Review--Black Magic Sanction

Rachel Morgan has fought and hunted vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, and other supernatural dangers as both witch and bounty hunter--and lived to tell the tale. But she's never faced off against her own kind...until now. Denounced and shunned for dealing with demons and black magic, her best hope is life imprisonment--at worst, a forced lobotomy and genetic slavery. Only her enemies are strong enough to help her win her freedom, but trust comes hard when it hinges on the unscrupulous tycoon Trent Kalamack, the demon Algaliarept, and an ex-boyfriend turned thief.

It takes a witch to catch a witch, but survival bears a heavy price.

Just finished Kim Harrison's latest in the Hallow series, Black Magic Sanction, and it was a GREAT read! I love the Hallows series, Rachel is spunky and fun, plus she gets herself into trouble a lot, but with great friends and a great mind, she manages to get herself out of a pickle every time...but as the BOC says, this time she has to face her own kind and dealing with witches isn't easy.

The book opens up with a bang! Well, chapter 2 did, chapter 1 was very interesting, but the BANG comes in chapter 2 when the witches come into contact with Rachel. And hence the story begins and the mayhem begins to take its toil on Rachel and her friends.

All the major characters have returned, unless noted otherwise--you can guess who, and surprise surprise (not really since the BOC states it), Nick returns. Rachel actually trusting Nick? Again? It's still hard to tell which side Nick is really on and whether or not he is lying...again.

Jenks, oh how I love his sense of humor, has a lot to say about good ol' crap-for-brains coming back into Rachel's life. Gotta love that pixie! Jenks makes sure to keep the humor up for Rachel and Co. during this trying novel. For there is a lot of crap Rachel has to deal with concerning the witches wanting to "fix" her.

The council may be Rachel's biggest enemy yet. Trent is one of those strange kinds of enemies that Rachel has worked with before in the past, sometimes they even get along, other times not so much. We even get to see a moment in their past as children where they were almost nice to each other. Al--that's another story, we REALLY see another side to the demon this time and it was quite interesting. He was actually being teacher like and almost decent, as decent as a demon can get.

I don't want to divulge further incase I lead to any spoilers, but yeah, Rachel's help from the BOC is definitely noteworthy and becomes very interesting.

Pierce returns as well. My mind was fuzzy as to his role in White Witch, Black Curse, but with some small recaps I was able to remember the important details. I remember him best from Holidays from Hell. He's back and playing a major role in Rachel's life as well, since he is still under Al's thumb.

While there's lots action--fighting/plotting/etc--, there's also a bit of a romance--won't say more!--, betrayals, heartache and more. Black Magic Sanction had several surprises and not all were pleasant, I'll say.

Kim writes wonderfully in a style that's realistic, you know what Rachel's thinking and you can relate if you were in a similar situation. With so much Hallows history all ready said and done, it's hard to describe the awesomeness of this book to any Hallows newbies. But I highly recommend this series! It has absolutely everything in it character-wise: vampires, witches, werewolves, pixies, fairies, demons, etc! It takes a couple of books to see all of these players, but they are there. The Hallows is one of the best series that has the supernatural and normal citizens coexisting together. True others are good, but the Hallows does it in a way that is superb, because there is a limited contact with the normal world, granted some characters have to interact with the normals every now and then, but it really is like two different worlds colliding!

**DON'T FORGET THERE IS STILL A FEW HOURS LEFT TO ENTER TO WIN A SIGNED COPY OF SHIFT FROM RACHEL VINCENT. SCROLL DOWN FOR DETAILS!