The Outlaw Demon Wails
The Hollows, Book #6
By Kim Harrison
ISBN# 9780060788704
Author’s Website: http://www.kimharrison.net/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Spoilers Ahead!
This is the sixth book in Kim Harrison’s Hollows series that stars the witch Rachel and her two partners and roommates Ivy and Jenks.
This book picks up about three months after the end of the fifth installment, For a Few Demons More. Rachel is still rocked by the death of her boyfriend, Kisten, and is trying to find a way to move on while still trying to figure out who killed him.
She gets a call from a potential client and goes to meet him, only to discover that it’s Quen! He wants her to go into the Ever-After to retrieve an elf sample, that has been stored there since the beginning of their race. It turns out that Ceri is pregnant and they need it to make sure that her baby will arrive safely and survive.
Unfortunately, she can’t because Al is gunning for her and she fears he will take her if she crosses the lines. He has been in prison there, but someone is summoning him out every night and sending him to kill her. He no longer is sticking to their deal to never hurt her as he feels he has nothing to lose. She decides that the only way to keep him in jail is to take his summoning name, but to do that she must get his DNA sample out of the Ever-After. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get into the Ever-After, but when Trent offers to pay her way as long as she takes him with her, she can’t refuse.
So Trent and Rachel summon Minias to make the arrangements and Jenks stows away in Rachel’s bag. Jenks gets Al’s sample for Rachel and while he’s looking for the elf sample, Rachel twists the curse to switch summoning names with Al. Jenks finds the elf sample and they’re getting ready to leave when Jenks disappears in thin air and Minias captures Rachel and Trent.
They are thrown into a cell next to Al who is anxiously waiting to be summoned out, only to discover that Rachel succeeded in taking his name and she is summoned out instead, even though she was never supposed to be able to be summoned since she isn’t a demon. Trent is left in the Ever-After and Rachel starts to plan a rescue mission to save him. Against everyone’s wishes she decides to make a deal with Al in order to save Trent.
I found the first half of this book to be incredibly excruciating to read. It felt like mostly filler and nothing was really happening. Rachel kept obsessing on missing Kisten (who I miss also) and blaming herself for his death. Then, Rachel and Ivy were trying to find a blood balance, which I always find annoying. I’m just not into this whole bisexual relationship that Harrison always tries to hint at with these two. There was Rachel hanging out with Marshal and then David coming over to discuss getting a pack tattoo that they don’t get in this book and it just felt like a whole lot of nothing going on.
It does start to get interesting when Rachel goes to Trent’s to see Quen and it’s pretty good from then on….if only we didn’t have to read so much blah blah blah to get there!
Rachel learns a lot in this installment. She discovers that the vampire that killed Kisten tried to bind her; she learns that her father isn’t her biological father and when she is summoned with Al’s name she starts to wonder about who she is and what she is.
If I could cut out all the mindless rambling in the first half of this book, I would have enjoyed it, but since I had to muddle through all that, I just didn’t like the book as a whole.
