Book Jacket:
Condemned to death for black magic and shunned, Rachel Morgan has three days to somehow get to the annual witches convention in San Francisco and clear her name. If she fails, the only way she can escape death is to live in the demonic ever after . . . for ever after.
Banned from the flight lists, Rachel teams up with elven tycoon Trent Kalamack, headed for the West Coast for his own mysterious business. But Rachel isn’t the only passanger along for the ride. Can a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy in one car survive for over 2,300 miles? And that’s not counting the assassin on their tail.
A fearsome demon walks the sunlight, freed after centuries of torment to slay the innocent and devour souls. But his ultimate prey is Rachel Morgan. While the powerful witch with nerves of steel will do whatever it takes to stay alive, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her.
You can read an excerpt here.
Review:
In Pale Demon, Kim Harrison takes everything we know and love about the Hollows series, shakes it up like a margarita, and delivers one smooth story with a lot of kick. If I didn’t know it, I would never believe this was the ninth book of a series.
The story starts off in familiar territory – it’s certainly not the first time the Church has come under attack (nor I imagine the last), but after the opening sequence, this story burns rubber veering away from the beaten path, and it never looks back. And so our favorite crew (plus one smug elf), embarks on what quickly becomes the road trip from hell, with plenty of fun pit stops along the way (what happens in Vegas…). And as you’d expect from a Kim Harrison story, the pages are absolutely packed with eventful happenings, such that you’ll have a hard time believing you’re only done with the first third of the book by the time the road trip comes to an end.
Which brings me to how much I absolutely love that this book isn’t afraid to radically change gears. This is not a road trip story, there is no case to solve, this is just one wild ride of a narrative with several drastically different sections – and yet they all fit together perfectly. It was fresh, intense, and absolutely riveting.
At its heart, this story is about the linchpins of Rachel’s life getting thrown to the wind like dandelion seeds. As Rachel is faced with loosing everything that holds her together, we the readers are also faced with loosing everything we hold dear about the series, and it lends the narrative a fantastic, wrenching tension. No one and nothing is safe in this story, and you’ll feel it every step of the way.
The hard earned wisdom Rachel has gained over the course of this series is very much in evidence in this book, and it’s fascinating to see her weathered and beaten sense of right and wrong contrasted with the almost childlike innocence of those less experienced in the kind of shit she has to deal with. It creates a nice sense of how far she’s come from book one, back when she was the naive one, and this story really pushes Rachel, testing how much farther she’s willing to go.
Everyone gets a moment in the sun in this book, from Trent to Al to Rachel’s Mom. I have to confess, my favorite part of this series has always been the Rachel-Ivy dynamic (I’m absolutely rooting for them), and I’ve been missing it acutely in the last couple of books, where Ivy has been emotionally distant and plot-wise she kind of faded into the background. Fear not, Rachel-Ivy fans, this book gives us one KILLER Rachel-Ivy moment – I almost lost my mind, in the best possible way.
I was also fascinated by the fixation with labeling that happens in the second half of this book. Given Rachel’s background and history, I wasn’t entirely sure why she was so willing to accept it, and even to own it, but it still made for a very interesting portrait of how all evidence to the contrary falls by the wayside when it comes to prejudices and stereotyping – an all too relevant lesson, given our present day issues with racial profiling.
Honestly, there is never a dull moment in this book. The usual Rachel flare for catastrophe is very much in effect, with all the action and magic you could wish. Pale Demon explodes all over this series, in really interesting ways, and I can’t wait to see what Kim Harrison does next.
Hollows fans, buckle up – this is one seriously fun ride. And fair warning, the wait for the next book is going to be interminable…
Byrt Grade: A
As Lever Burton used to say – you don’t have to take my word for it…
What can I say, Pale Demon was freaking fabulous…I really don’t want to say too much more for fear of giving something away, but Pale Demon is going to have readers talking about it for months. The plot is full of little things that affect Rachel in such ways that everything is going to change for her. Everyone’s life is going to be different after Pale Demon, and what Rachel ends up going though, and I have no clue what is going to happen next.
Pale Demon is a kickass book and it just may be my new favorite of the series.
Where to begin? For starters, you’ll love that even though not everything is resolved in this book, Harrison does her best to address many of the concerns & questions that fans have been having over the series. I won’t state which ones get the most attention, but I opine (as Pierce would put it) that the many people will be satisfied in one way or another.
