For a Few Demons More – review

Author: Kim Harrison

First Published: 2007

contains spoilers

The Blurb:

“Bargaining with Demons has left Rachel Morgan in constant danger of losing her soul.

“As if being famous in the underworld – for all the wrong reasons – and sharing her home with a vampire and he jealous girlfriend didn’t make her vulnerable enough, one night Rachel finds demons ransacking her home with no fear of sanctified ground. They are searching for something they believe Rachel to possess – a danger that Rachel thought was well hidden and secret.

“But when the human morgue starts to fill up with partially-turned lupine women who have been brutally murdered, Rachel realises that someone else knows the Focus still exists and that she may have been betrayed.”

The Review:

This is book number five in the series of books concerned with independent witch Rachel Morgan, who along with her partners, living vampire Ivy and pixie Jenks, run Vampiric Charms – well the best way to describe it would be a private investigation service – though they tend to be more about bringing them in than investigating the crime. I reviewed the fourth book, A Fistful of Charms, last year.

The book follows on from that neatly and is one of the slew of multi-monster supernatural books that are flooding the market. This book maintains a nice balance between the concerns of the elves, demons, weres and vampires – each group getting a fair slice of story. As in all the other books in the series it is told in first person from Rachel’s point of view.

To be honest, at first, I found myself getting a little bored. We were in the same situation as previous books and the characters do not seem to be growing in the inter-relationships. I actually thought, God if Rachel Morgan whines once more I’m giving up.

However that does the book a disservice as, about ¼ of the way in things became more cohesive and the story took over, proving itself to be a well thought out rollercoaster ride through the supernatural world of Cincinnati post-turn (the turn being when the supernatural creatures found themselves, due to a gm food mistake, the dominate part of society and so made themselves public). At that point, the book became a permanent part of my hand until it was finished!

There are some nice little twists, that fit in with the lore that Harrison has built up, and she kills off a couple of major characters – a move by an author that I respect and, indeed, a brave move. There is also a very brief appearance by a group of Demon Practitioners (witches who involve themselves in the illegal world of demon summoning), which was almost throwaway but clearly leaves a new, and dangerous, group available for future volumes.

So, a slow start, but then things hot up and when they do the book becomes darker than those that have gone before. All in all a worthwhile addition to the series. 7 out of 10.