Dead Witch Walking

I'm so glad audible got the first book in this series. I can't wait for the rest. The publishers summary above gives a good set-up for the book and their claim that it's Fun, sassy, filled with action, humor is dead on.
The combination of a witch, vampire and pixie crime fighting team makes for a facinating and complex story. Jenks the pixie and his family provides most of the humor while Ivy the living vampire and her struggle for control gives the book a sharp edge. The heart of the story is the witch Rachel Morgan.
This is one of my favorite paranormal series. It's as exciting as Charlaine Harris's books about Sookie but with more humor. And without the "soft-porn" you find in some of the paranormal romance books.
At first I thought the reader, Marguerite Gavin, spoke a little too fast but I quickly became accustomed to her and enjoyed her performance more and more as the book progressed. Even if you read the book when it came out in 2004 like I did I think you'll really enjoy listening to it also.

This futuristic story centers around a witch named Rachel Morgan and it is set in time after a genetically engineered virus wipes out a good chunk of the human population. After the virus, the paranormal community decided to come out of hiding and make itself known to the rest of the world. The rest of the world wasn’t quite ready for the big reveal so the two communities still keep themselves mostly separate.

Rachel works as a type of cop for an organization called IS. The IS doesn’t treat her very well so she decides she wants to quit and work on her own. A little pixie named Jenks and her vampire friend Ivy also want to quit the IS and work with Morgan. The IS can’t have these renegade types out there, so they put a contract out on Rachel. Now Rachel and her two friends must hide from hit men while they try to figure out a bust that will be big enough for them to get out from under the contract.

I really enjoyed this story. Kim Harrison has created a whole new world for us to explore and enjoy. There was a whole different take on vampires and witches that I found a bit confusing at first. That was due to my preconceived notions about the paranormal traits of vampires and witches, not because of the writing. So flush your brain of all other vampire and witch stories and start fresh.

I enjoyed that there was a mystery surrounding Trent that was never actually divulged. Normally that would tick me off, but with all the rest of the action and suspense, it didn’t. There was a whole lot going on in this book and it will be one that I will probably go back and listen to again.

This was the first book in a series and I will definitely go on to the next.

The Narration Review
I think Marguerite Gavin did a great job on the narration. I liked that she would increase the tempo just a bit for when she was talking for Jenks and that she gave him a good I-got-attitude voice. All the voices were clearly distinguishable so I never had to wonder who was speaking.

No, I kept having to rewind the story, it didn't hold my attention.

I would changed the pacing of the story, it was as if everyone was in a hurry, author, narrator..

The narrator sounded fresh and young, which the story required

to quote the author, "...a witch, a pixie, and a vampire walk into a bar..." thus begins the tale of our heroine. up and coming runner (cop) who strikes out on her own and teams up with a vampire and a pixie to go after the, "big, bad uglies." set in a cincinati where instead of going to the moon, half of humanity was wiped out by killer tomatos; thus unmasking all the were's and vamps, ect. and, to me atleast, a wonderfull new twist on vampire lore... not all vampires are dead. i have recommended this series to my whole family and they are all hooked. my mom (who prefers biographies and dramas), my sister (ok, she recommended this to me, but who's counting), my grandma (she prefers mysteries and sci-fi). my dad who dosen't even like paranormal stories, likes this series. even a few of my co-workers have picked up on this series and we have had fun discussing these books. the last book that hit all those buttons i mentioned above, harry potter. and as for the narrator all i can say is kim harrison + margueritte gavin = best pairing i have ever listened too.

Probably not.

I'm reading the whole series, the characters are addictive. My problem is that Rachel is a flaming idiot. I spend half the time yelling at her or thinking that she really deserves to die for making such inane choices. I love Ivy, Janks and the rest - but be warned; your favorite characters in this series are not safe. People do die in some of the books.

This is the first book in the excellent Hollows series. If you like this book, you will like all of them; if you don't, you won't. I found them very enjoyable! The story is good, the characters are good, and the narration is good. I feel a little pompous when I say that a book isn't "great", as in great literature, but I don't think that is the writer's intent. These are fun reads that will take you into a new place with plenty of action, magic, and even romance.

These books do have plenty of romance in them and even talk about clothes and shoes, but it's all part of the main characters and done in such a way that it reveals things about the characters to you. I'm a guy, but I'll go out on a sexist limb here and admit that I really enjoy reading female authors because they usually do a better job overall at getting across the internal conflicts of the characters, their motivations, their hopes/fears, and yes, their feelings, and let's face it, they write female characters very well. I also happen to have a vested interest in figuring out what makes the fairer sex tick :)

This book drug on and on for me, with so many deviations from the plot that I couldn't stay interested. I wasn't sure if the main story was catching the bad guy or avoiding getting dead. The main character kind of bumbled her way through, losing my interest when she was caught as a ferrett. Hmmm. The performance by Gavin was good, though.

I am hooked on Rachel Morgan, and Kim Harrison. The narrator, Marguerite Gavin is wonderful and expressive. I recommend the series it's a pure joy.

The first half was not doing it for me, but a couple of things made it better in the second half.

The biggest problem is the heroine Rachel. She is not good at things. She doesn’t sweat the details. She isn’t successful. Sometimes there are reasons she isn’t successful, like her boss sabotaging her. (Actually seeing details of her boss sabotaging her could have been good, but that wasn’t shown.) She is reckless and jumps to wrong conclusions. She doesn’t plan well. She gets caught while spying on a bad guy - three times. There’s a contract on her with assassins attacking her. Each time she doesn’t do anything smart to get away. Luck or someone else rescues her. When she does get around to doing a witch-like thing, it’s not impressive. She wanted to make a potion to turn into an animal. But she’s in a hurry and uses a mouse hair because it’s convenient. As it turned out it was a mink’s hair not a mouse hair, so she turns into a mink. I like to watch someone do something well or in an interesting way. But I wasn’t interested in watching Rachel do mediocre things.

But I loved one part. Rachel is in mink form and cannot change back to human. She has been captured by a bad guy who plans to kill her by entering her in the rat fights. Trained rats fight to the death. What happened during the fight and after was very entertaining. It was the best part of the book. It had to do with meeting and interacting with another creature.

The narrator Marguerite Gavin was ok, but at times she talked too fast. I would have liked occasional dramatic pauses.

Genre: urban fantasy.

I disagree with those who said Marguerite Gavin was difficult to listen to. She was entertaining and did female / male Dialogue extremely well. I enjoyed the books and Marguerite. I downloaded book 6 'the outlaw demon wails' from my local library - now that was the worst narator I've ever listen too! Gigi Bermingham! Try that one and you'll see what I mean!