dead

Jun 162008
 

Picking up right where The Good, The Bad, and the Undead finished, book three gets off to a promising start, and never lets up. In between Rachel’s problems with a demon, Ivy resuming her blood drinking ways but still trying to stay on the right side of everyone and Jenks being his usual endearingly grumpy self, you would think they had enough problems. If only! Dealing with the outfall of their actions in Book two, the three partners in Vampiric Charms (NOT an escort agency!), try to do their ‘day’ jobs, diffuse the war that is threatening The Hollows after Rachel put away the former head of the Vampire faction and try to stay true to themselves.

The characters develop further still, it seems a little piece of important history of each character is released in each book which is something that keeps you reading to find out. The main characters are very ‘human’ in their actions and it’s something you can identify with – you don’t always agree with their actions but you can understand how they came to make them. Rachel, Ivy and Jenks are so fundamentally different as well, their interactions are always amusing or heartfelt and I enjoy them a lot. The secondary characters are just as entertaining and I was pleased to see some of the less known characters becoming stronger and more integral to the plot. Again I was eager to pick up book four as soon as I’d finished book three which is a real treat!

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

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The Good, The Bad, and the Undead

Jun 162008
 

I sometimes find that when I’ve really enjoyed a first book in a series, the second can be a bit lacking. I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case here!

The book picks up a couple of months after the end of the first, bursting back into action right from the first page. You learn more history about the characters, making them more rounded and easier to empathise with. The main characters can be a little irritating at times but in all honesty it is part of their charm. They can make bad decisions in moments of stress and do what they think is right, even if it is at odds with their ‘good’ natures. The interactions between Rachel, Ivy and Jenks often produce laugh out loud moments which is always nice.

The plot moves along nicely, with entertaining new characters being introduced of which a few of them you hope will become regulars. I enjoyed this second book as much as the first (Dead Witch Walking) and when I finished, I was eager, again, to dive right back in to number 3.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Dead Witch Walking

Jun 132008
 

Rachel Morgan is a witch. A witch who is under a death threat for daring to leave her employer, rooms with a still living vampire, shares her garden with a pixie family and is a bounty hunter of the supernatural, keeping the normal world safe from the creatures that would prey on them. Welcome to The Hollows in Cincinnati.

I actually picked up the third book first and when I found it hard to follow what had happened before, I put it away again until I could get this first book. I’m glad I did as so much became clear. I liked the history about how the world came to be what it is today, humans and the supernatural Inderlanders co-existing in a world that is vastly different yet so similar to our own. The main characters are flawed yet eminently likeable and you very quickly come to care about what happens to them.

The story centres around Rachel and her desire to be her own boss which becomes her struggle to stay alive. Her friend and room-mate Ivy is a still living vampire, who refuses to give in to the desire for blood. As she is still living, it’s a craving rather than the necessity it would be if she had died. Then there is Jenks, the six inch high Pixie, who helps Rachel and Ivy in their bounty hunting. He and his wife and fifty four kids live in a tree stump in the garden.

The story flows very well, even when filling in history and the action is fast paced, often leaving you tense along with it. It’s written in first person which is good as there are a lot of characters coming in and out and I think third would have been too chaotic. I liked being in Rachel’s head.

By the end I was eager to pick up the second book straight away and plunge right back into it and I was very happy to find there were five books so far!

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

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