I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
Holidays are Hell
by
Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Marjorie M. Liu, Vicki Pettersson
It is part of the The Hollows #5.5, series and is a urban fantasy in Paperback edition that was published by Harper on October 30, 2007 and has 374 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Dates from Hell, Pale Demon, Unbound, Something Deadly This Way Comes, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, Every Which Way But Dead, A Fistful of Charms, For a Few Demons More, The Outlaw Demon Wails, White Witch, Black Curse, Black Magic Sanction, A Perfect Blood, "Pet Shop Boys", "Trouble on Reserve", Into the Woods, Ever After, The Drafter, "Waylaid", The Operator, The Turn: The Hollows Begins with Death, "Sudden Backtrack", A Quick BIte, The Bite Before Christmas, Eternal Lover, Love Bites, Darkness Calls, A Wild Light, In the Dark of Dreams, Huntress, Wild Thing, Within the Flames, Never After, An Apple for the Creature, Mortal Bone, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, "A Dream of Stone & Shadow", Labyrinth of Stars, Dark and Stormy Knights
Four paranormal short stories with Christmas as the theme.
The Stories
Kim Harrison‘s “Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel” is a snapshot into Rachel’s life before she joins Inderland Security and is her first meeting with Gordian Pierce.
You can find this short in Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond — a much better deal as it provides all the current Kim Harrison short stories for The Hollows.
Lynsay Sands‘ “Run, Run, Rudolph” is a cute idea, but Jill is such a dork! She keeps losing her shapeshifting control. She has stupid ideas. She never leaves a message to warn her brother or his wife. I mean, duhhh… Although, the ending was pretty funny.
Marjorie M. Liu‘s “Six” is a combination of secret agent, vampires, and necromancers battling it out for domination in Shanghai. I’d love to find out if this is a series as it has some intriguing possibilities. And we don’t get many urban fantasies based in Asia!
Vicki Pettersson‘s “Harvest” is just after Zoe Archer has given up her superhero abilities to her daughter Joanne to fulfill a prophecy told her by the Seer. But then her newborn granddaughter is kidnapped, and Zoe is determined to get her back.
I’ve had Pettersson’s Signs of the Zodiac on my TBR pile, but I have to wonder if I want to read it. What with all the duh-what moments in this story. Why would a baby need to go into witness protection? Why publish every little detail of what you did on a mission and everything you learned where, I assume, the bad guys can read it? If Zoe investigated Ashlyn’s new adoptive parents so exhaustively, wouldn’t she know what they looked like?
The Cover and Title
The cover is a montage of each story and I can’t tell if the sexy, knife-brandishing Mrs. Santa is walking on a cloud or on snow towards the sunlit collection of headstones with bats flying around them.
The title tells it like it is, Holidays are Hell.
