Book #18

Greywalker
by Kat Richardson

Greywalker was a good book. The writing was excellent, and I liked the characters and the world she created. But there were two big problems, which were closely related. First of all, the setup of the magical world makes almost no sense. This was intentional, because the main character, a private detective who literally gets beaten to death and then is revived after being dead for two minutes, cannot accept the fact that she can now see and go into the world between this reality and the afterlife, called (boringly but appropriately enough) the Grey. It was impossible to understand exactly what the Grey was, and exactly how it worked, because the main character didn't understand and didn't want to. In itself that wouldn't be so bad, except the character who is supposed to be the expert -- two characters actually, a husband and wife, college professor and witch combo -- don't understand the thing either. All they keep saying is, "You have to learn to accept what has happened to you!" They don't actually tell Harper anything useful, other then some brief meditation/coping techniques. But if Mara told her one more time that she just had to learn to accept her new life, I was going to chuck the book across the room, right into the Grey. The worst thing about this constant ignorance was it made me think that maybe the author herself doesn't really understand the Grey, and that, I think, is a problem.

The second problem with the book is that the plot wasn't great. I mean, I liked the villain, and I liked the way it all resolved with the vampires taking out the evil artifact and saving Seattle from the nasty thing, but it took a whole lot of hemming and hawing to get us there, and a ton of unnecessary side trips, into dates, into other plot lines, and especially into visits to Ben and Mara so that Ben could say something that might have been profound if it had any point at all and Mara had said something other than, "Harper, you have to learn to live with this!" But that's where these two problems are linked: because the author either didn't know how to make the Grey work, or she had some bad idea about keeping it mysterious throughout this book, she had to waste a lot of time to fill out the story before getting to the end.

On the plus side: really great vampires, really beautiful descriptions of how disturbing they are to be around, especially to someone who can see their undead side directly. Really excellent writing, great descriptions of places and objects, especially the evil artifact. The heroine is great, funny and smart and realistic and sympathetic, and I liked her boyfriend and his brother, and the short appearances by her other clients and informants and so on and so forth. So overall: she's a good writer who does great characters and has a good idea. She just needs help plotting. Hopefully she'll get better in the second book.