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shadowkatOnly four people besides myself, who visit this lj, appear to be reading the Kim Harrison novels. Not overly surprised. They are odd books. With a rather grey heroine at the center. And Harrison melds science fiction and urban gothic fantasy together. Also she's not quite as deft a stylist in her phrasing as Jim Butcher, who of the urban fantasy writers that I've read to date - seems to have the least number of typos and the richest vocabulary, not to mention the best dialogue. Possibly because he was an English Lit major? Harrison's dialogue comes rather close to Butcher's and she also navigates a dark urban universe, noirish, with grey characters, the heroine feeling at times like an anti-hero (even though Harrison's fan board seems to be remarkably oblivious of this aspect). And let's be honest, sci-fantasy, specifically urban gothic - is not everyone's cup of tea. I don't tell anyone outside of this lj and maybe Harrison's board that I read these books. And when I do, I am a bit embarrassed. Marcel Proust and Octavia Butler they aren't. I may have eclectic taste, but this does not mean I'm not a snob. You can't get a BA in English Lit and not be a bit of snob.
Harrison fascinates me as a writer though - because she melds her bio-engineering background into her stories. She doesn't come from the traditional English Lit/Lawyer/Classical Lit Academic backgrounds so many writers hail from. Instead she comes from the world of science, business, and engineering. My father used to say that what annoyed him most about a lot of writers out there - was he felt like he was reading the same books - some guy or gal in a musty university writing about what it is like to be at a musty university or worse some occupation they've thoroughly researched but never quite lived (which may explain why John Le Carre, Grahaem Green, and Ian Spelling's spy novels feel a bit more real than say David Baldacci, John Maxim, or Robert Ludlum). It is true, to a degree, that old adage, we write what we know best of all. Jim Butcher is a martial arts student, a English Lit major, and a bunch of other weird jobs - so we see that to a degree reflected in his stories. Patricia Cornwell was a foresenic scientist. John Grisham - a lawyer. We meld our experience into our tales. The characters that populate them live inside our, the writer's, minds, we are their universe, and we are their god. When we write the stories down - they fill others minds and become part of their personal canon and verse. Taking on a new and different life.
In Harrison's Rachel Morgan series (I haven't tried anything else she's written and I don't like short stories so tend to avoid them), she creates a wide range of characters and species. Unlike Butcher and other's - Harrison is interested in biological differences and the ethics of power in all its forms - notably science and magic. Her magic has a chemistry element to it. It's a magical world designed by a bio-engineer. Her witches aren't human, nor are her elves, pixies. Weres (werewolves and others are human, cursed with a virus), Vampires are also human - but have a virus that changes them. But Witches in Harrison's world are stunted demons. Demon's who have been changed by bio-engineering elves, who felt the need to weaken the demon who had become all powerful and was trying to destroy them.
The world itself has been changed by a bio-engineered plague - that was spread by tomatoes - killing off a large percentage of the human population. The plague blamed on scientists and elves - drove both groups underground. While in reality it was a weapon devised by humans in their own wars. The theme of war and how the weapons we create to protect ourselves and rid the world of our enemy is explored peripherally, yet remains oddly at the center of the Rachel Morgan series. The Ever After in Harrison's novels is the not the land of fairy tale, it is a red dark world, with no sun, drug after our own reality. Created by the demons to banish the elves. The intent was to banish the elves forever, to a reality that would vanish completely. But the demons's magic pulled them into the ever after with the banished elves and their attempts to stay in reality caused ley lines to form or skid marks on the fabric of time and space - acting as anchors. The elves could leave the ever after by jumping through the lines that the demons created, but the demons will always get pulled back again when the sun sets. Fitting karma for their own actions. Their attempt to rid the world of the elves, resulted in their own exile. The elves are not much better - tinkering with DNA, they twisted the demons into extinction, making it impossible for demons to breed new demons - instead they have weaker, stunted demons - known as witches - who the elves tricked into believing they were a new species entirely. Those witches who can do demon magic and thus become demons, die early on, of a rare blood disease. That's the elf safeguard to ensure no more demons get made. As a result of this tinkering - the elves created a disease that resulted in their own potential extinction - all elves die at birth unless their DNA is tinkered with. In their war - the elves and demons destroy themselves. As is the case of all war. It never ends well.
Harrison doesn't paint this picture that neatly - the questions are not clear ones. And her character's motivations get jumbled.
Rachel Mariana Morgan - the protagonist and whose pov in which we reside throughout this series, is a bounty hunter. She starts out in the book Dead Witch Walking with the IS - Inderlander Security. Inderlander's are witches, demons, elves, pixies, fairies, leperchauns, vampires, werewolves - anything that isn't purely human. There's the FIB - Federal Investigative Bureau or human branch, and Inderlander Security - the magical community. After the tomato virus - or Turn, the Inderlander's came out of the woodwork and helped the human community maintain order and sort of took over. The new President of the US is a living vampire named Rynn Cormel. The head of the leading bio-tech industry and city councilman is Trenton Kalamack (who no one knows if he is Inderlander or human, although as Rachel's partner, a pixy states - he smells wrong for human). Rachel's view is a fairly black and white in the first novel. She's a marshal or bounty hunter - she doesn't determine if the perp is guilty or innocent, she nabs him or her and brings them in. In some respects she's a bit like a marshal in the old West.
Harrison's novels borrow heavily from The Western genre, in fact most of the titles are riffs off of old Clint Eastwood films or current ones. Dead Witch Walking is a rift off the Eastwood directed film Dead Man Walking, this is followed by Every Which Way But Dead (Every Which Way But Loose) and The Good, the Bad and The Undead - (The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly).
And these aren't the only clever pop culture references in Harrison's novels - she also does fly-away references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. As well as the Kiebler elves.
In the first book - Rachel's target is Trent. But like most noir westerns or detective books, the villain is seldom the target. Rachel believes if she can nab Councilman Trenton Kalamack for illegal bio-drug smuggling and engineering, she'll get the IS to pardon her and get the death mark off her head. Long story short - Rache, her partner/sidekick Jenks (a pixy), and colleague/rival Ivy run into a leprechaun. They help Rache nab the leprechaun. The leprechaun offers Rache three wishes in exchange for her freedom. Rache agrees. And in exchange for helping her let the leprechaun go free - she gives Jenks and Ivy one wish each. Rache's wish is to get out of her dead-end, bottom feeder job at the IS. She wanted to be a top agent like her Dad - actually she wants to follow in his footsteps. She's patterned herself after him - except for ley line magic which he told her never to practice.
But going after Trent proves to more of a challenge than expected, because there's a few things about dear old Dad, and her own origins that Rachel has been kept in dark on. The first being that Trent not only knows who she is, but that they spent time together in a summer camp for three years when they were both children, and their fathers were not only best friends, but worked together - dying two weeks apart of the same malady. The second being what Trent really is - which in turn leads to the secret of what Rachel is, and why Rachel's father didn't want her anywhere near ley lines and why Trent and Rachel were kept apart by their fathers after camp. These mysteries aren't resolved in the first book - they are an arc that we get bits and pieces of throughout the series.
Other mysteries connected to them - are resolved much earlier. Rachel discovers by going after Trent, that someone wants her far far away from Trent. Someone who is willing to kill Rachel and Trent to keep them apart and out of the Ever After. It's an intricate power play of politics between various species all jockeying for position - the Weres, the vampires (who are currently the big dogs on campus and run the show), the elves (who Rachel believes are extinct and no longer exist except as human hybrids, not pure Inderlander), the Witches, and the demons. In DWW - Rachel believes elves are extinct. That only hybrids still exist. And repeats what she's been taught. Harrison in a way comments on how what we are taught through religion or school is often twisted and wrong. Rachel's moral code begins to shift as her story progresses and she begins to question what she thought was true.
In DWW - she believes that the tale that witches derived from demons is a myth, not true. That elves are gone, extinct, through their own fault - because of their tendency to interbreed with humans and that the elves caused the tomato virus. She sees all bio-engineering as evil. That it will automatically lead to another plague or virus. Demons are evil. Black magic is evil. Etc. Her world-view is a very narrow one.
Then she meets the leprechaun who grants her her wish - and she gets kicked out of the IS, her apartment, and has a death warrant placed on her by the IS - one few people can avoid. No where to go, she moves in with Ivy and Jenks who talk her into moving in with them at a church - hallowed ground. Spooked by Ivy, who is a bisexual living vampire - another species that is uniquely Harrison's - in Harrison's novels - if a vampire and a human have a child - the result is a living vampire. The living vampire carries the virus and will turn into a full-fledged vampire when she or he dies. Losing their immortal soul. The immortal soul doesn't go to purgatory, it is just completely lost. A double-death is when you kill the undead vampire. Living vampires can go out into the sunlight and are tormented by blood-lust, which they have to quench in different ways. Ivy has hooked up with Rachel in part because she believes Rachel can help her figure out how to keep her soul after she dies and in part because her mentor, Piscary has ordered her to watch Rachel and more importantly keep Rachel away from Trenton. Ivy falls in love with Rachel and all of this goes out the window.
The first three books focus on vampires, humans and witches, we learn what Trent is at the end of the third book - The Good, the Bad and the Undead. A Fistful of Charms and a Few Demons More - focus on werewolves, vampires, pixies and well, demons. Outlaw Demon Wails, White Witch/Black Curse and Black Magic Sanction focus on elves, witches, pixies, fairies, and demons.
By Pale Demon - Harrison does something similar to what Butcher pulled in Changes, except with a far more positive results - she flips her story. Everything we thought we knew gets well shifted. And the books become a bit more interesting as a result. Trenton Kalamack is no longer the villain gunning for Rachel that he appeared to be in all the other books, and we start to realize he never really was - that was just how Rachel perceived him. It's at this point that the reader begins to question the protagonist's pov and what the protagonist knows.
Here's some of the characters:
Trenton Alyosius Kalamack - CEO of Kalamack Industries and City Councilman. Also head of a bio-drug ring and illegal bio-engineering. He is introduced as a scientist, an engineer, logical and pragmatic. He seems to be cold and unemotional - a trait often associated with engineers. Working with them and having numerous family members who are engineers - I know this is not true. They just don't like emotion, they hide it. Or cover it. I remember at my grandmother's funeral - the engineers started trying to figure out how the urn fit into each of the slots of the cemetary plot and how it was constructed. I actually found what they were doing oddly comforting and began to participate, as did my brother - it took our minds off our grief. One gets tired of crying. Harrison being an engineer - seems to understand this reaction and she does a good job of hinting at how Rachel's view of Trent may be inaccurate, while remaining in Rachel's pov. Excellent use of the unreliable narrator. [Species not revealed until third books]
Elves are the politicians and scientists in this world - logical creatures. Pragmatic to a fault. At times, or so it appears, coldly objective. They are represented by about four to five characters in the novels, to date.
Demons
They can take any form. Their true form seems to be almost goat-like, but it's not clear since we never quite see it and they can't remember. They can exaggerate portions of their DNA. And they can
use magic to shift reality.
Seemingly limitless in their knowledge of magic and all its uses they are often summoned to provide guidance or to kill by humans, witches, weres, and elves. That is the only way they can leave the Ever-After - to be summoned. In return for whatever the summoner requests - the demon will elicit a price - this is usually a demon mark - get three and you are the demon's indentured servant, he/she can bring you across the lines and do with you as he/she wishes. This is actually taken from Christian mythology. Rachel believes at first that the demon gets your soul, but it's really not that clear cut.
Doing demon magic or black magic - that involves twisting a curse - results in smut being added to your aura. It's not clear from the books whether an aura is the same as a soul or merely the encasing. I'm guessing it's the protection or encasing - that which keeps one's soul in one's body. Souls in this universe are the energy or essence of what we are. When someone jumps the lines to the ever-after, their soul leaves, as their body dematerializes and their soul rematerializes their body from their memories. Harrison is into world-building with a vengeance.
Demon magic is the most powerful, more powerful than elf magic - as far as we know. Demons can basically do anything - the only thing that keeps them in check is the ley lines they created which pull them back to the Ever-After where they are trapped much like a genie in a bottle. In some respects they remind me a great deal of genies.
There is only one female demon - Newt and she's the most powerful demon and the most frightening.
Insane. She is the only character who has successfully killed another demon or a demon.
Demon's can technically live forever - due to the number of curses they've twisted which have reset their biological clocks. The secret to immortality in this verse is the ability to reset one's biological clock.
Witches
Witches came over from the Ever After before the elves and were created by elves. They are in effect stunted demons. Or demons rendered safe. They can't kindle demon magic and while they can do ley lines, they aren't as powerful as demons. They may however be equal to elves. In appearance they look human. Male witches do not have the anatomy that male demons and humans do - apparently they are ahem smaller down there, but it does not matter - since they can ahem, do other things. We aren't really told what - which is wise, the imagination is always better. Doing a power pull - pulling a line or earth power through another (think Willow and Tara in Buffy) is how witches often have sex, with their clothes on.
Most witches practice earth magic - which is weaker than ley line magic but also less likely to be black. Only witches with mitchondria in their blood, who have been fixed, and are well demons can kindle demon magic. Note - you aren't necessarily a demon because you can do it, you are if you do it.There's a subtle theme about the seductive nature of power and how it can corrupt you, even if you have the best of intentions - a theme that also runs through Jim Butcher's novels.
Rachel starts out only doing earth magic, it's not until after she starts gunning for Trent and running from the IS as well as away from a demon that she begins to practice ley line magic and eventually demon magic (which happens by accident in part due to her relationship with Nick).
In the first book - Rachel is afraid of demons and wants nothing to do with them. Her relationship with demons is sort of similar to Harry Dresden's with the fairies, if you read the Butcher novels.
Pixies and Fairies
They are seen for the first time in Black Magic Sanction.
Vampires
Introduced and explained at length in the first five novels. Vampires are either living vampires or undead. The living vampire is born that way. Witches, Weres and Elves cannot be turned into vampires.
Humans can. Witches, Weres and elves can become shadows or slaves to the neurotoxins or die from the virus. But they can't be turned into one of the undead or get the virus. Vampires are derived from humans. The Were virus cancels out the vampire virus apparently.
Living vampires are super-strong, super-hearing, and super-fast. They have fangs. They can kill.
And they drink blood. But they don't have to. They are however afflicted with bloodlust and can put neurotoxins in who they bite. Living vamps struggle with their bloodlust. Undead vamps need to blood bond with someone. It's rather complicated.
When the living vamp dies and becomes undead - they lose their soul. It is gone, destroyed.
They can go insane if they don't have someone who is a caretaker who can do a blood bond.
The blood bond also keeps living vampires sane.
Rachel is attacked by demon who poses as a vampire in the first book - as a result she has neurotoxin's in her system that a vampire can activate. If the vampire bonds her - she would become it's shadow - no longer in control, desiring the vamp, and basically a slave to her addiction.
It's addiction metaphor of sorts. Sharing a blood bond would make her more than a shadow, but she would still be forever bonded, enslaved from her perspective to the vamp. The series has a lot of themes and metaphors regarding servitude, enslavement, and being controlled by someone else as their tool. Ivy is Piscary's tool, Denon is his scion, Kisten is Piscary's scion. There's also the familar bond with demons similar to the vampire bond. A familar is the demon's tool, has to do whatever the demon orders - little more than a slave. The demon pulls energy through it, and often will make the familar take its smut and the pain of its magic. With vampires - the scion is super-powered by the vampire, but also has to let the vampire feed off of it. The scion is addicted to the vampire and under its control.
An intricate story with a lot of characters who all weave in and out of each other's lives.
Humans
Okay that's it. Lots of characters in this verse and all richly designed. This may be amongst the most detailed series I've read in a while. With intricate themes regarding race, prejudice, power, homosexuality, and the ethics of biological engineering and science.
Well worth a look.
I may do individual metas on character arcs and themes at a later point. Along with reviews of each book. Don't know yet. Time being what it is.
Off to bed.
Okay that's my latest cultural obsession. Don't worry it won't last long. The next book isn't due out until next Feb, and my attention span isn't that long. Plus there's no good fanfic out there for the books. And the fandom, sigh, is a little too invested in the romances. So, I'll mosey on soon.
Harrison fascinates me as a writer though - because she melds her bio-engineering background into her stories. She doesn't come from the traditional English Lit/Lawyer/Classical Lit Academic backgrounds so many writers hail from. Instead she comes from the world of science, business, and engineering. My father used to say that what annoyed him most about a lot of writers out there - was he felt like he was reading the same books - some guy or gal in a musty university writing about what it is like to be at a musty university or worse some occupation they've thoroughly researched but never quite lived (which may explain why John Le Carre, Grahaem Green, and Ian Spelling's spy novels feel a bit more real than say David Baldacci, John Maxim, or Robert Ludlum). It is true, to a degree, that old adage, we write what we know best of all. Jim Butcher is a martial arts student, a English Lit major, and a bunch of other weird jobs - so we see that to a degree reflected in his stories. Patricia Cornwell was a foresenic scientist. John Grisham - a lawyer. We meld our experience into our tales. The characters that populate them live inside our, the writer's, minds, we are their universe, and we are their god. When we write the stories down - they fill others minds and become part of their personal canon and verse. Taking on a new and different life.
In Harrison's Rachel Morgan series (I haven't tried anything else she's written and I don't like short stories so tend to avoid them), she creates a wide range of characters and species. Unlike Butcher and other's - Harrison is interested in biological differences and the ethics of power in all its forms - notably science and magic. Her magic has a chemistry element to it. It's a magical world designed by a bio-engineer. Her witches aren't human, nor are her elves, pixies. Weres (werewolves and others are human, cursed with a virus), Vampires are also human - but have a virus that changes them. But Witches in Harrison's world are stunted demons. Demon's who have been changed by bio-engineering elves, who felt the need to weaken the demon who had become all powerful and was trying to destroy them.
The world itself has been changed by a bio-engineered plague - that was spread by tomatoes - killing off a large percentage of the human population. The plague blamed on scientists and elves - drove both groups underground. While in reality it was a weapon devised by humans in their own wars. The theme of war and how the weapons we create to protect ourselves and rid the world of our enemy is explored peripherally, yet remains oddly at the center of the Rachel Morgan series. The Ever After in Harrison's novels is the not the land of fairy tale, it is a red dark world, with no sun, drug after our own reality. Created by the demons to banish the elves. The intent was to banish the elves forever, to a reality that would vanish completely. But the demons's magic pulled them into the ever after with the banished elves and their attempts to stay in reality caused ley lines to form or skid marks on the fabric of time and space - acting as anchors. The elves could leave the ever after by jumping through the lines that the demons created, but the demons will always get pulled back again when the sun sets. Fitting karma for their own actions. Their attempt to rid the world of the elves, resulted in their own exile. The elves are not much better - tinkering with DNA, they twisted the demons into extinction, making it impossible for demons to breed new demons - instead they have weaker, stunted demons - known as witches - who the elves tricked into believing they were a new species entirely. Those witches who can do demon magic and thus become demons, die early on, of a rare blood disease. That's the elf safeguard to ensure no more demons get made. As a result of this tinkering - the elves created a disease that resulted in their own potential extinction - all elves die at birth unless their DNA is tinkered with. In their war - the elves and demons destroy themselves. As is the case of all war. It never ends well.
Harrison doesn't paint this picture that neatly - the questions are not clear ones. And her character's motivations get jumbled.
Rachel Mariana Morgan - the protagonist and whose pov in which we reside throughout this series, is a bounty hunter. She starts out in the book Dead Witch Walking with the IS - Inderlander Security. Inderlander's are witches, demons, elves, pixies, fairies, leperchauns, vampires, werewolves - anything that isn't purely human. There's the FIB - Federal Investigative Bureau or human branch, and Inderlander Security - the magical community. After the tomato virus - or Turn, the Inderlander's came out of the woodwork and helped the human community maintain order and sort of took over. The new President of the US is a living vampire named Rynn Cormel. The head of the leading bio-tech industry and city councilman is Trenton Kalamack (who no one knows if he is Inderlander or human, although as Rachel's partner, a pixy states - he smells wrong for human). Rachel's view is a fairly black and white in the first novel. She's a marshal or bounty hunter - she doesn't determine if the perp is guilty or innocent, she nabs him or her and brings them in. In some respects she's a bit like a marshal in the old West.
Harrison's novels borrow heavily from The Western genre, in fact most of the titles are riffs off of old Clint Eastwood films or current ones. Dead Witch Walking is a rift off the Eastwood directed film Dead Man Walking, this is followed by Every Which Way But Dead (Every Which Way But Loose) and The Good, the Bad and The Undead - (The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly).
And these aren't the only clever pop culture references in Harrison's novels - she also does fly-away references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. As well as the Kiebler elves.
In the first book - Rachel's target is Trent. But like most noir westerns or detective books, the villain is seldom the target. Rachel believes if she can nab Councilman Trenton Kalamack for illegal bio-drug smuggling and engineering, she'll get the IS to pardon her and get the death mark off her head. Long story short - Rache, her partner/sidekick Jenks (a pixy), and colleague/rival Ivy run into a leprechaun. They help Rache nab the leprechaun. The leprechaun offers Rache three wishes in exchange for her freedom. Rache agrees. And in exchange for helping her let the leprechaun go free - she gives Jenks and Ivy one wish each. Rache's wish is to get out of her dead-end, bottom feeder job at the IS. She wanted to be a top agent like her Dad - actually she wants to follow in his footsteps. She's patterned herself after him - except for ley line magic which he told her never to practice.
But going after Trent proves to more of a challenge than expected, because there's a few things about dear old Dad, and her own origins that Rachel has been kept in dark on. The first being that Trent not only knows who she is, but that they spent time together in a summer camp for three years when they were both children, and their fathers were not only best friends, but worked together - dying two weeks apart of the same malady. The second being what Trent really is - which in turn leads to the secret of what Rachel is, and why Rachel's father didn't want her anywhere near ley lines and why Trent and Rachel were kept apart by their fathers after camp. These mysteries aren't resolved in the first book - they are an arc that we get bits and pieces of throughout the series.
Other mysteries connected to them - are resolved much earlier. Rachel discovers by going after Trent, that someone wants her far far away from Trent. Someone who is willing to kill Rachel and Trent to keep them apart and out of the Ever After. It's an intricate power play of politics between various species all jockeying for position - the Weres, the vampires (who are currently the big dogs on campus and run the show), the elves (who Rachel believes are extinct and no longer exist except as human hybrids, not pure Inderlander), the Witches, and the demons. In DWW - Rachel believes elves are extinct. That only hybrids still exist. And repeats what she's been taught. Harrison in a way comments on how what we are taught through religion or school is often twisted and wrong. Rachel's moral code begins to shift as her story progresses and she begins to question what she thought was true.
In DWW - she believes that the tale that witches derived from demons is a myth, not true. That elves are gone, extinct, through their own fault - because of their tendency to interbreed with humans and that the elves caused the tomato virus. She sees all bio-engineering as evil. That it will automatically lead to another plague or virus. Demons are evil. Black magic is evil. Etc. Her world-view is a very narrow one.
Then she meets the leprechaun who grants her her wish - and she gets kicked out of the IS, her apartment, and has a death warrant placed on her by the IS - one few people can avoid. No where to go, she moves in with Ivy and Jenks who talk her into moving in with them at a church - hallowed ground. Spooked by Ivy, who is a bisexual living vampire - another species that is uniquely Harrison's - in Harrison's novels - if a vampire and a human have a child - the result is a living vampire. The living vampire carries the virus and will turn into a full-fledged vampire when she or he dies. Losing their immortal soul. The immortal soul doesn't go to purgatory, it is just completely lost. A double-death is when you kill the undead vampire. Living vampires can go out into the sunlight and are tormented by blood-lust, which they have to quench in different ways. Ivy has hooked up with Rachel in part because she believes Rachel can help her figure out how to keep her soul after she dies and in part because her mentor, Piscary has ordered her to watch Rachel and more importantly keep Rachel away from Trenton. Ivy falls in love with Rachel and all of this goes out the window.
The first three books focus on vampires, humans and witches, we learn what Trent is at the end of the third book - The Good, the Bad and the Undead. A Fistful of Charms and a Few Demons More - focus on werewolves, vampires, pixies and well, demons. Outlaw Demon Wails, White Witch/Black Curse and Black Magic Sanction focus on elves, witches, pixies, fairies, and demons.
By Pale Demon - Harrison does something similar to what Butcher pulled in Changes, except with a far more positive results - she flips her story. Everything we thought we knew gets well shifted. And the books become a bit more interesting as a result. Trenton Kalamack is no longer the villain gunning for Rachel that he appeared to be in all the other books, and we start to realize he never really was - that was just how Rachel perceived him. It's at this point that the reader begins to question the protagonist's pov and what the protagonist knows.
Here's some of the characters:
Trenton Alyosius Kalamack - CEO of Kalamack Industries and City Councilman. Also head of a bio-drug ring and illegal bio-engineering. He is introduced as a scientist, an engineer, logical and pragmatic. He seems to be cold and unemotional - a trait often associated with engineers. Working with them and having numerous family members who are engineers - I know this is not true. They just don't like emotion, they hide it. Or cover it. I remember at my grandmother's funeral - the engineers started trying to figure out how the urn fit into each of the slots of the cemetary plot and how it was constructed. I actually found what they were doing oddly comforting and began to participate, as did my brother - it took our minds off our grief. One gets tired of crying. Harrison being an engineer - seems to understand this reaction and she does a good job of hinting at how Rachel's view of Trent may be inaccurate, while remaining in Rachel's pov. Excellent use of the unreliable narrator. [Species not revealed until third books]
Elves are the politicians and scientists in this world - logical creatures. Pragmatic to a fault. At times, or so it appears, coldly objective. They are represented by about four to five characters in the novels, to date.
Ceri - an thousand year old elf (apparently elves can live a very long time as can witches, and demons) - that Rachel rescues from the Ever After and indentured servitude to Al (a demon) - Ceri was Al's slave. Ceri is pragmatic. She is noble. Old blood. High elf. She is also highly practiced in magic. And into honor and class. Not a scientist - more a political spy. She goes after Trent, with the desire to spy on him and his camp for Rachel, but she finds out nothing and feels like she has failed.
Ellasbeth - a nuclear bio-engineer - premiere in her field. In a business relationship/merger with Trent. Rachel breaks them up when she interrupts their wedding to arrest Trent for murdering a few weres. He didn't kill them, they committed suicide while he was questioning them. Trent later thanks Rachel for breaking up the marriage in a rare moment of emotional honesty - stating he didn't trust or respect Ellasbeth enough for their union to have worked.
Jonathan - enslaved by the demons and saved by Trent's Dad, he is Trent's head of communications and right-hand man. Cruel and sadistic - in part because of the hundreds of years he spent in the pens.
Quen - half human/half elf - raised Trent, and is Trent's head of security. A skilled martial artist and practioner of magic.
Elves in Harrison's world are quick, have heightened sense of smell, hearing, and beautiful voices.
They can sing you to death. And use ley line magic. They smell like cinnamin and wine or their blood does and sweat. Pragmatic, political, manipulators, and scientists. Have their hands in everything. Rachel is a bit prejudiced - based on her up-bringing and education.
Demons
They can take any form. Their true form seems to be almost goat-like, but it's not clear since we never quite see it and they can't remember. They can exaggerate portions of their DNA. And they can
use magic to shift reality.
Seemingly limitless in their knowledge of magic and all its uses they are often summoned to provide guidance or to kill by humans, witches, weres, and elves. That is the only way they can leave the Ever-After - to be summoned. In return for whatever the summoner requests - the demon will elicit a price - this is usually a demon mark - get three and you are the demon's indentured servant, he/she can bring you across the lines and do with you as he/she wishes. This is actually taken from Christian mythology. Rachel believes at first that the demon gets your soul, but it's really not that clear cut.
Doing demon magic or black magic - that involves twisting a curse - results in smut being added to your aura. It's not clear from the books whether an aura is the same as a soul or merely the encasing. I'm guessing it's the protection or encasing - that which keeps one's soul in one's body. Souls in this universe are the energy or essence of what we are. When someone jumps the lines to the ever-after, their soul leaves, as their body dematerializes and their soul rematerializes their body from their memories. Harrison is into world-building with a vengeance.
Demon magic is the most powerful, more powerful than elf magic - as far as we know. Demons can basically do anything - the only thing that keeps them in check is the ley lines they created which pull them back to the Ever-After where they are trapped much like a genie in a bottle. In some respects they remind me a great deal of genies.
There is only one female demon - Newt and she's the most powerful demon and the most frightening.
Insane. She is the only character who has successfully killed another demon or a demon.
Demon's can technically live forever - due to the number of curses they've twisted which have reset their biological clocks. The secret to immortality in this verse is the ability to reset one's biological clock.
Characters:
Al or Algiarpret, also Gally - he's the demon who the villain in the first book calls to kill Trent and Rachel. Rachel's boyfriend, a human, finds a way of cutting a deal with the demon. Over the course of the books - Al becomes a central character. A seductive mentor to Rachel - tempting her with more and more power.
Newt - the aforementioned female demon and the only one who scares Al. She's the oldest of the demons and wants demons to die out. And has an odd relationship with Rachel - seeing Rachel as a long-lost sister, child. (a Few Demon's More - first appearance, and Outlaw Demon Wails)
Minas - Newt's watcher.(A Few Demons More and Outlaw Demon Wails, dies in White Witch/Black Curse)
There's also Dali - a demon judge. And Ku-Sox, a demon who can walk in the daylight and is the link to witches as is Rachel.
Witches
Witches came over from the Ever After before the elves and were created by elves. They are in effect stunted demons. Or demons rendered safe. They can't kindle demon magic and while they can do ley lines, they aren't as powerful as demons. They may however be equal to elves. In appearance they look human. Male witches do not have the anatomy that male demons and humans do - apparently they are ahem smaller down there, but it does not matter - since they can ahem, do other things. We aren't really told what - which is wise, the imagination is always better. Doing a power pull - pulling a line or earth power through another (think Willow and Tara in Buffy) is how witches often have sex, with their clothes on.
Most witches practice earth magic - which is weaker than ley line magic but also less likely to be black. Only witches with mitchondria in their blood, who have been fixed, and are well demons can kindle demon magic. Note - you aren't necessarily a demon because you can do it, you are if you do it.There's a subtle theme about the seductive nature of power and how it can corrupt you, even if you have the best of intentions - a theme that also runs through Jim Butcher's novels.
Rachel starts out only doing earth magic, it's not until after she starts gunning for Trent and running from the IS as well as away from a demon that she begins to practice ley line magic and eventually demon magic (which happens by accident in part due to her relationship with Nick).
In the first book - Rachel is afraid of demons and wants nothing to do with them. Her relationship with demons is sort of similar to Harry Dresden's with the fairies, if you read the Butcher novels.
Rachel is the lead character and we are in her pov. Harrison does not give us a reliable narrator, rather an unreliable one. Rachel is opinionated, jumps to conclusions, and is a bad detective. She's a deeply flawed protagonist. And Harrison does critique the "protagonist privilege" a bit - in that Rachel appears to get away with things that other characters don't - this isn't left unquestioned, at more than one point - Trent, along with Jenks, Pierce, and Ivy question Rachel's actions. In Rachel's perspective it's either not her fault or she did it because she had no choice or to survive. Collateral damage is rarely noticed when she's doing the summoning or the magic, only when other's are. This is similar to Harry Dresden, although I think Butcher likewise questions it and perhaps even more so. Noir genre tends to question protagonist privilege more than other genre's do, which is why I like it.
The flaw of first person narrative structure - whether in television or in books - is that you are stuck in a limited pov, often a prejudicial and self-centered one (because human beings like it or not tend to be selfish creatures and fairly prejudiced, with desire to feel good about themselves - so also a bit self-righteous). The trap of the first person close perspective is that the character can if the writer isn't careful come across as either self-loathing and pathetic or ego-centric, self-righteous and a bit of pill. Harrison to give her credit skirts these traps fairly well, as did Butcher, her protagonist is snarky, self-deprecating, and questions herself. She is human in more ways than one - even if in the universe she's not biologically human.
And Harrison explains where Rachel's flaws derive from. She has been lied to by those who love her.
Her mother lied about her father. Her father lied about what she was. And her memory has been blocked. There were memory blockers in the water at summer camp. In the first book - she mentions loving that camp, best memories were there, but they are foggy ones. She remembers being forced to leave because she pulled a ley line which resulted in a bratty 15 year old boy that was teasing her best bud Jasmine - being thrown up into a tree and breaking his arm. She can barely remember her friend Jasmine's name and doesn't remember who the boy was. Just that he was a bully and rich and she didn't like him. This memory turns out to be skewed. She learns the boy was Trent, he was an awkward 14 not 15. That he wasn't teasing Jasmine - they liked each other. And she was also friends with Trent - they had a love/hate game going on and he was teasing her. Also Trent tells her that he can't remember Jasmine's name either and to write it down the next time she recalls it. He would like to find out what happened to her. He also states that boys tease girls they like at that awkward age. As a result of the incident - she'd been pulled out of camp and told never to play with ley lines. That's just one example.
Rachel's father taught her to work alone, trust no one, and fear ley lines. But who was he?
Rachel doesn't know. She finds out later that he isn't even a witch, he's human. Which means she's not his biological daughter.
Marshal - a character Rachel meets, sort of nice, but mostly a rebound guy, barely registers.
Gordian Nathanel Pierce - an 19th Century Witch who was buried alive by the coven of moral and ethical standards after he was shunned for a terrible crime. He's a ghost that Rachel inadvertently brought out of purgatory when she was 18, and then disturbed again while playing with ley lines in her church's grave-yard - where his tombstone resides. He has dedicated his life to killing demons and fell in love with Rachel when she was 18. Rachel is 25 now. Pierce gets a body, that's not his own, in White Witch/Black Curse.
Vivian - plumber for the coven of moral and ethical standards, featured in Black Magic Sanction and Pale Demon. She fixes problems.
Brooke a leader of the coven, who wants Rachel to breed demon children as the next powerful breed of witches. Rachel refuses, they fight, things go badly.
Oliver another leader of the coven - a self-righteous prick who thinks any witch who does black magic is evil (he actually sounds a lot like Rachel did in the first three books, ironically enough, as does Vivian).
Robbie - Rachel's older brother who lives in California and is rarely in contact. (typical brother/sister relationship - which I highly identified with. Harrison who has brothers - obviously understands this dynamic. )
Takata - a singer, a witch, and has an interesting connection to one of the characters. Revealed in Outlaw Demon Wails.
Tom - a black witch who tries to get Rachel to help him with the black arts.
Lee aka Stanley - a witch who like Rachel can kindle demon magic but he can't have demon children, because he's male. He's also not as powerful as Rachel is. He's the better witch because unlike Rachel - he was educated in ley lines, Rachel operates mainly by instinct and Al's tutelage.
Lee redeems himself in Black Magic Sanction, up until then - he is a bit of a bully and Rachel's nemesis. Long-term frienemy of Trent - who has a love/hate relationship with him. The three of them go back to summer camp.
Pixies and Fairies
On Kim Harrison's web site - Kim's Drama, she has an essay written by her character Rachel Morgan on the biological differences between pixies and fairies. It's rather in depth. The writer is clearly a biologist at heart. I adore science in fiction, because I know little about it and it fascinates me.
Our educational system is relatively poor in the science department. Got very little science until well college. And I deal with scientists and engineers daily.
Pixies are tiny, winged creatures, that look like people or humans. They dust constantly - and the color of their dust is their emotion. Pixies can dust their victims with a toxin that blisters or makes them each - known as pixing or pixed. They only live 20 years. A short life-span. And their lives are harsh ones. They are bit like bees in that they pollinate and live off of flowers. If you have pixies in your garden it will flourish. They are by and large - vegetarians. Although I think they eat pizza and other human items, and are very similar to elves. Pixies will bond with elves and are a bit like elves in how they look and react to things. Pragmatic, fierce fighters, and territorial. Pixies will get pulled back into the real world from the ever after at sunrise, they can't stay there when the sun is up. They also have the same sleep schedules - they sleep about four hours in the morning and four in the evening, and are up 12. Taking lots of naps. And have broods of children - since their children rarely live long.
JEnks - is Rachel's partner and best bud. He's at the end of his life-line when she meets him but she manages to reset his biological clock so he doesn't die. The books he features the most in are Fistful of Charms, Black Magic Sanction, although he's in all of them.
Matalina is Jenks wife and the love of his life.
Jax is his son.
Jih is his daughter.
And there are many others.
Fairies
Fairies are the same size as pixies. Tinkerbell in this series is a fairy who became famous under Disney and Peter Pan is a true story, and Tinkerbell is real. Jenks curses are all about Disney and Tinkerbell - who is their royalty. Jenks hates fairies. Fairies are carnovores who eat spiders and insects. They are like insects - with sharp teeth, long faces, and white hair - look a little like vampires. Bigger than pixies.
They are seen for the first time in Black Magic Sanction.
Vampires
Introduced and explained at length in the first five novels. Vampires are either living vampires or undead. The living vampire is born that way. Witches, Weres and Elves cannot be turned into vampires.
Humans can. Witches, Weres and elves can become shadows or slaves to the neurotoxins or die from the virus. But they can't be turned into one of the undead or get the virus. Vampires are derived from humans. The Were virus cancels out the vampire virus apparently.
Living vampires are super-strong, super-hearing, and super-fast. They have fangs. They can kill.
And they drink blood. But they don't have to. They are however afflicted with bloodlust and can put neurotoxins in who they bite. Living vamps struggle with their bloodlust. Undead vamps need to blood bond with someone. It's rather complicated.
When the living vamp dies and becomes undead - they lose their soul. It is gone, destroyed.
They can go insane if they don't have someone who is a caretaker who can do a blood bond.
The blood bond also keeps living vampires sane.
Rachel is attacked by demon who poses as a vampire in the first book - as a result she has neurotoxin's in her system that a vampire can activate. If the vampire bonds her - she would become it's shadow - no longer in control, desiring the vamp, and basically a slave to her addiction.
It's addiction metaphor of sorts. Sharing a blood bond would make her more than a shadow, but she would still be forever bonded, enslaved from her perspective to the vamp. The series has a lot of themes and metaphors regarding servitude, enslavement, and being controlled by someone else as their tool. Ivy is Piscary's tool, Denon is his scion, Kisten is Piscary's scion. There's also the familar bond with demons similar to the vampire bond. A familar is the demon's tool, has to do whatever the demon orders - little more than a slave. The demon pulls energy through it, and often will make the familar take its smut and the pain of its magic. With vampires - the scion is super-powered by the vampire, but also has to let the vampire feed off of it. The scion is addicted to the vampire and under its control.
Ivy - is a living vampire who is fighting and struggling against what she is. Her mother is undead, and her father human, a scion. Her sister is a living vampire as she is. Ivy is also Rachel's best friend. The two share a close and platonic relationship, although they've tried to do a blood bond, but since Rachel is straight and Ivy associates it with sex - it can't work. There's a clear metaphor regarding friendship and sex here and how you can love someone but it doesn't have to be expressed sexually. Harrison builds Ivy as bi-sexual. Ivy has both male and female partners.
Think Nikita in the current series, but as a vampire/human. Sex doesn't always equal love as love doesn't always equal sex.
The Rachel/Ivy relationship may be amongst the best female platonic love relationships done. It doesn't involve men really and is layered.
Kisten - think Spike wannabe. Although Trent reminds me more of Spike, to be honest.
He's died his hair blond and is half-asian, as is Ivy. The cast of these books is multi-racial.
Kisten is introduced in DWW and featured through a Few Demons More. The Rachel/Kisten relationship reflects on the Rachel/Ivy one. Kisten is also Piscary's scion or tool, Piscary owns Kisten and Kisten more than Ivy is Piscary's slave.
Piscary - pretty much Harrison's version of Gentleman Johnny Marcone, he's the underworld king-pin, crime-lord who runs Cinncinatti and doesn't want to be pushed from power by the likes of Trent Kalamack.
Skimmer - Ivy's girl-friend and Piscary's lawyer. She is also Ivy's first love.
An intricate story with a lot of characters who all weave in and out of each other's lives.
Humans
Nick - a thief and demon summoner, who Rachel meets and hooks up with in Dead Witch Walking.
This character's arc is the exact opposite of Trenton's. He starts out as a good guy or so we think, with subtle hints that this may not be the case. His last appearance to date is Black Magic Sanction - where his arc is finally concluded. Fascinating and unpredictable character arc.
Glenn an African-American cop, who likes tomatoes. He's the son of FIB chief Edden. OR rather the step-son and adopted son. Glenn is Rachel's contact at the FIB. Think this universe's version of Sgt. Murphy.
Edden - chief of the FIB who brings Rachel in to deal with the Inderlanders as a consultant.
Weres
David - an insurance investigator that looks Rachel up and she becomes partners with briefly and only on paper. Featured heavily in Fistful of Charms, Good, Bad and Undead, and a Few Demon's More. Less so in later books. He helps Rachel with legal stuff, as does Trent and Glenn.
Okay that's it. Lots of characters in this verse and all richly designed. This may be amongst the most detailed series I've read in a while. With intricate themes regarding race, prejudice, power, homosexuality, and the ethics of biological engineering and science.
Well worth a look.
I may do individual metas on character arcs and themes at a later point. Along with reviews of each book. Don't know yet. Time being what it is.
Off to bed.
Okay that's my latest cultural obsession. Don't worry it won't last long. The next book isn't due out until next Feb, and my attention span isn't that long. Plus there's no good fanfic out there for the books. And the fandom, sigh, is a little too invested in the romances. So, I'll mosey on soon.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 04:19 pm (UTC)Thanks for the rec. What is it about the Napoleonic Wars?
A lot of writers like to write about that period. Very popular in the historical romance novel genre, and in the historical novel genre.
Harrison's novels are contemporary urban fantasy -science fiction.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 08:41 pm (UTC)Harrison's novels are contemporary urban fantasy -science fiction.
Maybe I'll get to read them at some point. I have to say, it's not really my genre. I'm leaning more towards past periods fantasy or sci fi, but then I do enjoy the dresden files. Urban fantasy has too much of a cop show element for me more often than not, but there are the rare times when I like that.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 10:21 pm (UTC)There are exceptions. But not many.
So I tend to lean towards futuristic tales or alternate universe contemporary. Harrison's novel takes place in an alternate reality - where Napolean won the Napoleanic Wars and half of humanity was wiped out by a virus.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 10:51 pm (UTC)Women were treated horrendously back then.
Yes, but it's up to writer if they want to keep that element (like grrm) or modify it. Kushner's third riverside book, privilege of the sword focuses pretty much solely on women and I love how it works.
I guess we mostly meet in the far future. Have you read the Miles books by Lois McMaster Bujold. They always make me happy when I reread them.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 12:06 am (UTC)The [talking] dragon series by Naomi Novik plumbs the friendship between species among other things. I followed a rec by
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:28 pm (UTC)And thanks!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:59 pm (UTC)Yes, that's my problem with most of the female centric urban fantasy novels. While I like the relationship drama - it is often poorly plotted (because the writer often doesn't bother to plot the emotional/relationship part) and can end up, if the writer isn't careful looking like the fictional equivalent of the Bachelorette (I can't stand the tv show (unwatchable) can't imagine liking the fictional version). Five to six characters wondering about drooling over the lead protagonist looks a bit ridiculous after a while. Butcher almost ran into the same problem, actually - except he kept it under control.
They all like to add new characters in late in the game, I think they get bored.
Thanks for the rec. Will be sure to check it out. Prefer the plotty to the sex drama, which tends to get a bit repetitive after a while.