Dealing with people...

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. - Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962

Grave Witch...

Remember how excited I was to find a series of urban fantasy that I loved, the Ilona Andrews series about Kate Daniels?

Having read all the Kate Daniels novels there are (so far), I looked at a few other novels of that type, wasn't impressed, and moved on to other books.

Today I found another one, and read it all. Grave Witch by Kalayna Price. There's a quote on the cover by Patricia Briggs - not really a good thing for me, because I find Patricia Briggs kind of boring - luckily I didn't notice that before I started reading. And Patricia Briggs says the book is "intriguing and original". Intriguing, absolutely. Original? Well, I thought it was remarkably like the Kate Daniels series. Both books are set in the American south-east in a near-future where magic is overt and the world has made accommodation with it. The protagonist of each book is a magic-wielding female private eye who lives alone in a shabby apartment with a funny-looking dog. In both cases, she becomes romantically involved with a powerful and sexy man whom she sees as a danger to her. In both cases, she's more powerful than we thought she was - or than she thought she was. In both cases, her father is powerful (in different ways) and her identity and her heritage are entwined and important to the story.

Understand, I'm not complaining. I love the book because it's similar to another series I loved. And really, what I love isn't the setting, the plot, or the situation; if you'd have told me what the story was about, I'd probably have decided not to read it. I'm glad I didn't know beforehand, because this is one of the few novels I've encountered with Fae characters that I've really enjoyed. (Shakespeare doesn't count; anyway, that was a play.)

And there are aspects of this book that really did strike me as original: the characterization of Death, for example.

Now I'm eager to read the next novel about Alex Craft, Grave Dance.