varjohaltia | Kim Harrison: Black Magic Sanction

While enjoying a post-Red-Robin stroll in one of the few bookstores still around with some friends, I picked up a hardcover copy of Kim Harrison's "Hollows" series book 8, Black Magic Sanction, as it was being blown out for $6. Like a number of other modern fantasy series, it's not one you can jump into mid-way, the setting, characters and longer story-arcs having been established over the course of several other books.

I wasn't a huge fan of the series when I started to read it. It seemed to be pretty run-of-the-mill, as far as the setting went, and the prose and characters had many things that annoyed me and seemed to suggest the pen of an unedited, or badly edited, novice author. Since friends of mine were reading the series, I got to borrow the books for free for the most part, and in order to participate in discussions it behooved me to know what was up.

A few books into the series it started to dawn on me that the annoying, irrational behaviors of the protagonist and some other characters were no accident, but actually had a purpose behind them, and once understood, gave them a whole new level of depth. Slowly, a lot of other layers of the onion have been peeled away, and I found myself pretty well hooked.

Book 8 introduces no major new characters, but rehashes some old ones, getting almost Dr. Who-esque in its way of digging up events from the first few books and explaining just why certain things happened in them. By now, we're pretty well invested with the core characters, and when one of them suffers the loss of a loved one, it matters. As it happens, it's a bit past the anniversary of Kay's passing, so I was in a somewhat emotional state as is, but not only was I in tears, I had to get tissues to make it past a section of the book. Ms. Harrison certainly took a lot of pains to get that part of the story right, and not gloss over the tragedy in a haphazard manner.

Aside from the emotional gravity, I found the book very good. The pacing wasn't perfect, and the level of her prose remains pretty average, but the annoying overuse of some pet words from earlier books is long gone, and the fae profanities are getting not only more imaginative, but more appropriate and offset the seriousness of events quite well. Overall, much like with Seanan McGuire, Ms. Harrison manages to learn and improve along the way, rather than churning out robowritten novels once the series is established. The very start of the book sets up a tension, and there's a constant threat throughout the story, with the protagonist working to deal with it, and making progress. This was a nice change from the usual feeling in modern/urban fantasy where the protagonists just seem to stumble through events, and in the end everything turns all right. The setting, which originally seemed like something from an 80s era shared world project, has gained a lot more depth, and now feels familiar and believable. In many ways, then, this is beginning to be a remarkably mature storyline, without characters who are "good" or "evil" as much as driven by their own motives, which can be harder to judge. A special mention in the series goes to an original portrayal of elves and a remarkably in-depth development of pixies.

If you have the time and willingness to sit through a couple of ho-hum modern fantasy novels, this part of the series might just be worth it.

Four out of five stars.