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For A Few Demons More

Kim Harrison

Published 2007                    520 pages

Synopsis

Rachel Morgan, witch and freelance bounty hunter, is awoken from her sleep to find an insane yet powerful demon ransacking her home claiming that Rachel has something of hers that she wants back.  Rachel lives in a sanctified church -  that the demon can find her without being summoned is scary enough but that the demon can enter the church is beyond frightening.

In her role as an interspecies consultant for the human run police force, she is called to the morgue to look at the bodies of some murdered werewolves.  If that wasn’t bad enough, when she is there she is shown the bodies of some unidentified werewolf women.  Putting two and two together, Rachel realises the reason the women can’t be traced is because they aren’t on the were register.  They weren’t born as werewolves but were humans who have been changed into weres, which normally would be impossible because you have to be born a wolf.

Rachel has been secretly hiding a dangerous demon artefact called the Focus since she acquired it from her ex-boyfriend.  She recognises that the Focus has been spontaneously turning humans into weres, and worse she realises that someone else knows of the artefact’s existence and is brutally murdering werewolves in order to find out who has it.

Unfortunately, the Focus is too dangerous to be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.  It would start a new interspecies war between the vampires and the weres which would be a disaster for the whole world. 

With an invitation to her old enemy Trent’s wedding and a demon that has a score to settle with her freely running about the city in possession of a human body, Rachel has more to worry about than the focus though.  When Piscary (the undead master vampire of the city who Rachel had jailed for murder) is unexpectedly pardoned and released from jail Rachel knows that her life - and the lives of her friends are at risk…. 

The Review

For A Few Demons More is the fifth book in the Rachel Morgan series by author Kim Harrison.  It delivers a powerful mixture of fast paced action, emotion, horror and imaginative fantasy.  

If you haven’t read any of the previous books in this series (you have been missing out on an exciting and well written urban fantasy series) and I would recommend reading them first, in the order that they were written.  This is because the events in this story carry on plot lines from the previous novels and the development of the characters and the characters’ relationships in this series will be more meaningful if viewed over the full series.

Rachel is gaining more power and experience as a witch, with less spells going disastrously wrong.  I used to think of this character as a kind of supernatural Stephanie Plum but unlike Stephanie Plum she learns by her mistakes.  She still lurches from one crisis to another but she seems to be gaining some insight into her own character and emotions with each adventure.  Her relationship with Ivy (her gay, living vampire room-mate) is complex and although it develops a little further in this book it isn’t the focus of this story. 

For A Few Demons More is a thoroughly enjoyable blend of action, humour and fantasy.  It isn’t what I would call “chicklit” though.  Some numpty (Scottish slang word that I picked up on my last holiday) at the publishers decided to put the word “chicklit” on the cover of the UK imprint for this novel.  “Chicklit” brings to mind the work of MaryJanice Davidson or Michelle Rowen and this book is a lot more serious than that.  Yes, the central character Rachel Morgan can be entertainingly flaky but that doesn’t make this book “chicklit”!

Recommended reading!

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