Ever After by Kim Harrison - book review
Jan. 27th, 2013 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSpent most the day reading or devouring the latest Rachel Morgan novel by Kim Harrison, entitled Ever After which once again is a twist on the title and theme of a Clint Eastwood directed flick - Here After" about the mythological after life.
There's only three serial genre writers that I buy all the books in the series from or read all of the one's from currently - they are Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files), George RR Martin (Song of Ice and Fire), and Kim Harrison (Rachel Morgan/ The Hollows Series). Of the three Martin is the best writer - particularly when it comes to description and plotting, Harrison has the most interesting ideas, and Butcher ...well the best dialogue.
I like Harrison's stories better than the other two and her mythology/themes better - which are basically anti-war, sharing power, anti-vengence, and the power of forgiveness. Also how enslaving and abusing others tends to circle back on you in the end. Also of the three she does the most interesting and innovative things with fantasy characters - ie. elves, demons, vampires, pixies, fairies and witches. Which I haven't seen anyone else do to date. She approaches the mythological creatures from an biological point of view or the view of a bio-engineer - which is sort of different. Also the heroine/protagonist is a demon who is currently in a star-crossed romance with a devilishly tricky elf that up until the last four books had been her antagonist. I like elves. Too many frigging fantasy books focus on fairies. Personally find the elves far more interesting. That said? Martin's take on zombies and dragons is the most innovative I've seen to date as well. Butcher is disappointingly cliche in comparison, damn him. I feel like the writer has been borrowing from Marvel comics.
In short, I liked this book better than Cold Days, in some respects, even if I think Cold Days was better executed. Both writers have similar problems. I think Butcher's series is longer than Harrison's - Harrison is stopping at 13 books, Butcher appears to be going for 17 or more. And at this point? Let's just say it is easier to read George RR Martin's books out of order.
The problem with long-running serials, which is why I seldom read them and they often grate, is:
1. The writer has to spend a lot of time catching up readers who just popped in and haven't read all the other books. So, exposition can feel a bit heavy handed at times in the latter books.
2. Plots become convoluted and often seem to go in weird directions...they aren't tight.
The writers of these series don't plan it all out ahead of time...they sort of go with their gut. Which is great and actually more realistic, but it can lead to some head-scratching moments, albeit unpredictable ones.
3. If not down well, the writer begins to repeat themselves, the characters grow stagnant, and we feel like we keep doing the same story. (So far not a problem with the three serials I've been following - but it was a problem with the Stephanie Plum novels - which is why I gave up on them and most mystery serials.)
4. The romances feel recycled, or the hero/heroine just jumps from love interest to the next, with a long-running love interest in the background, which at first seems highly unlikely then suddenly starts to take off and becomes a star-crossed love affair, that you are convinced can't work. Oh and there's a triangle. Between former love interest/friend who you thought they'd end up with and this new/older one that didn't occur to you and suddenly you're rooting for. (This also happens in long-running television serials - it happened with Buffy. I was rooting for Buffy/Angel, then out of nowhere popped Spike, and suddenly, I thought frak the whole B/A thing - that's over, I want Buffy/Spike! And yes, the writers wanted me to go that route. I'm good at seeing narrative patterns and going along with them, apparently. Same deal in Harrison and in Butcher's novels. What's nice about George RR Martin is well he has too many frigging characters for it to happen.)
5. The writer begins to get tired of their story and characters, has moved on, and you can tell they are phoning it in. (Not happening with the ones' I'm currently reading, so far. Although I'm catching a bit of writer laziness on the parts of both Harrison and Butcher.)
That said? I liked Ever After - it was a quick read. The plot worked. Yes, it was bit long and busy, sort of like Cold Days, and way too much explaining of the world and plot. You can always tell the plot has gotten convoluted when the writer spends pages and pages explaining it to you. But the characters are great and the whole theme about racism/ethnic cleansing and slavery ...is well thought out, as is the examination of power and how it can be abused.
Overall rating? B
[As an aside, when I'm in a funk, I prefer genre novels. Literary novels are depressing. And feel at times like the reading equivalent of trudging through quicksand. Beautiful sentences structured to either lure you to sleep or drag you under. Literary writers are more in love with language not story, genre writers love story not language. Or so I've noted.]
In this story, Rachel Morgan is tasked with the difficult assignment of fixing the Ever After - a hellish parallel reality that was ruined centuries ago during the elf/demon war.
Ku'Sox, a soulless demon that was created by the demons to fight the elves and an attempt to continue their own line, has kidnapped Rachel's god-daughter, Lucy, and one of her closest friends, Ceri. Ku'Sox was unleashed by Trent in the novel A PALE DEMON as a means of saving Rachel from the witches who were trying to either kill her or bannish her from daylight to the demon world. Rachel bannish Ku'Sox to the demon reality - Ever After, and Trent saves Rachel's life at great risk to his own. Lucy is Trent's daughter by Ellasbeth, his former fiancee. Trent and Jenks, a pixy who is one of Rachel's best buds, steal/save Lucy from Ellasbeth - which grants Trent control of her custody, instead of Ellasbeth.
At any rate - Rachel has to work with Trent, his protector/father figure Quen, and the demon Al to save the Ever After, Lucy and Ceri.
Surprisingly, Ceri is killed off. Actually not that surprisingly, the writer had given Ceri and Quen a happy ending - and Trent had this nice little family unit - Ceri/Quen, Lucy and Ray. By killing off Ceri - the writer smashed the unit. She also brings new characters together, along with Ellasbeth, who we thought had left the scene.
Ceri and Rachel's ex-boyfriend Pierce (who was not a fan favorite - and was brought in from a short story), sixteenth century witch/demon hunter who thought nothing of killing thousands of people in order to slaughter one demon and was a bit on the self-righteous moralistic side of the fence. He's a great foil for both Rachel and Trent - in that he echoes Rachel's self-righteousness from prior books, and Trent's ruthlessness - showing what happens when taken to extremes. At any rate Ceri and Pierce are tricked by yet another ex of Rachel's, Nick, into trying to kill Ku'Sox. Ceri to save Lucy. Pierce to save Rachel. Nick is Ku'Sox familiar and sets them up. Ku'Sox burns Pierce with his own curse. Then kills Ceri - dumping her in Trent's office to find. Which results in Trent agreeing to be Ku'Sox familiar and Rachel agreeing to free Ku'Sox from the bannishment curse in exchange for Trent's daughter's safe return.
There's a lot sub-plots.
1. Ivy and Nina and the vampires - Rachel is expected to find their souls and return them to the undead vampires. Ivy and Nina are living vampires - still alive, but with a blood-lust.
While Undead vampires often inhabit living ones to see the sun. It's complicated. This is a long-running plot-arc that has been in existence since Dead Witch Walking. Outside of reminding us of this plot, Rachel's best bud Ivy really serves no purpose in the novel.
She pops up, they talk mainly about Ivy's problems, Ivy tries to help Rachel and is proven ineffectual. The writer is most likely setting up the next book...with this story thread.
Ivy's problem is that she is a living vampire, when she dies - she loses her soul, and becomes an undead...unable to walk in the sun, unable to truly love, cut off, yet alive, and powerful. Her soul assigned to hell - assuming there is one.
Ryan Cormel (King Vampire and the savior of the world after the turn) and Ohme (Felix) two
undead vampires...show up. Felix to get Rachel to kill him, because he's become drunk on the sun after spending a bit too much time in Nina's body, until Nina kicks his consciousness out. Cormel shows up to save Rachel from Felix and Felix from Rachel. He tells Rachel that if Ivy leaves Cinncinati again (which she did this round to be with Daryl and Glenn, only to discover they'd moved across country just to get away from her and vamp problems) - he'll kill her. He also tells Rachel that she must find and restore their souls pronto!
Harrison has set-up the ground-work for this - via the last three books, including this one.
Showing how Rachel as a female demon has the ability to hold two souls in her consciousness at the same time and blend auras or change auras, as well as match soul to aura and ley line to aura. In addition, Harrison shows how Trent is able with wild elfin magic to put a soul back in a body, and locate one or take it out. Working closely together - Trent and Rachel could put the vampire's souls back in their bodies. The last three books - Trent and Rachel being to trust each other, start to bond, and develop a viable working relationship.
2. Bio-engineering sub-plot. This is about the Rosewood Babies, the Elves, and HAPA - the Humans Against the Paranormal.
Trent and Ellasbeth are bio-engineers who engineered a cure for the elves using samples Rachel stole from the Ever After. Trent is the only one who knows how to cure the Rosewood virus in witches - that enables them to live and do ley line magic and well become demons.
Two people survived Rosewood due to this cure - which was engineered by Trent's father, Kal, they are Lee and Rachel.
Now that Ceri is dead, Ellasbeth has been brought back - as Trent's intended. Ellasbeth wants more than just joint custody, she wants to marry Trent and have a family with him - basically be Queen of the Elves. Everyone wants this - except apparently Trent, who obviously prefers Rachel but knows he can't have Rachel, Rachel (who has much to her own chagrin developed strong feelings for Trent), and Jenks (who hates Ellasbeth for good reason). Quen is non-committal - as far as I can tell. The Elves are hard to read.
But Ellasbeth does owe Rachel as does Trent for Lucy. Also Trent wants to work with Rachel and is willing to cure the Rosewood babies. Trent wants Rachel and knows that saving the Rosewood babies is the best way of getting what he wants.
HAPA of course doesn't want magic, elves, demons, or witches. HAPA has gotten into the FIB, which is why Glenn left it and moved out west to help a covert group fight HAPA. HAPA knows about the Rosewood babies.
3. Jenks and the Fairies. Jenks is apparently in a star-crossed romance with the wingless fairy Belle. Fairies in these books are rather interesting - they have fangs, and are sort of scary looking - and eat spiders. Warriors. Protecting gardens from bugs. Pixies are more human looking and less carnivorous - they pollinate plants and take care of them. The two are tiny, about four inches tall. Jenks always saw fairies as the enemy, but his true love Matalina died, and slowly Belle has been doing things like making him food, clothes, helping with his kids and guarding the perimeter...they are bonding.
Jenks in some respects is an echo of Rachel...echoing her loss with Kisten, and his relationship with Belle echoes her relationship with Trent. It's telling Trent is the only boyfriend that Jenks appears to have friended long-term or respects. But Elves and Pixies have a natural affinity.
4. Rachel/Trent romance - Harrison is building this. I'm not sure the writer is being honest about the romance taking her by surprise. She may be, since...it does a weird right turn by way Alburque somewhere around the fifth or sixth book. Up until then Trent and Rachel appear to want to kill each other - and take turns trying. The whole series starts with Rachel trying to arrest multi-billionaire Trenton Kalamack as a drug-lord and illegal bio-engineer, and murderer - in Dead Witch Walking. It's not until the third book that she figures out he's not human, but an elf, which takes her by surprise - because she'd assumed the elves were dead. Trenton meanwhile keeps trying to manipulate her into working for him. Or kill her for not complying and stealing from him. Then Trent asks her help in stealing a sample elfin DNA from the demon vaults in the ever after (Outlaw Demon Wails). Things go badly, but she manages to do it, even if it results in Trent becoming her familiar, because he gets caught - and it's the only way she can save him. Trent tries to kill her. Ceri and Quen stop him. He rails at her for being a Demon, she can't deal with the fact that she is one - something she was taught to hate. In the next three books - she has to fight the coven, who is upset with her being a demon and the demon collective who is overjoyed at the news, and decides to use Trent to get free - by manipulating him and blackmailing him into it. But he outsmarts her and using her ex-boyfriend, the tricky Nick, sets her up to steal something from his impregnable vault. No one can. It's impossible. But she does it and defeats her pursuers...as well as manages to get Trenton to get the coven off her back at least momentarily.
There's also a mysterious back-story that is hinted at in various books. Rachel and Trenton's parents were close friends. Her father and his mother got killed by a vampire trying to save the elfin race. Rach's adopted Dad, a human ley-line practioner, bargained with Trent's father - he would help Trent's Dad save Trent and the elves, if Trent's Dad could save Rachel's life. As result, Rachel is at the same camp as Trent - but it's not a camp, it's a sort of hospital/bio=engineering lab. Memory charms are used to erase memories of the camp. Rachel's memories of her time there - which is most of her formative childhood years, is as a result foggy. She remembers Trent, but her memories don't quite make sense.
Was he a spoiled brat? A bully? A close friend? Her best friend? All of the above?
Did their star-crossed romance start as children and teens, Trent is about three years older.
What we do know for certain is they were friends. And they helped each other. We also know that their father's separated them - after something happened. And Rachel's father - made certain Rachel wouldn't learn ley-line magic. They don't meet up again until after Rachel's adopted Dad and Trent's parents are long dead. At this point - Rach's memories of Trent are as a spoiled brat who got her kicked out of summer camp after she broke his arm when he threatened/bullied her friend. But as time progresses this memory begins to appear to be false, and Rachel grow increasingly puzzled.
By the last three books - Trenton and Rachel's relationship has changed dramatically. She saves his life. He saves her's. She begins to understand him better and why he does what he does. She also starts to see who he is. He in return respects her and her power. In some respects he becomes her foil. At the end of this book - he tells her not to seek vengeance on Nick, not for Nick, but for him - he needs her to stay pure of motive, he needs someone or something in his life that is a part of him that is pure that is good, that he can point to and be proud of. It's an odd statement - because it expresses, although this appears to be oddly lost on Rachel who only hears that he thinks she's good, how connected he feels to her. In his pov, she's part of him, essential. He wants her with him and is clearly willing to do anything to accomplish this. He is beyond ruthless and manipulative. While he is being honest with her to a degree, he's tricky - because he realizes he has to work around a lot of loop-holes. Rachel is a bit clueless and too noble for her own good - self-sacrificing. She tells Ceri earlier - that she can't be with Trent, she'd kill him, he's meant for greater things. And everyone else - that Trent is meant to marry Ellasbeth and be King of the Elves, including Trent himself. While, Trent doesn't appear to confirm or deny it, so much as humor Rachel. You almost get the feeling he's been doing this since the beginning, playing mind-games. To be fair he does admit it. In A PALE DEMON - he states that he has to save Rachel, because he manipulated her into going in the direction she did - after power, after ley-line magic. He wanted to see what would happen if she obtained more and more power. Would it corrupt her? It started as an experiment and it went wrong. He did what his father did and assailed by guilt, he frees Ku'Sox and he find a way to save her from the witches and at great cost to himself and his family, saves her soul and her life - redeeming himself at least partially in her eyes. In the next book, he saves her again this time from the HAPA. And in the last, most recent entry, he helps her save the EVER AFTER.
Jenks more or less warns Rachel about Trent's tendency to play mind-games and manipulate.
Quen mentions how good Trent is with the horses, how like his father. Jenks mentions how he is mean to the horses - controlling them with mind-games, pitting them against each other and manipulating them. Similar in a way to what he did with Rachel in the first five books.
We know from the short story, Million Dollar Baby, that the one person Trent does not want to resemble is his father. Something happened there - and it relates to Rachel. He hates what his father did to her, and what his father did to him, yet realizes its necessity.
He tells Rachel in A PALE DEMON - that his father when he saved her life, made her a demon, powerful - but did not give her a choice. They lied to her, told her not to practice ley lines. He wants her to have that choice. Not to be a slave to her power or placed in a cage.
How he goes about pushing her into that choice is in some respects similar to what he does with his horses - punishment/reward, temptation, trickery. Elves, both Peirce and Al warn, are tricky. And from Million Dollar Baby - we see remorse in Trent and regret for the choices he's made and fear that he is becoming like Ellasbeth and his father, a cold-hearted bastard who can kill and hurt things without remorse.
Rachel/Trent relationship intrigues me, in part, because I'm not quite sure where it is headed. It's unpredictable. They kiss passionately at the end of this book, but do not have sex - Rachel pulls back, stating he'll marry Ellasbeth and where will she be. And he lets her pull back...uncertain. But it's worth noting that he initiated the kiss and when she begs off of something further, he suggests going for coffee, talking, and maybe fighting a bad buy together. Pushing for friendship.
What I like about these books is the writer's attitude towards happily ever after for her characters is not a "lasting romance", for she seems to realize that there is no such thing - all romances are temporary, either bracketed by mortality or other whims of fate, but rather on finding comfort with oneself, one's abilities, being comfortable in one's own skin. Happy and positive about the future. Without needing someone or something else to do that. (The writer is a fan of the tv series BTVS and the ending she is searching for may well be similar to that one - the heroine walking off into the sunset alone, but happy.)
The main plot thread works out okay, but is a bit wordy and too dependent on a lot of psuedo-science on ley lines. I kept wanting to get back to the characters and their relationships and away from the whole how do we fix the ley lines and kill Ku'Sox. Which I found a bit dull at times. Also, after a while, I began to think how many races and people is this poor woman expected to save? She has to save the elves, the demons, the vampires, the gargoyles (really?), the pixies and the fairies. Seriously? She's BIS and TRENT's Sword. Interesting Trent still considers her his sword. Actually Trent's relationship to Rachel and his reactions in this book are very interesting. He's working hard at building a relationship with her from the ground up. Having tried other approaches. All the other relationships, unfortunately were fairly predictable. At this stage the most interesting dynamic is the Al/Rache/Trenton triangle...which clearly the writer is in agreement with.
Oh well, at least she got rid of Wade the Werewolf, who did not work in the last book. Very glad to see that guy gone. And Marshall the boring witch. Although, I may miss Pierce and Ceri. Not happy about the return of the grating Ellasbeth - who doesn't appear to have any redeeming qualities to speak of. Seriously, I like Trent and Quen, along with their daughters, they do not deserve Ellasbeth in their lives. Can the writer please kill of that woman? Ugh.
There's only three serial genre writers that I buy all the books in the series from or read all of the one's from currently - they are Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files), George RR Martin (Song of Ice and Fire), and Kim Harrison (Rachel Morgan/ The Hollows Series). Of the three Martin is the best writer - particularly when it comes to description and plotting, Harrison has the most interesting ideas, and Butcher ...well the best dialogue.
I like Harrison's stories better than the other two and her mythology/themes better - which are basically anti-war, sharing power, anti-vengence, and the power of forgiveness. Also how enslaving and abusing others tends to circle back on you in the end. Also of the three she does the most interesting and innovative things with fantasy characters - ie. elves, demons, vampires, pixies, fairies and witches. Which I haven't seen anyone else do to date. She approaches the mythological creatures from an biological point of view or the view of a bio-engineer - which is sort of different. Also the heroine/protagonist is a demon who is currently in a star-crossed romance with a devilishly tricky elf that up until the last four books had been her antagonist. I like elves. Too many frigging fantasy books focus on fairies. Personally find the elves far more interesting. That said? Martin's take on zombies and dragons is the most innovative I've seen to date as well. Butcher is disappointingly cliche in comparison, damn him. I feel like the writer has been borrowing from Marvel comics.
In short, I liked this book better than Cold Days, in some respects, even if I think Cold Days was better executed. Both writers have similar problems. I think Butcher's series is longer than Harrison's - Harrison is stopping at 13 books, Butcher appears to be going for 17 or more. And at this point? Let's just say it is easier to read George RR Martin's books out of order.
The problem with long-running serials, which is why I seldom read them and they often grate, is:
1. The writer has to spend a lot of time catching up readers who just popped in and haven't read all the other books. So, exposition can feel a bit heavy handed at times in the latter books.
2. Plots become convoluted and often seem to go in weird directions...they aren't tight.
The writers of these series don't plan it all out ahead of time...they sort of go with their gut. Which is great and actually more realistic, but it can lead to some head-scratching moments, albeit unpredictable ones.
3. If not down well, the writer begins to repeat themselves, the characters grow stagnant, and we feel like we keep doing the same story. (So far not a problem with the three serials I've been following - but it was a problem with the Stephanie Plum novels - which is why I gave up on them and most mystery serials.)
4. The romances feel recycled, or the hero/heroine just jumps from love interest to the next, with a long-running love interest in the background, which at first seems highly unlikely then suddenly starts to take off and becomes a star-crossed love affair, that you are convinced can't work. Oh and there's a triangle. Between former love interest/friend who you thought they'd end up with and this new/older one that didn't occur to you and suddenly you're rooting for. (This also happens in long-running television serials - it happened with Buffy. I was rooting for Buffy/Angel, then out of nowhere popped Spike, and suddenly, I thought frak the whole B/A thing - that's over, I want Buffy/Spike! And yes, the writers wanted me to go that route. I'm good at seeing narrative patterns and going along with them, apparently. Same deal in Harrison and in Butcher's novels. What's nice about George RR Martin is well he has too many frigging characters for it to happen.)
5. The writer begins to get tired of their story and characters, has moved on, and you can tell they are phoning it in. (Not happening with the ones' I'm currently reading, so far. Although I'm catching a bit of writer laziness on the parts of both Harrison and Butcher.)
That said? I liked Ever After - it was a quick read. The plot worked. Yes, it was bit long and busy, sort of like Cold Days, and way too much explaining of the world and plot. You can always tell the plot has gotten convoluted when the writer spends pages and pages explaining it to you. But the characters are great and the whole theme about racism/ethnic cleansing and slavery ...is well thought out, as is the examination of power and how it can be abused.
Overall rating? B
[As an aside, when I'm in a funk, I prefer genre novels. Literary novels are depressing. And feel at times like the reading equivalent of trudging through quicksand. Beautiful sentences structured to either lure you to sleep or drag you under. Literary writers are more in love with language not story, genre writers love story not language. Or so I've noted.]
In this story, Rachel Morgan is tasked with the difficult assignment of fixing the Ever After - a hellish parallel reality that was ruined centuries ago during the elf/demon war.
Ku'Sox, a soulless demon that was created by the demons to fight the elves and an attempt to continue their own line, has kidnapped Rachel's god-daughter, Lucy, and one of her closest friends, Ceri. Ku'Sox was unleashed by Trent in the novel A PALE DEMON as a means of saving Rachel from the witches who were trying to either kill her or bannish her from daylight to the demon world. Rachel bannish Ku'Sox to the demon reality - Ever After, and Trent saves Rachel's life at great risk to his own. Lucy is Trent's daughter by Ellasbeth, his former fiancee. Trent and Jenks, a pixy who is one of Rachel's best buds, steal/save Lucy from Ellasbeth - which grants Trent control of her custody, instead of Ellasbeth.
At any rate - Rachel has to work with Trent, his protector/father figure Quen, and the demon Al to save the Ever After, Lucy and Ceri.
Surprisingly, Ceri is killed off. Actually not that surprisingly, the writer had given Ceri and Quen a happy ending - and Trent had this nice little family unit - Ceri/Quen, Lucy and Ray. By killing off Ceri - the writer smashed the unit. She also brings new characters together, along with Ellasbeth, who we thought had left the scene.
Ceri and Rachel's ex-boyfriend Pierce (who was not a fan favorite - and was brought in from a short story), sixteenth century witch/demon hunter who thought nothing of killing thousands of people in order to slaughter one demon and was a bit on the self-righteous moralistic side of the fence. He's a great foil for both Rachel and Trent - in that he echoes Rachel's self-righteousness from prior books, and Trent's ruthlessness - showing what happens when taken to extremes. At any rate Ceri and Pierce are tricked by yet another ex of Rachel's, Nick, into trying to kill Ku'Sox. Ceri to save Lucy. Pierce to save Rachel. Nick is Ku'Sox familiar and sets them up. Ku'Sox burns Pierce with his own curse. Then kills Ceri - dumping her in Trent's office to find. Which results in Trent agreeing to be Ku'Sox familiar and Rachel agreeing to free Ku'Sox from the bannishment curse in exchange for Trent's daughter's safe return.
There's a lot sub-plots.
1. Ivy and Nina and the vampires - Rachel is expected to find their souls and return them to the undead vampires. Ivy and Nina are living vampires - still alive, but with a blood-lust.
While Undead vampires often inhabit living ones to see the sun. It's complicated. This is a long-running plot-arc that has been in existence since Dead Witch Walking. Outside of reminding us of this plot, Rachel's best bud Ivy really serves no purpose in the novel.
She pops up, they talk mainly about Ivy's problems, Ivy tries to help Rachel and is proven ineffectual. The writer is most likely setting up the next book...with this story thread.
Ivy's problem is that she is a living vampire, when she dies - she loses her soul, and becomes an undead...unable to walk in the sun, unable to truly love, cut off, yet alive, and powerful. Her soul assigned to hell - assuming there is one.
Ryan Cormel (King Vampire and the savior of the world after the turn) and Ohme (Felix) two
undead vampires...show up. Felix to get Rachel to kill him, because he's become drunk on the sun after spending a bit too much time in Nina's body, until Nina kicks his consciousness out. Cormel shows up to save Rachel from Felix and Felix from Rachel. He tells Rachel that if Ivy leaves Cinncinati again (which she did this round to be with Daryl and Glenn, only to discover they'd moved across country just to get away from her and vamp problems) - he'll kill her. He also tells Rachel that she must find and restore their souls pronto!
Harrison has set-up the ground-work for this - via the last three books, including this one.
Showing how Rachel as a female demon has the ability to hold two souls in her consciousness at the same time and blend auras or change auras, as well as match soul to aura and ley line to aura. In addition, Harrison shows how Trent is able with wild elfin magic to put a soul back in a body, and locate one or take it out. Working closely together - Trent and Rachel could put the vampire's souls back in their bodies. The last three books - Trent and Rachel being to trust each other, start to bond, and develop a viable working relationship.
2. Bio-engineering sub-plot. This is about the Rosewood Babies, the Elves, and HAPA - the Humans Against the Paranormal.
Trent and Ellasbeth are bio-engineers who engineered a cure for the elves using samples Rachel stole from the Ever After. Trent is the only one who knows how to cure the Rosewood virus in witches - that enables them to live and do ley line magic and well become demons.
Two people survived Rosewood due to this cure - which was engineered by Trent's father, Kal, they are Lee and Rachel.
Now that Ceri is dead, Ellasbeth has been brought back - as Trent's intended. Ellasbeth wants more than just joint custody, she wants to marry Trent and have a family with him - basically be Queen of the Elves. Everyone wants this - except apparently Trent, who obviously prefers Rachel but knows he can't have Rachel, Rachel (who has much to her own chagrin developed strong feelings for Trent), and Jenks (who hates Ellasbeth for good reason). Quen is non-committal - as far as I can tell. The Elves are hard to read.
But Ellasbeth does owe Rachel as does Trent for Lucy. Also Trent wants to work with Rachel and is willing to cure the Rosewood babies. Trent wants Rachel and knows that saving the Rosewood babies is the best way of getting what he wants.
HAPA of course doesn't want magic, elves, demons, or witches. HAPA has gotten into the FIB, which is why Glenn left it and moved out west to help a covert group fight HAPA. HAPA knows about the Rosewood babies.
3. Jenks and the Fairies. Jenks is apparently in a star-crossed romance with the wingless fairy Belle. Fairies in these books are rather interesting - they have fangs, and are sort of scary looking - and eat spiders. Warriors. Protecting gardens from bugs. Pixies are more human looking and less carnivorous - they pollinate plants and take care of them. The two are tiny, about four inches tall. Jenks always saw fairies as the enemy, but his true love Matalina died, and slowly Belle has been doing things like making him food, clothes, helping with his kids and guarding the perimeter...they are bonding.
Jenks in some respects is an echo of Rachel...echoing her loss with Kisten, and his relationship with Belle echoes her relationship with Trent. It's telling Trent is the only boyfriend that Jenks appears to have friended long-term or respects. But Elves and Pixies have a natural affinity.
4. Rachel/Trent romance - Harrison is building this. I'm not sure the writer is being honest about the romance taking her by surprise. She may be, since...it does a weird right turn by way Alburque somewhere around the fifth or sixth book. Up until then Trent and Rachel appear to want to kill each other - and take turns trying. The whole series starts with Rachel trying to arrest multi-billionaire Trenton Kalamack as a drug-lord and illegal bio-engineer, and murderer - in Dead Witch Walking. It's not until the third book that she figures out he's not human, but an elf, which takes her by surprise - because she'd assumed the elves were dead. Trenton meanwhile keeps trying to manipulate her into working for him. Or kill her for not complying and stealing from him. Then Trent asks her help in stealing a sample elfin DNA from the demon vaults in the ever after (Outlaw Demon Wails). Things go badly, but she manages to do it, even if it results in Trent becoming her familiar, because he gets caught - and it's the only way she can save him. Trent tries to kill her. Ceri and Quen stop him. He rails at her for being a Demon, she can't deal with the fact that she is one - something she was taught to hate. In the next three books - she has to fight the coven, who is upset with her being a demon and the demon collective who is overjoyed at the news, and decides to use Trent to get free - by manipulating him and blackmailing him into it. But he outsmarts her and using her ex-boyfriend, the tricky Nick, sets her up to steal something from his impregnable vault. No one can. It's impossible. But she does it and defeats her pursuers...as well as manages to get Trenton to get the coven off her back at least momentarily.
There's also a mysterious back-story that is hinted at in various books. Rachel and Trenton's parents were close friends. Her father and his mother got killed by a vampire trying to save the elfin race. Rach's adopted Dad, a human ley-line practioner, bargained with Trent's father - he would help Trent's Dad save Trent and the elves, if Trent's Dad could save Rachel's life. As result, Rachel is at the same camp as Trent - but it's not a camp, it's a sort of hospital/bio=engineering lab. Memory charms are used to erase memories of the camp. Rachel's memories of her time there - which is most of her formative childhood years, is as a result foggy. She remembers Trent, but her memories don't quite make sense.
Was he a spoiled brat? A bully? A close friend? Her best friend? All of the above?
Did their star-crossed romance start as children and teens, Trent is about three years older.
What we do know for certain is they were friends. And they helped each other. We also know that their father's separated them - after something happened. And Rachel's father - made certain Rachel wouldn't learn ley-line magic. They don't meet up again until after Rachel's adopted Dad and Trent's parents are long dead. At this point - Rach's memories of Trent are as a spoiled brat who got her kicked out of summer camp after she broke his arm when he threatened/bullied her friend. But as time progresses this memory begins to appear to be false, and Rachel grow increasingly puzzled.
By the last three books - Trenton and Rachel's relationship has changed dramatically. She saves his life. He saves her's. She begins to understand him better and why he does what he does. She also starts to see who he is. He in return respects her and her power. In some respects he becomes her foil. At the end of this book - he tells her not to seek vengeance on Nick, not for Nick, but for him - he needs her to stay pure of motive, he needs someone or something in his life that is a part of him that is pure that is good, that he can point to and be proud of. It's an odd statement - because it expresses, although this appears to be oddly lost on Rachel who only hears that he thinks she's good, how connected he feels to her. In his pov, she's part of him, essential. He wants her with him and is clearly willing to do anything to accomplish this. He is beyond ruthless and manipulative. While he is being honest with her to a degree, he's tricky - because he realizes he has to work around a lot of loop-holes. Rachel is a bit clueless and too noble for her own good - self-sacrificing. She tells Ceri earlier - that she can't be with Trent, she'd kill him, he's meant for greater things. And everyone else - that Trent is meant to marry Ellasbeth and be King of the Elves, including Trent himself. While, Trent doesn't appear to confirm or deny it, so much as humor Rachel. You almost get the feeling he's been doing this since the beginning, playing mind-games. To be fair he does admit it. In A PALE DEMON - he states that he has to save Rachel, because he manipulated her into going in the direction she did - after power, after ley-line magic. He wanted to see what would happen if she obtained more and more power. Would it corrupt her? It started as an experiment and it went wrong. He did what his father did and assailed by guilt, he frees Ku'Sox and he find a way to save her from the witches and at great cost to himself and his family, saves her soul and her life - redeeming himself at least partially in her eyes. In the next book, he saves her again this time from the HAPA. And in the last, most recent entry, he helps her save the EVER AFTER.
Jenks more or less warns Rachel about Trent's tendency to play mind-games and manipulate.
Quen mentions how good Trent is with the horses, how like his father. Jenks mentions how he is mean to the horses - controlling them with mind-games, pitting them against each other and manipulating them. Similar in a way to what he did with Rachel in the first five books.
We know from the short story, Million Dollar Baby, that the one person Trent does not want to resemble is his father. Something happened there - and it relates to Rachel. He hates what his father did to her, and what his father did to him, yet realizes its necessity.
He tells Rachel in A PALE DEMON - that his father when he saved her life, made her a demon, powerful - but did not give her a choice. They lied to her, told her not to practice ley lines. He wants her to have that choice. Not to be a slave to her power or placed in a cage.
How he goes about pushing her into that choice is in some respects similar to what he does with his horses - punishment/reward, temptation, trickery. Elves, both Peirce and Al warn, are tricky. And from Million Dollar Baby - we see remorse in Trent and regret for the choices he's made and fear that he is becoming like Ellasbeth and his father, a cold-hearted bastard who can kill and hurt things without remorse.
Rachel/Trent relationship intrigues me, in part, because I'm not quite sure where it is headed. It's unpredictable. They kiss passionately at the end of this book, but do not have sex - Rachel pulls back, stating he'll marry Ellasbeth and where will she be. And he lets her pull back...uncertain. But it's worth noting that he initiated the kiss and when she begs off of something further, he suggests going for coffee, talking, and maybe fighting a bad buy together. Pushing for friendship.
What I like about these books is the writer's attitude towards happily ever after for her characters is not a "lasting romance", for she seems to realize that there is no such thing - all romances are temporary, either bracketed by mortality or other whims of fate, but rather on finding comfort with oneself, one's abilities, being comfortable in one's own skin. Happy and positive about the future. Without needing someone or something else to do that. (The writer is a fan of the tv series BTVS and the ending she is searching for may well be similar to that one - the heroine walking off into the sunset alone, but happy.)
The main plot thread works out okay, but is a bit wordy and too dependent on a lot of psuedo-science on ley lines. I kept wanting to get back to the characters and their relationships and away from the whole how do we fix the ley lines and kill Ku'Sox. Which I found a bit dull at times. Also, after a while, I began to think how many races and people is this poor woman expected to save? She has to save the elves, the demons, the vampires, the gargoyles (really?), the pixies and the fairies. Seriously? She's BIS and TRENT's Sword. Interesting Trent still considers her his sword. Actually Trent's relationship to Rachel and his reactions in this book are very interesting. He's working hard at building a relationship with her from the ground up. Having tried other approaches. All the other relationships, unfortunately were fairly predictable. At this stage the most interesting dynamic is the Al/Rache/Trenton triangle...which clearly the writer is in agreement with.
Oh well, at least she got rid of Wade the Werewolf, who did not work in the last book. Very glad to see that guy gone. And Marshall the boring witch. Although, I may miss Pierce and Ceri. Not happy about the return of the grating Ellasbeth - who doesn't appear to have any redeeming qualities to speak of. Seriously, I like Trent and Quen, along with their daughters, they do not deserve Ellasbeth in their lives. Can the writer please kill of that woman? Ugh.