#the hollows (kim harrison)

[whimsicalmeerkat]

Fic Master List

All the cool kids have these, so I figured I'd make one as well. Splitting them up by fandom since I have a bajillion fandoms and fics. List updated as of 2/24/2024. Some of the links go straight to my works on AO3 and some go to a post I've made here on tumblr. It's a work in progress.

Drabbles | 3 Sentence Ficathon

Teen Wolf: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Chris Argent/Derek Hale, Derek Hale/Peter Hale, Derek Hale/Laura Hale

Men’s Hockey RPF: all archive locked, click the link to see pairings etc.

Black Jewels - Anne Bishop: Daemon Sadi/Lucivar Yaslana

Original Work: various m/m and m/m/m pairings

The Hollows - Kim Harrison: Trent Kalamack/Rachel Morgan, Jenks/Matalina

Spider-Man/Deadpool

The Witcher: Emhyr var Emreis/Geralt of Rivia, Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion

Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh: Aden Kai/Vasic Zen, Kaleb Krychek/Judd Lauren, Lucas Hunter/Hawke Snow, Judd Lauren/Walker Lauren

Stargate Atlantis: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard

The Authority: Apollo/Midnighter, Apollo/Midnighter & Jenny Quantum

Perilous Courts - Tavia Lark: Julien Sandry/Whisper, Bellamy Sandry/Rakos Tem, Daromir Azri/Vana Dire, Vana Dire & Bellamy Sandry, Corin Marcel/Audric Sandry

Radiance Series - Tavia Lark: Evain Marha/Leth ka Tariel, Karis Cooper/Ronan Vizia, Arthur Davorn/Shaesarenna Nightven

Demonic Disasters and Afterlife Adventures - Shannon Mae: Adam/Minos

Chosen One Universe - Macy Blake: Victor Eastaughffe/Orsen Riggs, Victor Eastaughffe/Orsen Riggs & Gus, Bentley "Bebe" Baxter & Eduard Eastaughffe, Jedrek/Nick Smith

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Enkidu/Gilgamesh

Last Binding Series - Freya Marske: Robin Blyth/Edwin Courcey

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Loki/Thor

[pixiedustandbluebutterflies]

I identify with Jenks because I, too, absolutely hate change, love honey, have nothing but correct opinions, and am drawn to any and all heat sources

[leer-reading-lire]

FunDayBPC | August | 1 : National Girlfriends Day

Friends: Rachel Morgan & Ivy Tamwood

[noo-im-not-addicted-to-books]

Just finished my October-read: Kim Harrison's "Dead Witch walking" (Rachel Morgan-series 1).

I've read it years ago and since there are still new books of that series popping up in local book stores, I wanted to be pulled into the world of the Hollows once more.

My thoughts: Great book, gripping plot, the characters are lovely, but also scary and you can easily get a connection with them and their everyday-problems.

Spoiler, only read if you've read most of the books: Trent is such a horrible person, I'm on Al's side on this little man. It also really hurt, when we met Kist again :,/

[mordacitatis]

i sometimes miss the things i was able to read as a teen that are just...too much now. today im thinking about the rachel morgan series by Kim Harrison.

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Trouble with the Cursed by Kim Harrison

Series: The Hollows #16Author: Kim HarrisonPublisher: AceReleased: June 14, 2022Received: Own How are we already at book number sixteen in The Hollows series?! Okay, I know the series has been out for over a decade, but I’m still impressed (and shocked) by how far we’ve come—especially considering that the series was meant to conclude three books ago. I will never complain about getting more of…

[pips-squeak]

Would one of you please read the dead witch walking series please </3 it’s also called the hollows series </3 I need to talk about it with someone and apparently only me and my grandma have read it </3

[alfvaen]

Heavy Novel

August was a heavy month. Bob Geldof said so, and it's hard to disagree. I read some books in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Potential spoilers within for Jo Clayton's diadem series, Tade Thompson's Rosewater/Wormwood series, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series, and of course Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

R.A. Salvatore: The Crystal Shard, completed August 5

Once again it was time to try a new author…a male author, and not one of the complete unknowns relegated to the pool table. I was ready for another epic fantasy, and for a while I was considering Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough, but then I was on Tumblr and saw a bunch of posts about Drizzt do'Urden and remembered that I had this book on the shelf as well. I've been hearing things about R.A. Salvatore for a while now, but I confess that I never got too deeply into D&D novels the way I did (at some point) into Star Trek. I did read the Dragonlance books pretty slavishly for a while, but to diminishing returns (I gave up after the first Richard Knaak one, I recall); I tried the first Forgotten Realms one, Azure Bonds, and was kind of meh. And at first what I heard about Drizzt (my fingers keep wanting to type "Drizzy", lol) sounded kind of cringe to my newly-sophisticated palate. (Heavy irony there--I was still reading Piers Anthony and Jack L. Chalker for years, and I now find them both relatively cringe.)

I elected to start with the first published book, rather than the first chronologically. This is not a simple decision; I've gone back and forth on this over the years. For instance, back when I was first trying out the Darkover series, I found a chronological list in one of the books and thus decided to start with Darkover Landfall, which was a bad call; I recall it as being so heavily infected with prequelitis as to be practically incomprehensible on its own. (Readers of Dragonsdawn will find this a familiar experience.) I also read the Deryni books starting with Camber rather than Kelson (though on reread the first Kelson trilogy was noticeably worse writing, so maybe I dodged a bullet there). But when I read the Vorkosigan series for the first time, I read in strict publication order, which I guess is not the worst way to read them but I certainly don't do it that way any more.

So with the Drizzt books, I did some research. It seemed like in this book, and its Icewind Dale trilogy, Drizzt was part of an ensemble cast, as opposed to the prequel trilogy where he was the main character. In the end I went for this one on the publication-order theory. Also apparently there are a total of 39(!) Drizzt books.

For the most part the book is…about what I would expect for a D&D book. Characters mostly seem pretty flat, combats are done decently well, evil is evil, plot is mostly pretty predictable but with occasional twists. It wasn't bad, and I read it all the way through to the end, but I might have enjoyed it more when I was 17. (Or younger, but I would have been 17 when it came out, so…) The book does not pass the Bechdel test, because I believe we only get two named female characters if you include Gwenhwyfar the panther, and I don't think Catti-Brie ever talks to her. (Nor does she even get a whole hell of a lot to do--even her potential romantic subplot is vestigial.) The setting is not bad--Icewind Dale and its Ten-Towns region, whose leaders tend to squabble a lot over petty grievances and fishing rights, practically rings the truest of anything.

So now I'm reconsidering my starting point and may actually want to try the prequel trilogy to see if they're any good, because Drizzt did seem the closest to being an actual character. Even if the renegade Dark Elf who turned against his evil race/culture toward the light is a cliché, it feels like Drizzt might be the reason it's a cliché. Not sure if I'm going to buying any more of the books right away, but it turns out my brother-in-law has the whole series and so maybe I'll just arrange to borrow some from him.

Jo Clayton: Shadowplay, completed August 9

Back to a female author next, probably not epic fantasy because of the Drizzt book, and it felt too soon for another urban fantasy as well, which usually means going to science fiction, or occasionally mainstream or something. When I don't have a strong indication of what to read next, I will often sort my to-read shelf chronologically, with the books that have been there longest at the top, and see what leaps out at me. This time I apparently settled on Jo Clayton.

Jo Clayton's books were big mass-market books from the 1980s, and I saw them around all the time…through rarely in the right order. Like I'd look on the library paperback racks and see Changer's Moon (third in its trilogy) and Blue Magic (second in its trilogy). In her case I never tried to read them out of order, so sometimes it was a long time before I got to start them. But I did finish her Diadem series, nine books in all. In those books, we follow a woman named Aleytys who gets a mysterious diadem (high-tech because this is SF and totally not magical at all) and then gets sold into slavery or something? (It's been a while, so some of the details are vague.) After a few books she frees herself and joins the Star Hunters and then goes looking for justice (possibly against her mother, who may have been the one to sell her into slavery). The diadem contains the mental patterns of three other people, including Swardheld and Shadith, who have been trapped in there for decades or even centuries, and provide her aid and advice in her travels. Later in the series (spoilers!) she figures out how to extricate her helpers into physical bodies. Shadith ends up in the body of a teenage girl. And Shadowplay is the first book in her series.

Shadith is on her way to a university education (fitting for her young body, anyway) but in trying to evade a creepy and lecherous security guard at a transfer station, she ends up interrupting a kidnapping in progress and getting dragged along by the also-somewhat-creepy-but-at-least-not-lecherous leader of the kidnappers to a mysterious planet that seems to be in the middle of a period of unrest. It turns out the kidnapper is some sort of high-level snuff artist, who likes to instigate horrible events on innocent planets, film them with his tiny drone cameras, and then sell the footage to certain wealthy and jaded clients. Shadith and her fellow abductees are dropped in to play the roles of avatars of a particular trio of folklore figures from the planetary culture that turn up from time to time and trigger unrest. Luckily, Shadith and/or her current body have psionic abilities to to read and control the thoughts of others…though mostly she can't use it on sentients, so she limits it to animals, where it still frequently comes in handy.

It sounds interesting enough, but I don't think Clayton actually pulls it off. Shadith and her fellow "avatars", a hunter with two large cats and a falcon, and a reptilian fellow with some mind-clouding mental abilities of his own, keep trying to get off the planet without getting involved with the natives…which means that, as a reader, I didn't feel the need to get invested in the on-planet struggles until most of the way through the book. And I had trouble with the character and culture names, which may be a skill issue, but it was like they kept getting introduced in such a way that I didn't realize they'd be important later. Our trio keep escaping and getting recaptured, escaping and getting recaptured, until it feels less like try-fails to advance the plot and more like futile efforts to extricate themselves from it. And then, at the end, Aleytys shows up and rescues them, literally using the phrase "dea ex machina". Okay, it's true that Shadith had tried to contact her earlier and was hoping that she'd show up, but still, it felt like a bit of a cheat. Shadith does do some work to help in her own rescue, but it doesn't feel like enough.

At the end, our snuff-film director escapes, so presumably the rest of the trilogy is Shadith trying to hunt him down. I haven't quite given up on the series yet, but it'll probably be a while before I get around to reading Shadowspeer, the second book. (Hmmm…is that "shadow-speer", or "shadow's peer"? I'd always assume the former, whatever a "speer" was, but now I'm wondering. Echoes of Andrew Offutt's "Shadowspawn"…)

Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education, completed August 12

After the Jo Clayton I wanted something a little newer…but perhaps not an entirely new author. And there was this Naomi Novik book sitting there. I sometimes read books a little slower than other members of my family (which is still faster than most people, I imagine), and my wife and my eldest son at the very least, if not my younger son too, had already read this one. I took a little longer to finish the Temeraire series, which I thought was pretty good if not amazing, and then I decided to go through her two fairy-tale-esque standalones, Uprooted and Spinning Silver, which were both really good. This is the first book in the Scholomance series, which I keep conflating in my head with Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, which I also hadn't read yet, because my mind does that sometimes. (At least I'm pretty sure now that the Locked Tomb series is not written by Alix Harrow, though I have to look up the actual author every time still.)

I suspect that it would be accurate to say that this, a book about teenage wizards learning magic in a big magic school, might be vaguely Harry Potter-inspired. But if so, it's Harry Potter where Hogwarts has no actual professors, only spells that try to provide you with learning material and presumably somehow assess the assignments you submit. Oh, and there are "maleficaria", a.k.a. evil magic beasties, constantly trying to kill you if you let your guard down for even a second…and also you have to fight your way through a horde of them to graduate. Many wizards come from "enclaves", basically gated wizard communities intended to be defensible against maleficaria, though not all do; our protagonist, Galadriel, was raised by her mother in a commune after a "mal" killed her father, and she is apparently the subject of some prophecies that she will become a powerful force for evil. And she does have a talent for using "malia", which, unlike "mana" (which can be gained from a number of activites such as exercise, crocheting and other effortful exertions), is acquired by draining the life-force of other people, and is somewhat frowned upon.

Galadriel is in her junior year at the start of the book, trying her hardest not to give in to the ease of using malia, but she's an outsider in a place where being alone is a good way to get yourself killed by mals. And then New York enclave prodigy Orion Lake, who has the rare talent that he can gain mana by killing mals, bursts into her room to save her from a mal that she was planning to kill anyway, and keeps hanging around her because he's convinced she's going to turn evil. The whole thing annoys her, but she's not above using the perception that she and Orion are dating or something to weasel her way into some highly transactional relationships. Galadriel (or "El" as she prefers people call her) has built up quite a hard shell over the years, though, from a lot of childhood traumas that have taught her she can't rely on other people, particularly enclaves.

The book is a lot of fun, and really didn't make me think of Hogwarts all that much while I was reading; it is too much its own thing. Characters die, but overall the progression is towards hope. Highly looking forward to reading the other two books in the series. (The next book is called The Last Graduate and I'm already speculating as to what that might mean…)

Lois McMaster Bujold: CryoBurn, completed August 16

Almost done the Vorkosigan reread, and into the part that feels more like a slog, because this is probably one of my least favourite books in the series. I mean, most of the book is just meh, and the best part is really the post-denouement twist that hits with the last line of the book proper, and is then dealt with in a short epilogue. After maybe the first few pages Miles rarely feels like he's in jeopardy, and the tension just ratchets down throughout the book.

Probably what she is doing here is an attempt to explore some of the ramifications of cryofreezing the way she did many of the implications of the uterine replicator, so we go to a planet, New Hope a.k.a. Kibou-Daini, where people routinely get themselves frozen if they're ill or old, or feel like they might become ill or old in the future. The worst part of the whole setup is the fact that people who are frozen are allowed to assign a proxy to vote for them (since they're technically not dead), which ends up being the corporation who has custody of their frozen body. And with corporate mergers, those voting blocs have become intensely concentrated. Sure, that's fine. But I just couldn't get too invested in the plot.

Miles is on Kibou-Daini investigating a company that's trying to set up this scheme on Komarr, and through one of those series of coincidences that I don't care for, ends up meeting a runaway boy named Jin whose mother was frozen to stop her blowing the whistle on a particularly egregious corporate failure. The only part which is not an implausible coincidence is that it's a different company than the Komarr one. We get POV from Miles, Jin, and also Roic, and we get guest appearances from Mark, Kareen Koudelka, and Raven Durona. It has its moments, but it's very lightweight.

And then, yeah, there's a painful event at the very end and an epilogue in the form of five drabbles. (I'm not sure whether to give it away here or not, given what a gutpunch it was on first read, but it's also entirely the basis for the plot of Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen, so I won't be able to talk about that book without giving it away… I guess it can wait until I get there, though. Which will, by this point, be next month.)

Tade Thompson: The Rosewater Redemption, completed August 21

As I've mentioned before, I seem to have a harder time finding male authors for my diversity slot than I do female ones. Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy (well, Wormwood Trilogy, technically, but they all have "Rosewater" in the title) is something that would otherwise have been on the bubble, but I've kept going on it because of this particular scarcity, mostly from the library. For whatever reason (perhaps because I'm currently following Tade Thompson on Bluesky) I decided to go with this one, given that the book was available at the library and I requested it with enough lead time for it to come in promptly.

The Wormwood books are set in Nigeria, where a gigantic alien entity named Wormwood (hence the series title) has relocated after its initial appearance in London. It starts healing people who come to it, leading to the formation of a shanty town outside its boundaries called Rosewater (ironic name based on the fact that it stinks) (hence the book titles). The first book, Rosewater, is all from the POV of a man named Kaaro, who has some psychic abilities based on alien biotechnology; the second book, The Rosewater Insurrection, is a multi-POV book about Rosewater's growth as a power and its struggles against the Nigerian government, and Wormwood's real goals. This book also seems to be multi-POV, but one of them gets to be first-person, and is the mysterious "Bicycle Girl" who showed up in earlier books and whose backstory is now delved into.

Sadly, the plot of this one is a bit scattered; with all of the characters from the previous two books, it feels like we're just visiting them in random order, and few of them get much shrift. There is a resolution of sorts, in the end, but it's slow to manifest and frankly I'm not sure if anyone gets "redeemed" per se. As series conclusions go, I've seen worse (cough The Sacred Band cough), but it still doesn't pack the punch of eiher of the first two books.

Garth Nix: Sabriel, completed August 25

I picked this one up next mostly because it came up when my wife was helping me organize my to-read shelf. This is not just a virtual shelf on Goodreads, and it's not a single shelf of books. It's not even a single bookshelf. No, it's two small bookshelves and a overflow shelf. At some point I did just keep the books I was planning to read on the shelves with the rest of them, but at some point, probably when I was transitioning from "read books in a strict sequence" to "pick the next book from a shortlist" mode. Currently it is organized by gender (since that informs my current reading schedule), then more or less by genre, and then by title. But besides the physical shelf I do maintain a Goodreads shelf, and a spreadsheet where I can keep track of things like when the book was acquired and the like. And sometimes they get out of sync, so I was sitting in front of the spreadsheet while my wife was going over the physical shelves. She found some on the shelf that weren't in the spreadsheet, I found some that were in the spreadsheet but not on the shelf, and we reconciled them. But she quibbled with the placement of Sabriel with the adult epic fantasy novels rather than the YA novels, so I decided I'd read it soon and settle the matter to my satisfaction.

I have read Garth Nix before, but mostly his middle-grade ones; I got them for my oldest son, starting with Mister Monday from the "Keys To The Kingdom" series, and he liked them, but I only got up to Sir Thursday before deciding I was tired of them. I had also read A Confusion of Princes, which had an interesting promotional campaign consistent of a Facebook game called "Imperial Galaxy" where you were an officer in a fleet ship. I was actually in Nix's own fleet, though my immediate commander was Arthur Slade; I enjoyed the game, but everyone else I tried to recruit to play it apparently didn't because I ended up with a bunch of inactive players in my fleet as dead weight. (Ah, Facebook games. They were their own particular thing.) Anyway, I had picked up Sabriel at some point, and I thought it was adult fantasy, so I decided to try it next.

But I guess perhaps it is actually young adult; at least, the main character is. The titular character is a girl whose mother died when she was born, and she herself was only saved from death when the mysterious Abhorsen (her father, apparently) showed up and ventured into the land of death to retrieve her. As a result of this experience, she is excessively pale and has a natural talent for necromancy. Oddly, this world is divided into the magic-laden Old Kingdom and the magic-poor Ancelstierre, and Sabriel grows up in a boarding school in a land of cars and guns (though no computers yet that I've seen), but close enough to the border wall that there is still some magic available for her to learn. When, in her Year Six, she receives a message that her father has gone missing, she has to leave school and return to the Old Kingdom to try to rescue him from the land of the dead.

It's a really good book, with some breakneck oh-my-god-please-let-her-rest sequences in it, a talking cat who is more than they seem, a nail-biting finale, intriguing worldbuilding, and barely a word wasted. One scene where she's listening to the people in the next room having sex makes it a little doubtful for YA but who knows, these days. And a little bit of head-hopping in one important scene, but it's probably fine. Apparently there are like five more books in the series? (And here I thought it was just a trilogy…) Apparently there's a reasonable-priced four-volume ebook omnibus available so probably we'll just do that. (Yes, my wife has read it now too, and my son probably will soon.)

Kim Harrison: Every Which Way But Dead, completed August 31

Between the YA-ish fantasy and the upcoming Vorkosigan reread, it seemed like the next book should probably be urban fantasy, with a female author. As I probably mentioned a little while ago when talking about the Faith Hunter series, I have started a lot of these series and have mostly not gotten super invested in any one of them to give it priority over the rest. Maybe the Tobey Daye (Seanan McGuire) and Kate Daniels (Ilona Andrew) are picking up a little, but mostly I can take or leave them. So I ended up just picking the "oldest" one of them which, now that I read a little further in the Faith Hunter series, is Kim Harrison's "Rachel Morgan/The Hollows" series.

Since I do read these books fairly well spaced apart, I do like a good recap game to remind me what happened previously. This book is mostly doing a decent job, though we start right out of the gate with a high-stress situation, Rachel having to confront the demon she made a bad deal with in the previous book to save people's lives and take a bag guy down. But we are quickly reacquainted with her vampire housemate and professional partner Ivy and other recurring characters.

The plot of the book seems to wander a lot, though. ("Every which way", like the title, perhaps?) Dealing with the demon's castoff, getting a contract from a famous musician for concert security, going on a date (with another vampire) which ends badly, meeting some of Ivy's family… She keeps shooting herself in the foot and endangering herself through sheer thoughtless stupidity. By halfway through the book it's not clear where it's going. And by the end, there have been some exciting scenes, but it feels like there's not much of a through-line. One job that Rachel was hired for didn't even happen in the book but was mentioned in the denouement like an afterthought.

I haven't quite given up on the series, but I am not inspired to speed up my reading pace.

So kind of a mixed month, with two great books and a handful of meh ones. Sometimes it do be that way.

I also finished the Dan Gardner Risk book. I quite appreciate what it has to say about how we fail to assess potential risks accurately. I feel more informed for reading it, which is to say that I'm probably in the state of thinking that I assess risks more accurately when I'm actually just as likely to make inaccurate estimates despite all my awareness of logical fallacies. I'd like to see an updated version of the book, or at least a discussion in the same vein, that deals with things like Covid-19, and whether the author still thinks of school shootings as an overblown risk.

I got An Immense World by Ed Yong as a birthday present, but I haven't started yet. Trying to read another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited instead (April 1994), though I spend a lot of time with the Simon Tatham's Puzzles app.

[whimsicalmeerkat]

First and Last Lines

Rules: Go through your last 5 completed works and share the first and last lines without context

I was tagged by @girlwithakiwi who also knows what it’s like to do things instead of sleeping.

1. follow me into the current (Perilous Courts - Tavia Lark, Julien Sandry/Whisper)

First: Julien practically dragged Whisper through the halls of Greenhaven Castle.

Last: “I love you, too.”

2. the kitten is happy (Perilous Courts - Tavia Lark, Julien Sandry/Whisper)

First: Julien stepped up to the rail of the pavilion and watched Whisper scratch Fisk’s belly.

Last: Julien smiled.

3. until the Darkness takes us (Black Jewels - Anne Bishop, Daemon Sadi/Lucivar Yaslana)

First: Lucivar stands at the top of the tower outside SaDiablo Hall in Kaleer and looks at the stars.

Last: They’ve both lost so many people, but they have each other.

4. I saw you standing out (The Hollows - Kim Harrison, Jenks/Matalina)

First: Jenks flies across the garden behind the church to the corner where the thistles are planted.

Last: “OK, love,” he says and lets her lead him inside.

5. I was born by the devil (Black Jewels - Anne Bishop, Daemon Sadi/Lucivar Yaslana)

First: Lucivar is walking down the stairs of his family’s townhouse when the front door opens, and Daemon stumbles through.

Last: “Come on, then,” he says, pulling Lucivar out the door.

~

Low pressure tagging @calenlily, @pterawaters, @bittersweetbark, @dear-massacre, @beawritingbooks and anyone else who wants to play!

[backinblackstaff]

Has anyone read the Hollows series?

I'm rereading it currently and checking out the new books, just thought I'd check in if anyone's read them and enjoyed them. I'm currently about to finish the first new book of the continuation of the series, American Demon. It's good, but I can't help feeling like...maybe Rachel needs a holiday.

[tinx-methinks]

The TV show Blood Ties got me painfully into vampires. After the show ended I ended up reading the original books.

It's about a PI with a degenerative eye condition that means she has no night vision who becomes involved with a vampire who writes historical romance novels when they're both trying to find out who is making demon sacrifices in their city (Toronto!).

Based on these books: Tanya Huff's Blood Books

(Spoilers but the second group of books the Smoke books, follows one of the vampire's other lovers who is a guy who ends up working at a production studio. Huzzah for bisexual vampires that were written before I was born.)

[nikihawkes]

Book Review: Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

Title: Demons of Good and Evil Author: Kim Harrison Series: The Hollows #17 Genre: Urban Fantasy Rating: 4/5 stars The Overview: Rachel Morgan will learn that the price of loyalty is blood… Rachel Morgan, witch-born demon, suspected that protecting the paranormal citizens of Cincinnati as the demon subrosa would be trouble. But it’s rapidly becoming way more trouble than even she could have…

[eponymiad]

Excruciatingly slowly working to build up some fluff in The Hollows tag xoxo 

Word Count: 708 Rated: T Rachel and Trent enter a costume contest...again. At least this time, it's on purpose. Set sometime post-Witch with No Name, probably  

[madam-melon-meow]

All im sayin is Kim Harrison’s The Hollows deserves more love. And nobody is delivering.

people trying to insist a fandom is tiny when it /only/ has a few thousand works on ao3 meanwhile my current fandom is a sixteen book series and has several hundred fewer works than goncharov, a movie that, and i cannot stress this enough, doesn’t even exist

[kaleidolon]

Newt turns up in Rachel's bedroom at 5 in the morning. She has a story to tell. It's not a nice story.

[book--brackets]

Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce (1983-1988)

From now on I'm Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I'll be a knight.

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page. 

But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (2011-present)

Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (2018)

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk--grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh--Miryem's fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. She will face an impossible challenge and, along with two unlikely allies, uncover a secret that threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike.

Bartimaeus by Jonathan Stroud (2003-2005)

Nathaniel is a boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire, and Nathaniel is told his is the "ultimate sacrifice" for a "noble destiny."

If leaving his parents and erasing his past life isn't tough enough, Nathaniel's master, Arthur Underwood, is a cold, condescending, and cruel middle-ranking magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The boy's only saving grace is the master's wife, Martha Underwood, who shows him genuine affection that he rewards with fierce devotion. Nathaniel gets along tolerably well over the years in the Underwood household until the summer before his eleventh birthday. Everything changes when he is publicly humiliated by the ruthless magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his cowardly master who does not defend him.

Nathaniel vows revenge. In a Faustian fever, he devours magical texts and hones his magic skills, all the while trying to appear subservient to his master. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine.

The Hollows by Kim Harrison (2004-present)

All the creatures of the night gather in "the Hollows" of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party . . . and to feed.

Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining—and it's Rachel Morgan's job to keep that world civilized.

A bounty hunter and a witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring 'em back alive, dead . . . or undead.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (2017-2018)

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around--and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was just five years old, he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. 

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? And who is the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams?

Septimus Heap by Angie Sage (2005-2013)

Septimus Heap, the seventh son of the seventh son, disappears the night he is born, pronounced dead by the midwife. That same night, the baby's father, Silas Heap, comes across an abandoned child in the snow--a newborn girl with violet eyes. Who is this mysterious baby girl, and what really happened to the Heaps' beloved son Septimus?

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (1968)

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone…

…so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch—and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction….

Redwall by Brian Jacques (1986-2011)

Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by Cluny the Scourge savage bilge rat warlord and his battle-hardened horde. But the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends combine their courage and strength.

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani (2013-2020)

With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she'll earn top marks at the School for Good and join the ranks of past students like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil.

The two girls soon find their fortunes reversed--Sophie's dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust among handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.

But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are?