Customer Reviews

Dead Witch Walking

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I like the world that Harrison writes in. I like the people that parade around in it. I like Rachel a tough head strong woman. Ivy, Jenks, Trent are all good characters to base a series with.

I like the Ivy/Rachel relationship in the story but that falls flat, it's a tease, it's like the author just dropped it all together for a more conventional romance.

The biggest problem I had with this book is the last part of the book. I felt that the author brought in a character, Nick, just to bring in a typical romance hero good, appearing, guy, who Rachel falls for instantly and trusts without reservation. I just felt that introduction of the character brought strong confident Rachel to be a weak kneed romance heroine. I believe that Harrison can remedy that in the next book, and I'm looking forward to it.

I would strongly recommend this book because it will be a part of a series and the world is solid, the characters with the exception of Nick, are all strong and worth the time to get invested in them.

if you are a fan of ann rice , this is right for you. the style is great and so overdwelming a read i cant wait for more, needless to say i read this entirely in one sitting!! MORE!!!

This is an interesting read with compelling characters. I love fantasy books, especially dark fantasy about vampires, werewolves and the such. I needed to find a new author to read and when Amazon recommended Kim Harrison, I bought Dead Witch Walking and gave it a try. I would definitely recommend it. I've since read the rest of the books in the Rachel Morgan series and can't wait for the next installment.

This entire series by Kim Harrison is mind-blowing. We are thrown into a world of humanity that has greatly suffered from a virus spread through the average tomato. Much of humanity dies, only those know as Inderlanders survive, the ones that have tried to stay hidden and out of the human eye. Humans must accept that elves, witches, warlocks, and much more of the old, thought to be fairytales are in fact true.

Rachel, along with her partner Ivy and Jenks, must break free of their IS contracts, start their own buisness, and just try to survive day to day life, without bitting one another, or placing spells on one another. They must fight those whose only goal in life is to get richer, like Trent, and those that want to see them fail.

The characters are greatly developed, and have actual depth. The plot is easy to understand and in the end, everything is wrapepd up, just in time for "Every Which Way But Dead", "The Good, The Bad, and The Undead","A Fistful of Charms", and "For a Few Demons More".

Though the end of the series appears to wrap itself up, we can only hope that Kim will take pen to paper again, and continue writing this series, through a book 6.

Ok...how else to put this, but WOW! I hadn't figured on liking it as much as I did. It's a great book! If you like the quirkiness and hijinks of Stephanie Plum and the horror/fantasy aspect of a Anita Blake world, then you'll love Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking, the first in the Rachel Morgan story (2 books follow this one).
It was one of those books where you know it's 3 a.m. and you have to get to work at 8 a.m. but hell, just one more chapter, right? Wrong! Warning: This book can keep you up all night! It took 2 days to read thanks to such interuptions as work, sleep, and other inconviences.
I love the way Harrison writes, the story doesn't drag despite the fact that she has so much information to inpart on a new world she's created for us. It's fun to read, the characters are likeable (some not) and realistic. It's not a story of happy endings and it does end with a not so subtle "be the continued" but if you like serial novels such as Stephanie Plum and Anita Blake where the stories flow from one book to another you'll love this book. It's imaginative, creative, funny, and makes you beg for the next installment.

Kim Harrison's debut novel about a young police witch who decides to strike out as an independent, comes as something of a pleasant surprise. Certainly, there has been no lack of tough magician/detective stories in the years since Laurell K Hamilton, Jim Butcher, and some of the urban fantasy crowd moved into the genre. Detective fantasy is a small niche at best, but the overall quality has been good, with only a few wobbles lately. But just when I thought the genre dead, along comes this effort, and the story shows much promise and only a few imperfections.

I'm not going to pretend that the book's premises are spectacularly original. Harrison's world is one where magic and the occult were always there, but until a bio-engineered virus wiped out half of the 'normal' folk, the occult world stayed carefully hidden. Now it is a world divided - in this case the normals live in Cincinnati proper and the 'spooks' live across the river in The Hollows. The Hollows is part of the Interland, where technology and medicine are suspect and you never know when you might get hit with a bad spell. Interland Security spends its time hunting down ill-behaved vampires, werewolves who shift out of season, and black magicians.

Rachel Morgan is a police runner down on her luck and not getting a lot of respect from her management. She's been relegated to second-rate assignments and only a down and out pixie will work at her side. Instructed to bring in a blackmailing leprechaun she gets offered three wishes and decides it's time to go independent. To her surprise Ivy, an unturned Vampire and expert runner, and Jenks, a pixie with a strong case of obnoxious attitude, decide to join her. This infuriates Rachel's ex-boss, and he takes out a contract on her. The red-headed witch will spend most of this story trying to stay alive long enough to buy off the contract.

Harrison turns out to be an effective writer who can out a plot together and build dialog. Plus she has the skill to build a believable urban fantasy world. The novel's biggest weakness is in character design. For all that Rachel is supposed to be a strong enough character to walk out on a dangerous organization, she is surprising squeamish, tends to panic, and it totally terrified that Ivy will bite or kiss her (or bit and kiss her). Ivy is an ex-blood addict who has a surprising inability to say no considering that she is a top operative. Jenks, however, is fairly normal for a pixie.

Since Harrison plays all these quirks for comic effect they work well enough for readability. It's hard to predict how well everything will hold together over a series. If the story lines start to get serious then Rachel will be in danger of becoming an Anita Blake clone. If Harrison can keep to lighter weight sarcastic humor without overworking the jokes then we may have a hit on our hands. In the meantime this volume is a pleasant way to spend a few days reading.

Normally I don't write a review for a book, but this one deserves high praise. I read the entire book from my grandparents home in North Carolina to my home in Kentucky. The book was a fast paced thoroughly engrossing read. If your a fan of vampire, fairy and witch books with a new twist you'll love this. If you fancy more predictable tales with dry boneless female characters you should avoid this sassy book at all costs.

Although not as dark, this book is reminiscent of the early Anita Blake books. Plenty of action, plenty of character development, lots of world development, and plenty of good/bad/and neutral supernatural beings (all developed as part of the story). A major difference is that the heroine, although plenty tough, isn't a killer (I enjoy both types). And all without degenerating into endless mingling of blood and sex.

Although I did enjoy the book a lot and will buy the sequel, it left a lot of issues unresolved. Another reviewer did a good job of summing most of them up, without giving too much away; so I'm not going to. However, an 8 month plus wait for the sequel is way too long. For a book like this, which is obviously part of an 'logy and not just a series (ie. it isn't self-contained), 1 month is too long.

This book has gotten mixed reviews, and if I had read them first I probably would never have gotten the book. That being said, I enjoyed Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking. I found it's tongue in cheek style provided a refreshing, quick read. If you're after a dark vampire book, this probably isn't the one for you. Think of it along the guilty pleasure lines.

This isn't just the typical "vampire out of water" story or even "humans in a vampire world" story. Instead it really does have an interesting character- and plot-based line. And as far as it goes (which is a LONG way; it's nearly triple the length of the typical book in this genre at over 400 pages), it's well done.

The problem is it leaves a LOT of questions raised and unanswered. Examples are tough without providing spoilers, but some examples in ambiguous terms: who called the (apparently multiple) demons? What are the motivations, and even species, of several characters about whom these questions are raised? Several main characters' recent-and-relevant backgrounds are questioned by other characters, but these aren't addressed. Why the grudge by one and tolerance by another (both at extreme expense) towards the main protagonist? She owes mandatory "favors" to several powerful entities; how will they be called in?

The book is good, don't get me wrong, but it feels like it started out twice this long and the publisher must've said, "No, chop it. We'll put the second half in your next book." And if the ends are all wrapped up in the second book, reading them both at once will probably be massively enjoyable.

Is this a problem? She only has one book out yet. Her second one (also rated at 400 pages) isn't scheduled for another eight months (at this writing). That's a long time to wait hoping the deal doesn't get cancelled to finish the story.