I’d heard of this series, and when I had the chance to buy a used copy at the library (cheap books! supporting the library!) I picked it up, glad that I’d have the chance to explore more urban fantasy. Since I write urban fantasy, I’m very picky about others’ novels. I’ve picked up and discarded many more books than I’d read, so the fact that I read this to the end was a point in its favor.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first in the series, and I haven’t read the first ones, so I think my appreciation of this book was occluded by my lack of background knowledge. Had I known it was the fifth in a series, well, let’s be honest, I probably would have bought it anyway (sucker for cheap used books), but your enjoyment might be improved if you start a little earlier.
Harper Blaine is the hard boiled protagonist, an investigator who has the abilities of a “Graywalker” because she came close to death more than once. Her late father, whose ghost appears as a character in this novel, also had similar powers, but he was driven to suicide by the madness they induced. Harper is made of sterner stuff, and moreover, she has a slough of resourceful, competent, loyal friends to help her out with whatever she needs, up until the final battle, which of course Harper must do alone. In short, she’s a solid heroine.
There isn’t a lot of character building in this. Or, perhaps there is, but I missed it becuase I wasn’t around to read the first four novels, so I don’t know what she was like before. Harper doesn’t seem to do much introspection. She worries a little bit about who is going to die, and if she can save anyone, but she doesn’t dwell on that. She doesn’t seem to change much, except that she gets more magical powers than she had to begin with. Mostly, she just carries on with a sense of duty to the cause of justice and willingness to defend the defenseless that you’d wish we saw more often in our public figures. If Harper Blaine were running for Mayor, I’d vote for her. *
Many of the other characters felt slightly two-dimensional to me. Quentin should have been great. He’s got a cool tinkerer/steampunk engineer/mad scientist feel to him, but because his only motive seems to be “help Harper,” he seemed more of an extra than a supporting man. Ditto for her other friends. They’re nice, but they’re so nice that they seem more of a convenience to Harper than real people with seperate motives.
The setting is an alternate reality of Seattle, but it’s not much like the Seattle I used to live in. Even excluding the vampires, it felt unfamiliar. I couldn’t recognize anything, even places I’ve been before, like Pioneer square. Richardson did a better job of describing Leavenworth, which I haven’t been to but was able to picture slightly better. In other scenes, like in the orchard, the topography completely lost me, and my lack of grounding pulled me out of the story.
Which brings me to my main complaint about the novel. Almost all of the action takes place within the Grey, the netherworld between the living and the dead where the magic is created. It was such a cool idea that I wish I’d thought of it first. I loved the idea of people being “greyblind” as opposed to “colorblind.” Some of the scenes, especially the magical scenes, seemed as though they’d be strikingly beautiful if they were done in film. A book, alas, is not film, and on more than one occasion, the descriptions of the power flows, ley lines, wards, magic, and the surreal imagery that Richardson used to describe the Grey overwhelmed me. I simply had to stop paying attention and just skim over. This is a problem because I ended up skimming so many passages that I lost valuable information. In one scene, she’s interacting with a necromancer named Carlos. She spent so much time describing his wards and magic-y things that when there was a scene change, I found myself asking, “Wait, how did they get to the basement?” and I had to go back and re-read passages.
In this regard, the novel reminded me of Tom Clancy novel I read years ago, I forget which one. There were some of his novels (one could argue, most) which spent so much time on technical details and TLAs (TLA=Three Letter Acronym) that you lost the plot and characters. I understand greywalking about as much as I understand naval military procedure, so both novels made me kind of glaze over and want to skip passages. People who are already in the know might like the depth of detail, but I wanted more of the kind of plot I could understand, namely, that involving people.
I liked her vampires, and I thought Richardson’s worldbuilding was both solid and creative. Harper Blaine is a likeable person, heroic and just troubled enough that you feel for her. If you’re rabid about these stories, you’ll probably find this a good, solid read. Objectively, however, it’s too light on the setting, too light on the character building, and too heavy on the abstract magical descriptions for my taste.
*(If her fiscal policy was sound enough.)
