And now the humans are doing human things :(

This is the 10th book of a 13 book series. Don’t start here. Spoilers. Yadda,yadda.

 

Shit got real and the first half or so of this book was tough for me to get through.  I’m glad I’m reading it so close to the end of the year, because I might have picked up something else.  Here’s what’s tough for me – torture and cruelty.  Fighting kinds of violence don’t bother me much, but torture and deliberate cruelty do.  To be fair, there are only a few scenes of torture, but I knew they were coming and it was difficult to get through.

Of course some segments of the human population were going to react badly when the supernatural revealed themselves.  Other than some FIB members, humans haven’t been a big player in The Hollows series.  In A Perfect Blood, Rachel tangles with a fringe group of humans that want to wipe out the non-humans while she is trying to avoid reconnecting herself to demon magic.  The demons think she’s dead, and she is afraid that if they know she’s alive, she will have to live her life in the Ever After.   The price is that she has neutered herself, so to speak, and can’t perform demon or ley line magic.  She can’t perform a lot of earth magic either because she’s a demon, not a witch.  Though she has made herself less of a threat magically, her past escapades have taught her a lot of non-magical skills, and she is a smart woman who learns from her mistakes.

This is one of the elements that elevates the Hollows series as a whole.  The characters learn, grow and mature.  There is a formula (Rachel is the one who ultimately saves the day with some help from her friends), but the formula is loose enough that you can’t entirely predict how each character will act.

I’m going to take a moment here to complain about the “sexy” angle on the marketing of this series.  Ugh.  The series is frequently described as a “sexy adventure” and Rachel is “sexy” and will sleep with multiple species, and the covers have Rachel in sexy outfits.  Maybe it was originally sold to the publisher as more paranormal romance, or maybe someone thinks readers will only read about sexually adventurous women.  It’s ridiculous.  There is some sex and romance in the series, but not that much.  Rachel probably spends about as much time thinking about sex as say, Harry Dresden.  There is a lesbian subplot early in the series, but it’s fairly quickly resolved.  I don’t think the author was comfortable writing about lesbian sex. I don’t think she’s comfortable writing about heterosexual sex either.  For a “sexy” series, none of the characters really seem comfortable with sex.  It’s the weak spot in a strong series, and a constant annoyance when I look at descriptions of the books to come.   But don’t let the sexy covers, or the dearth of sexy-times dissuade you from reading the series.