Review: The Witch With No Name by Kim Harrison

Title: The Witch With No Name
Author: Kim Harrison
Release date: September 2014
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Series: The Hollows
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Description: Rachel Morgan has come a long way since her early days as an inexperienced bounty hunter. She’s faced vampires and werewolves, banshees, witches, and soul-eating demons. She’s crossed worlds, channelled gods, and accepted her place as a day-walking demon. She’s lost friends and lovers and family, and an old enemy has unexpectedly become something much more.

But power demands responsibility, and world-changers must always pay a price. Rachel knew that this day would come – and now it is here.

To save Ivy’s soul and the rest of the living vampires, to keep the demonic ever-after and our own world from destruction, Rachel Morgan will risk everything . . .

My thoughts: When you read a series over a number of years, there are always mixed feeling as you hold the last one in your hands. I had hopes, expectations, sadness that it would soon be done, and a little fear that it might not be a 'good' ending, tying things up well. Of course, this is Kim Harrison, and after reading this series for the past 10 years or so, I should know I can trust her.

The main conflict of this book is that Cormel, vampire leader of Cincinnati wants Rachel to solve the problem of vampires keeping their souls in their 'second life'. And he wants her to do it NOW. Rachel's learnt to stand up for herself, but Cormel knows her weak points: her friends.

Things quickly escalate, and soon there are elves and demons mixed up in the problem too. There is some lying, some double crossing, and some very cute moments. Even with all the rushing around in the books, Rachel gets some time alone with Trent and their relationship continues to grow and change.  You get to see pretty much all of Rachel's friends and family in this book, including the werewolves, the elf children, Jenks' family...

I don't want to talk too much about the plot, so let me focus instead on the questions I had before starting. Yes, this is a great final book of the series. It wraps up the big issues and it has a story of its own without being a book-long epilogue. There will be other issues for Rachel and her friends after the book finishes, but we don't see them, and I don't think we need to. This series for me has been a perfect example of excellent writing: characters who grow and change in a clear but gradual way over the series; an overarching plot connecting all the books; individual plots distinct to each book; an engaging romance element; well developed secondary characters; and now - a good, rounded off ending.

If for some reason you haven't read this series yet, feel confident that you can go straight from one book to the next with no waiting now, and that there's a good ending. If you've been holding off reading this last one: it's safe, I promise! Go out and buy it now! :)

I give this book, of course, ten out of ten.

~Ailsa

Stacking The Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews. 

I'm back staying with a friend who has a brilliant college library. I'm making good use of his library card! So here are the books I got this week. All title links go to goodreads.

Not pictured: First Test by Tamora Pierce. (Check my review here!)

Protector of the Small: Page, by Tamora Pierce. This is the sequel to First Test, and I'll probably read it and the rest of the sequence this week. 

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. This has been a huge bestseller in the UK since it was released last year, and it sounds intriguing with a dolls house making things happen. I thought I would give it a look. 

Honor's Knight, by Rachel Bach. This is book 2 in a trilogy. I read the first one in the autumn and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. It's more sci-fi than I'd normally read but I enjoyed book 1.

The Witch With No Name, by Kim Harrison. The last book in the Hollows series!! Nooo!! I'm really excited to see how things finish for these characters though. 

Prudence, by Gail Carriger. It doesn't have the dust jacket on, so I didn't spot it on the shelf at first! Book 1 of a new series from Ms. Carriger. I love her writing and this was one of my 'Waiting on Wednesday' picks the other week so I was very excited to find it here. I'll probably review this later this week. 

Leave me your links and I'll check out the books you got.

~Ailsa

Stacking the Shelves/Letterbox Love

 

Hello!

Letterbox Love (from Narratively Speaking) and Stacking the Shelves (from Tynga's Reviews) are memes to share the books you've received this week.

Busy times here, as per usual. I'm in Texas for a few weeks visiting a friend, and the library here is brilliant, they have so many books I want to read! Here are the three I got to start me off. (Links go to Goodreads.)

The Undead Pool, by Kim Harrison. The penultimate book in the hollows series. I've been looking forward to reading this for a while, can't wait to see how it goes, and of course I'm looking forward to seeing how things go between Rachel & Trent in this book. Reading it at the moment, review coming soon.

















Black Arts, by Faith Hunter. (#7 in the Jane Yellowrock series.) Evan Trueblood comes to New Orleans looking for his wife. I started reading this on the bus yesterday, and I'm excited to see how it goes. Getting to see more of the Trueblood family? Yes, please, I love seeing Jane with her 'pack' and it looks like this book might see the mending of some bridges between them.

Fortune's Pawn, by Rachel Bach. 1st in the series. I first heard of this book when I think Ilona Andrews reviewed it on her blog, and I've noticed it in a couple of places since then. Something a little different for me, but I think it'll be interesting.















What books did you get this week? Leave your links in the comments and I'll check them out, and let me know if you've read any of these three!
-Ailsa

Kim Harrison 'Ever After' signing & Q&A

For those who don't know, I'm originally in Scotland, but I'm studying abroad in North Carolina this year. I got to experience an unexpected bonus of that this weekend - one of my favourite authors, Kim Harrison, is doing a tour for the release of her latest book 'Ever After' and one of the tour stops was in Raleigh. Most of my favourite authors are from the US, Australia or New Zealand, so on rare European  tours they tend to only come to London - still too far for me to get to! This is a long way of saying, I was very excited to hear she was going to be less than an hour away from me.

The signing was in Quail Ridge Books, an independent bookstore that has been there for almost 30 years! I'd never been before, so it was good to find, and they were super helpful when I was ordering my copy of the book through them. I got there to find a large seating area around a podium, and I was glad I'd got there early because it was already pretty busy!

Kim came up and read a couple of page from the book, a nice little teaser from those who hadn't read it yet, and then started taking questions. I tried to take notes, but there were a couple I skipped over because the answers are on her website and things like that. This is SPOILER FREE for 'Ever After' but may have one or two spoilers for books earlier in the series, so if you aren't up to date, be warned!


Q. When a character dies, do you suffer as much as we [readers] do?

A: Yes! She said if someone like Nick died, she wouldn't mind, but Kisten was very upsetting. She also said that she still can't read the scenes where Matalina dies, because it feels to personal as a mother.

Q: Why did certain deaths in Ever After [you'll know which ones if you've read the book] occur 'off screen'?

A: She said this was too hard to answer without spoilers, but she would answer if you asked in person, so maybe this will be answered on the website at some point.

Q: How does she keep things straight in her head, and not get details and character personalities mixed up?

A: Partly from the number of edit rounds that each book goes through means she knows the story pretty well by the time it's done. When she was putting together the 'Hollows Insider' she had to reread the whole series, which also helped. She also works a long way ahead of her publication schedule, about 2 books ahead, so she can go back and change things, or add foreshadowing. She said she's never had a long range plot for the series on paper, just in her head.

Q: Did she always know details of what happened between Trent & Rachel at camp?

A: No, not at all. There was some shared past between them, and Trent remembers a lot more from camp than Rachel does, but no, she hadn't always known.

Q: Is every child with Rosewood syndrome actually a demon?

A: Yes, a Rosewood kid is born a demon.

Q: There seems to be a lot of science in the books....

A: Kim did a bio degree at college, and finds genetics really interesting, hence their inclusion in the books - she likes to bring the logic from science into magic systems and thinks it gives them some more grounding in reality.

Q: Will there be a happy ending? 

A: Rachel wants a happy ending, and Kim is working to give her one. She also said that she is "working for happy endings for all the characters who survive!"

***

I was lucky enough to be in te front of the line for signing because I bought my book early on, which was lucky since there must have been almost 100 people there!

It was very exciting to be there, and meet her, and get my book signed! :D

~Ailsa