Pale Demon by Kim Harrison
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: The Hollows #9
Publication Date: February 2011
ISBN : 978-0061138065
Page Count: 448

Summary:

Condemned to death for black magic and shunned, Rachel Morgan has three days to somehow get to the annual witches convention in San Francisco and clear her name. If she fails, the only way she can escape death is to live in the demonic ever after . . . for ever after.

Banned from the flight lists, Rachel teams up with elven tycoon Trent Kalamack, headed for the West Coast for his own mysterious business. But Rachel isn’t the only passenger along for the ride. Can a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy in one car survive for over 2,300 miles? And that’s not counting the assassin on their tail.

A fearsome demon walks the sunlight, freed after centuries of torment to slay the innocent and devour souls. But his ultimate prey is Rachel Morgan. While the powerful witch with nerves of steel will do whatever it takes to stay alive, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her.

REVIEW

This is by far the best book of the series to date. And I say that for many reasons, some of which I will get to in a moment, but I'd be a big liar, liar pants on fire if I didn't fess up to loving it mostly because of the amount of Trent there was in it. My enjoyment of any Hollows book is at least partially influenced by that factor, and in this one it was like all my Christmases came at once. Not only does he feature prominently, but the development of his character is absolutely huge. Even if he had to take a number of steps backwards before he could move forwards (The big goober) his progress as a character in his own right and also in how he is seen by other characters, was amazing.

The main plot centres around a road trip (from hell). Rachel needs to get to San Francisco for her brother's wedding, and Trent needs to get to Seattle. He remains, in typical Trent fashion, very tight-lipped about precisely why he needs to get there, and why he needs to go by road and not on his fancy jet, but since Quen won't let him travel without Rachel, and Quen can't go with him because of Ceri, Trent has to ask Rachel for help. I have to admit to getting all excited right from chapter one when Trent turns up on an unsuspecting Rachel in a bikini. You just knew it was going to mean big changes for these two from then on out!

Jenks and Ivy were along for the ride as well and were as wonderful as always. Jenks has plenty of great quote material and it was nice to see him getting on with things after the events of the last book. Ivy has also done some maturing. She has a very honest conversation with Rachel at one point which sort of came out of nowhere but it was a fascinating insight to Ivy's feelings and helped me understand her a lot more.

We also had a few scenes with Pierce. Honestly, I could take or leave his character and I didn't really feel like he added much. And Al! The cutest little demon on the block was there too and we learned more about him and the rest of demon kind too. Seriously it was like one revelation after another. Had Kim been saving them all up for this one book or what?

The whole book had excellent pacing. There was never a dull moment, really. The scenes at Rachel's trial were really well written- very tense and quite shocking as well! Especially what happened just before it began! And the last 30 or so pages were so good I had to read them twice! Obviously I can't say anything about it since it's at the end, but it was absolutely brilliant. It couldn't have been done better. Such amazing story-telling skills. I am flawed.

I have actually just finished reading this for the second time in preparation for A Perfect Blood, and it was just as much fun this time around. I cannot wait to see what happens next and just hope Rachel doesn't regress in any of her forward progress with Trent during the interim.

5 Magic Stars! ★★★★★