What I like in all of my stories, if my own style hasn’t become obvious yet, is for them to be driven by the personality of the character. I also like my characters to be flawed in some way, or at least unable to do everything all the time. Even Doctor Who has his problems, and I like to see Extraordinary characters in Ordinary situations. That’s what I got when I rolled the dice on ‘Dead Witch Walking’.

Let me take a step back and say that I was looking for a good Audio Book for a road trip, so I was willing to take a chance on just about anything outside of the norm. I’m also reading many books right now so it had to be something I didn’t already have in print. No sense in buying an Audio book for something I’ve already picked up a normal book for. I also wanted Unabridged — needless to say, I was getting very specific.

“Dead Witch Walking” seemed to fit. It was Unabridged and was right up the alley for what I wanted with Modern Fantasy (I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff). It takes place in an alternate modern world where humanity was almost destroyed by a tomato. I’m serious, you have to read the book but a tomato almost wiped out mankind and thus pasta would never be the same.

The main character is Rachel Morgan, a witch. Since paranormal types are immune to the tomato virus the events served only to balance out and reveal the paranormals that had been hiding along side humans the entire time. Vampires, Weres, Pixies and their arch rival Faries all exist with Ghosts, Demons, Witches and Warlocks just trying to make a living along side nervous humans. But can you blame them?

Rachel is an awesome character, and not just because she has red hair and the kind of girl-fight that would make her a perfect Slayer Side kick in the Buffy-Verse, but because she’s strong and sexy without being overly sexed. Rachel’s lack of “assets”, frizzy hair and freckles make her seem, almost, vulnerable and more endearing. She finds herself unemployed and living with a vampire who is her total opposite. Ivy exudes sexual energy but I quickly got the sense that there is a soft underbelly to this Vamp Vixen. A crack in the armor that she’s clearly trying to cover up. And then there’s Jenks, the 4″ Pixie who ends up being one of the bolder and most dynamic characters in the story. He constantly acts like someone who forgets he’s so small, which almost makes sense if I imagine a character who’s lived his whole life in a full sized world. In some instances he even comes across as tougher, and I found myself glad he’s not human sized or he I would wonder if he was truly unstoppable.

Like Books before it, I found myself being drawn back to the story to find out what characters were going to do next. I would forget about the main plot in some areas, and there is a heck of a mystery to solve. Sadly the underlying mystery never does get solved, but the point of this book was how the Hunter Becomes the Hunted. Rachel has to survive loosing her job, loosing her apartment, loosing all of her stuff (someone put a curse on all her worldly possessions leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back), and a price on her head welcoming assassination attempts just when I thought she could relax. And yet, even when I knew the threat of death looms over Rachel if she so much as checks the mail I found myself more interested in her reading a book Ivy gave her.

I’m hooked!