Er...ok. So this is not going to be a complimentary review, as you've probably already guessed by the rating.

I am a character-driven reader. I don't necessarily have to love a character to bits, but if I can get behind him/her, then I will come along for the ride, and be willing to overlook a lot of things, like faulty plotting. If I don't like the character, well, then I enjoy the book less, and become somewhat cranky. I notice choppy plotting/not-very-good writing.

I am not a plot-driven reader, but sometimes, really good storytelling will keep me interested even when I dislike the characters.

This book failed on both fronts. I wanted to slap Rachel, the main character, almost from the beginning, and was praying someone would shoot her dead and put me out of my misery. I didn't see much likeable/ interesting/ redeemable about her. She was not intelligent - and since every other person was dumber than she was, it made for a rather stupid cast of characters. The secondary characters were also boring and annoying in turns.

Um... the story. It was published in 2004, (I'm guessing) in the infancy of UF. I don't know if it would have been considered cutting edge/excellent in it's time, but now that the genre has taken off, it is just bad prose and bad plotting.

And bad editing/copy-editing. There were some glaring errors I caught several times.

I do not think I will be reading more of the books in this series; it's not for me. I might try other books Kim Harrison has written, but probably later.

I don't recommend this one.