Kim Harrison
The Hollows series takes place in an alternate history/fantasy version of Cincinnati. In this version in the 1960s a genetically modified tomato wiped out a large portion of humans. This made room for the supernatural creatures – witches, vampires, demons, elves, pixies, werewolves – to come out into society. It isn’t always going smoothly.
Dead Witch Walking introduces Rachel Morgan as a witch who is a bounty hunter. She lives with a vampire and a pixie in a converted church on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River across from Cincinnati. (I can’t drive through this area without assuming there are vampires around there somewhere.)
I hate this cover. This isn’t a skimpily dressed woman kind of book series but you wouldn’t know it from the covers. It gets a bit better in later covers.
I’ve said that I like long running series to have development. This one does. Rachel definitely grows and changes as the series develops. Characters come and go. Because of that you really need to start this series at the beginning to know what is going on.
One unique thing about this series is that it ended in 2014 with book 13. I ABSOLUTELY HATED THE ENDING. I can not emphasize enough how much I thought it sucked and was a betrayal of the whole character. It was very sad-making for me.
But, in 2020, the series rose again with American Demon. My head canon is that we are just pretending that the last ending didn’t happen and have just moved on. There have been three more books and they are good again. One more is expected in the fall of 2024.
I like this series on audio. The narration is good. I find that with urban fantasy novels with a lot of suspense that listening on audio slows me down and lets me enjoy it for longer.
Kim Harrison does have other series but they aren’t as long running. I just recently read a new book of hers out.
Three Kinds of Lucky seems to be the start of a new series. I picked it up purely on author name recognition. I listened to it and honestly, I probably would have DNFed it if she didn’t have goodwill built up from all her other books. It wasn’t bad but the world building was very slow at the beginning. It was sort of complicated to figure out where she was headed with this story. Also the main character seemed really slow on the uptake as events were unfolding around her. I ended up enjoying it as the story finally got going but I don’t know if I would have stuck with it if it was an unknown to me author. I’ll probably listen to the next book now that I know what is going on and am invested in it.
A tomato changed things… LOL. Sounds like an interesting series.
Ronel visiting for H: My Languishing TBR: H
Minotaur
A tomato wiping out half the population sounds funny (probably because I imagined it as a large killer tomato rather than people dying after eating tomatoes). I hate when book covers don’t really match the story.