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Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she'll be happy.
But fate - or, more exactly, the Fates - have other plans. Eve owes them a favour, and they've just called it in. An evil spirit called a Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy - previous hunters have been sent mad in the process. As if that's not problem enough, it turns out that the only way to stop her is with an angel's sword. And Eve's no angel...
Product reviews...
Well, Kelley Armstrong has just gained herself another fan!! I am an avid Fantasy reader, so when I spotted this book amongst a friend's collection, I decided to check it out... and was hooked simply by reading the blurb on the back!! I dived into it instantly, and from then on, it was with great effort that I'd drag myself back out to do whatever other tasks needed doing.
Having read some books that chop and change between dimensions or times and are quite hard to follow sometimes, I found Armstrong's style made it very easy to keep track of "where" I was at all times within the book... definitely a nice change.
A thoroughly enjoyable read that was extremely hard to put down and now has me itching to rush out and buy all of her other books. A "must have" for the collection of any big fantasy reader!
This is the first time I have encountered this author, being fairly new reader of this kind of Fantasy. Laurell K. Hamilton's works first introduced me to the world of supernatural gumshoe-type stories, and I admit to taking quite a fancy to them. Containing the core gems of 'a mission/mystery to solve', sexual tension, drama, action and magic... this is a genre that would appear to a wide audience. It's Mill & Boon with Magic... in a good way.
Though this is the third tale that involves the key characters, it stands alone well enough that if, like me, it is your first encounter with Kelley Armstrong's work, you'll still be mightily impressed. If I had to try and condense my first impressions down to one word, I could only pick 'Gripping' to be that word. Plenty others get close, but this one just suits the best.
Overall, I really enjoyed the multiple levels to the story, and the multiple planes of existence the characters bounce between, and the interactions possible only because of it. I was impressed at how she explained the overlap between the Ghost World and The Real World, and the overall guiding forces in action. I really loved how The Fates worked, so very clever, historically accurate, yet so totally unexpectedly unique and new. A wonderful story, worth reading by all means. If you enjoy witches and warlocks, fairy- and ghost-stories, and have not read any of Kelley's books, you are missing out on something wonderful.
Random listing from 'Books'...
The British Space Agency has sent a monkey into space. But all does not go well with the flight and Monkey's spaceship only just clears the first hilltop before crash-landing in a peaceful forest. Thinking he is on a new planet, Monkey decides to claim it for his own. But the other forest creatures have something to say about that. Namely one - 'Bunny'!
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