This book opens with the protagonist, Harper Blaine, being beaten to death. Quite literally. She’s actually only technically dead for about 2 minutes, due to the wonders of modern medicine, but the experience hasn’t left her unchanged. She’s now a Greywalker, and sees ghosts & can venture into the in between world where they exist. That’s a … state of being, rather than a profession – her profession remains the same, she’s a private investigator. And new cases come in – a missing person case, a missing heirloom to track down. Only her change of state hasn’t gone unnoticed & there’s more of the paranormal around in Seattle than she’d realised before she died & came back.<\/p>\n
I liked this – having read far too much urban fantasy a few years ago I burnt out on the formula that so many seem to follow but while this book ticks many of the requisite boxes I think it does something more interesting with them than just follow along formulaicly. Yes, the protagonist is a tough young woman – but she’s tough in a “is a good PI” sort of way, not in a “can kick supernatural ass and make sarcastic quips” sort of way. Yes, there’s a love interest, but that didn’t quite go where I was expecting. Yes, there are the normal collection of supernatural beasties – vampires for sure, werewolves probably, a necromancer or two, ghosts of course – but they tip to the horror side of the spectrum rather than the fantasy side in my opinion. Blaine’s reactions to her new status feel real, too, and grounded in her job & personality. And not everybody she meets is supernatural – some of the people are still just people, some dodgy goings are just straightforward crimes.<\/p>\n
My criticism is that Blaine appears to’ve come from nowhere despite feeling real. It’s been a couple of weeks since I read this, so perhaps I’ve forgotten if there’s an explanation for why she doesn’t seem to have friends that aren’t connected to this new world. There’s a business associate or two, but there doesn’t seem more than that, and yet she connects to people easily – there’s not a feeling of a “traumatic past that means she doesn’t deal well with people”. But I feel awkward writing this, coz maybe I’m an idiot who has forgotten something in just two weeks. Or maybe for all the solid feelingness of the world building it doesn’t have enough past. It’s a problem that cures itself, of course, because over the series (yes, it ticks the ongoing series box too) these’ll be the past friends for the new books.<\/p>\n
So, yes, I liked this but I think it’s in the fun-read-once category. Still, I liked it enough to reserve the next one at the library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book opens with the protagonist, Harper Blaine, being beaten to death. Quite literally. She’s actually only technically dead for about 2 minutes, due to the wonders of modern medicine, but the experience hasn’t left her unchanged. She’s now a Greywalker, and sees ghosts & can venture into the in between world where they exist. … Continue reading ““Greywalker” Kat Richardson”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,522,141],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-fiction","tag-richardson-kat","tag-urban-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}