This is the first book in The Hollows series, an urban fantasy series where the various Inderlanders (everything from pixies to vampires) were revealed when they proved immune to a pandemic that wiped out a good chunk of humanity years ago. It’s a first person tale told by Rachel Morgan, a witch who has had her fill of working for the magical cops of Inderland Security.

So, she’s off on her own, or at least she would be if she wasn’t joined by two partners, a pixie named Jenks and her old partner Ivy, a living vampire. Being a magical private investigator is not technically illegal, but her bosses at I.S. aren’t the kind to just shake hands and say goodbye. So, in addition to setting up shop and trying to track down her first case, she’s got her old bosses trying to turn her into a grim warning to anyone else foolish enough to follow in her footsteps.

The world was interesting, and her first case was a reasonably good exploration of it. I liked the characters for the most part, though I found the vampire and pixie to be a little too stereotypical. That is, the vampire was a touch too brooding, and the pixie was annoyingly perky and excitable. The story kept things moving, but I thought it was a slow take-off with too much world-building narrative in the early chapters.

Still, it finished strong and left enough open questions to lure me into the next book. It’s evidently quite a long series now, and a friend of mine is quite happy with the later books. So, I guess I’ll be digging into them soon enough.