Show me a cover picturing a woman in leather or boots with a gun and you may just have sold me a good impulse buy. Sadly, in the two cases I’ve succumbed I haven’t been particularly thrilled with the book, including Greywalker. It has some strong positives going for it though.
On the negative side, the climactic battle in the book was over something that really would affect only undead creatures, so I didn’t really care about it much. The main character, Harper Blaine, is partially undead and my level of caring toward her is partially attributable to the relative lack of depth of her character. On the positive side, it’s one of the few books I’ve read where normal people run into vampire types and the normal people’s reactions seems reasonable. Also, despite the author being a transplant, I think she portrayed the feel of Seattle better than most books set around here. (Well, except the sooper-sekret vampire club in Pioneer Square.)
Harper Blaine is a private investigator based out of Pioneer Square. When we are introduced to her in the first paragraph, she’s getting her ass handed to her by the subject of one of her investigations. She’s caught him perpetrating some sort of fraud, he doesn’t like it, and he beats the crap out of her. She’s dead. But just for a couple of minutes before the paramedics revive her. Afterward, black and blue, she starts seeing strange things that aren’t attributable to the blurred vision she has from getting beat up. Ghosts.
Yep, ghosts everywhere! Having been dead herself, she can now slide in and out of the land of ghosts, or the Grey
(hence, Greywalker). Being new to the ability, she’s not very good at it. But Harper Blaine is now one of the few beings who can go Grey and back, and so all the world of the undead now has it’s own private investigator. Though not all of them know it.
First case, woman hires her to find her son, last seen in the company of a very white serene goth looking guy with big fangy teeth. Second case, a voice on the phone hires her to track down an antique his family lost several decades prior. The antique seems to have a mind of it’s own.
Harper Blaine is really really whiny. Not quite as bad as Meg in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series, but pretty close. Every time she has to do something, the doing is preceded by several paragraphs to several pages of Harper’s discussion about being afraid to do whatever it is she has to do. In addition, she has these newly found powers to go back and forth to the Grey, and she barely uses them of her own volition. Nearly every time something happens, it’s either an instinctive reaction or it’s someone else doing the work for her.
That makes it really hard to care about Harper Blaine’s character. Since she’s the only viewpoint character, that’s a bad spot to be in. The climactic conflict is over what is essentially a bomb for the undead. Ghosts, vampires, necromancers, and maybe a witch or two. Those are the people
who will get blown to smithereens if someone cuts the red wire instead of the blue wire. I don’t care about them. They are bad guys, except for Harper Blaine. And she’s not someone I care to care for either, so the upblowing of the bomb doesn’t pique me.
However, Kat Richardson did capture the feel of the Seattle in which I live. In particular, a brief sojourn into the University District was spot on. I popped for the scene set inside the Grand Illusion theater as well the note about dodging skateboarders while walking the Ave. J. A. Jance set one of her series in the city and does a pretty good job of using the geography to advantage, but the feel of the city is more the feel of Seattle in the 1970s if at all. Greywalker fits better for a younger generation.
If you’re into the urban fantasy genre, I doubt this will be too bad a read. For this sub-genre outsider though, it wasn’t a great introduction.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: Greywalker
Author: Kat Richardson
Cover creator: Ray Lundgren (designer) / Chris McGrath (artist)
Series: Greywalker; 1
Imprint / publisher: Roc / Penguin
Format: Paperback
Length: 341 p.
Publication date: October 2006
ISBN-10: 0-451-46107-X
Subject: Blaine, Harper (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Women private investigators — Washington (State) — Seattle — Fiction
Subject: Vampires — Fiction
Subject: Seattle (Wash.) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3618.I3447 G74 2006
I was curious what you’d think of that book. Personally, I disliked it enough to stop reading a third of the way into it. It just didn’t have enough going for it to keep me interested.
‘Harper Blaine’ sounds like a book publishing company, and this alone might ruin the book for me.
women with gun? have you read kim harrison’s rachel morgan series? i just got the latest at a conference, haven’t started it yet. if you read her i’d lvoe to know what you think!