Yeah, I was fine. F*cked in Extreme, as Ivy would say.

Up to now I’ve been reviewing The Hollows series in chunks, because they’ve been so hard to put down, and have these multi book arcs that made made 3 or 4 book clusters make sense.  But, book 9, Pale Demon, is such a game changer that I’m going to review it on it’s own, and Black Magic Sanction will have to go unreviewed.  If you haven’t read the previous 8 books, don’t start here.

Spoilers! When Pale Demon opens, Rachel has been shunned by the Witch Coven as a black witch and they know that any children she has will be demons (thanks to genetic manipulation by Trent’s father).  She’s brought things to what she thinks is a state of truce and has an agreement with the head of the coven to appear before them and apologize in exchange for having her shunning rescinded.  Trent is still her familiar, but she’s agreed to dissolve that bond in exchange for him standing for her at the coven meeting.

Naturally, everything goes to hell and she ends up on a road trip from Cincinnati to San Francisco with Ivy, Jenks, Trent, and a coven spy they pick up along the way.  Trent frees a demon that even the other demons are afraid of in St. Louis and there’s a lot more death and mayhem.  Rachel struggles in this book with her identity and the way she sees herself.  She has maintained all along that she is a white witch, forced to learn demon curses by necessity.  She questions whether she is perhaps a black witch, and is forced to come to terms with her status as a demoness.  In book 4, Rachel started to think about the consequences of her actions. In Pale Demon, she accepts her loss of innocence and begins to move on.

I wished this had never happened, that I’d never agreed to help Trent, that I’d never, ever gone to the library two years ago looking for a way to do whatever it was I’d been hoping to do. I didn’t even remember anymore. Whatever it was, it had been a mistake.

By the end of the book, Rachel has accepted she’s a demon, she’s off the Interlander Security sh*t list, the coven is in shambles and her shunning soon to be revoked. Ivy and Jenks are alive and well. She and Trent are on the same side (mostly) and she will be the godmother to his child.  More importantly, she has the possibility of peace and the ability to make a choice about who she’s going to be.  Since there are 4 more books, I’m guessing the peace won’t last.