A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)

I feel like Kim Harrison is losing track of the characters she\’s created and has hit a creative road block. She spent the first three chapters going on and on and on about the pheromones and how this affects Rachel. OK – we get it. She is all about the vampire bite. Do you really need to tell us every other sentence? Not to mention Rachel is getting crabbier with each book. She has little temper tantrums and is becoming rather snarky. Her constant dance with Trent is getting old. How long is this going to go on? Also, if Kim Harrison wants Rachel to become a lesbian lover with Ivy then get it over with already. The jealously and constant remarks to Rachel eyeing Ivy and her sexiness are just annoying. It\’s time to make some serious decisions with all of these characters instead of just re-hashing, insinuating and doing an incredibly poor job of developing anything real. It\’s been a while since I read a Kim Harrison book and I realize now that I\’m not missing much. She started strong but with each consecutive book she becomes weaker. Enough already. My advice to author – first off get a better proofreader because my Kindle version had a ton of grammar mistakes and secondly take some much needed time off and actually come up with character/plot development. All this fluff just to add in pages is just that – fluff. It\’s doesn\’t move the story along and it doesn\’t help the involve the reader in your book. Oh, and I get it – she has a charmed bracelet – again – ENOUGH. Quit telling us the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over……

Rachel learns obligatory life lessons while she plays dead and cuts herself off from her magic and all that comes with it (the demon collective, the Everafter etc) as she tags some members from a mysterious hate group. I bought this book way back when it first came out and have repeatedly tried (and failed) to get through it over the YEARS since then. I finally finished it and am happy to report that from about 60% on it finally gets a lot more interesting—plus the books that come after this one are even better so it was worth it! But I still gotta say I hated this book because it makes absolutely no sense that Rachel would suddenly (and inexplicably) decide to cut herself off from her magic and the collective. She has always used magic and she has always used it responsibly so much of this book felt obligatory–like the author was trying way too hard to prove that Rachel was \”growing up\” and experiencing character development but wtf, we are 10 books in and it\’s already happened so it\’s a little late to start doing it all over again! In an effort to show us that Rachel was all growed up the author just made her seem like a clueless idiot and sometimes like a completely different person. For instance, Rachel spends a very painful 50% of this book in the captivity of humans and keeps becoming shocked again and again that she\’s powerless without her power. She keeps having the revelation that whoa it would be way easier if she had access to her magic—BUT NO, then she keeps bringing up her fears about Al and the Everafter and decides it\’s better to be powerless. How does this even make any sense? It\’s like the author expects us to just ignore the fact that Al and her resolved their issues at least 3 books ago! Seriously, in the last book she was saving Al\’s life and and becoming his friend and now she\’s suddenly terrified of him for no real reason? Her decisions and revelations only made sense if you ignore all the character development and revelations that already happened in the previous 9 books! As someone who has read all of these books this was just insulting. The \”mystery\” in this one was also laughably transparent–so much so that I was actually confused by it. Like I was confused when Rachel finally had a revelation and figured out who the \”bad guys\” were because it was already so obvious who they were that I had assumed she already knew it. I can\’t help thinking that some of the things that happened over the course of apprehending her tags and solving the mystery were just plain weird and out of character too, but whatever, I gave it 3 stars because I DO think that the author managed to make it work in the end and I get what she was trying to do (well I guess what I mean is it worked out better than you\’d think given how bad it started out). The truly redeeming part of this book was Trent. There is a new tension between Rachel and Trent and it\’s fun to watch them be all awkward with each other. That alone made the book worth reading for me, not to mention if I\’d known how good the next 2 books were I would\’ve forced myself to finish it WAY sooner.

I love the Hollows series; Kim Harrison is one of my favorite authors!!! In this book Rachel finally accepts Who she is and is ready to take responsibility for what she does. It’s wonderful to read about this amazing young woman who has always been her own worst enemy. The book is filled with creative writing, A solid storyline that you can just dive into and get lost. As always you can’t put the book down. Start from the beginning and read all of this wonderful series and you will fall in love!!

As a series, I give the Hallows 5 stars, I really enjoyed the characters and story lines, but this last book, and don\’t read further if you don\’t want any spoilers, I would give 2.5 maybe 3. I\’ll tell you why. But first, I must mention that I thought Rachel was out of character at the end of the last book, Pale Demon. I fully expected her to demand Trent remove the armband ASAP so she could save Peirce. Rachel was always going into life-threatening situations to save people; even people she didn\’t really like. (Trent, for example) But she was content to let Peirce be tortured by Al, because Al believed him to be responsible for her death?!! This situation I thought would be rectified early in the next book, but no. Five months pass, in which she hopes Peirce is still alive, feels guilty for his possible death/ or continued torture, but leaves the armband in place. On top of that, because she is magically helpless, she gets her backside handed to her multiple times, by mere humans. Humans who could jump out of the way of her splat gun, not once but many times. I mean, the only time she successfully hit anyone, was when she took out an out of control vamp, who also happens to be on their side. This book irritated me no end and I admit, I skimmed over those areas that bugged me the most. Honestly, Rachel, who has been able to handle fights with Inderlanders, was a bumbling boob against humans, even after she finally has Trent remove the band. I was expecting her to finally kick butt with her magic available to her; after all, she held own against the day-walking demon in Pale Demon, but no. She\’s once again beaten badly, and would have been killed if Trent hadn\’t shown up.

A Perfect Blood is the tenth book in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows series, and it continues the story of Rachel Morgan, a witch who recently discovered that she’s actually a demon. The Hollows is one of my favourite urban fantasy series, and I have been waiting a while to get my hands on a copy of this book. I really enjoyed reading this book. It has been a while since I have read any of the books in The Hollows series, but I just picked up A Perfect Blood and fell straight into the world and the story. With The Hollows series Harrison has created a really vibrant world. I really enjoy Rachel Morgan as both the narrator of the story and as the main character. Sure she makes really stupid choices at times, but she tries her best. And boy does she try in A Perfect Blood. The plot of A Perfect Blood is pretty much what you would expect from any of the books in The Hollows series. Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks team together to solve a rather tricky case. The case in A Perfect Blood is the most tricky case the team have tackled yet, and I have to say the fallout from the case will be interesting to watch in future books. I get the feeling that in A Perfect Blood Harrison has started the “endgame” of the series. There are certainly a few threads left dangling tantalizingly by Harrison at the end of the book, though there isn’t the feeling of a cliffhanger. The Rachel in A Perfect Blood is a really interesting character. She has grown a lot as a person since the first book in the series, and that is really obvious is the book; she is a lot more self-aware, and aware of those around her who she cares about. This Rachel is at times the most vulnerable and the strongest that I have read in the series so far. I really enjoyed watching her progression in this book. It was nice to see her relationship with Ivy and Jenks in full force in this book. I also loved her interactions with Trent. They were so…them. If you are a fan of urban fantasy and you have not read this series yet, then you should! A Perfect Blood is a great addition to The Hollows series. I cannot wait to get my hands on book eleven – Ever After!! Originally posted on TheFlutterbyRoom.com

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