Customer Reviews

Greywalker (Greywalker, Book 1)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(36)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Harper Blaine is a private investigator who survived an assault that was severe enough to actually kill her for two minutes. After she was revived and woke up in the hospital, Harper realizes that her life has forever changed. From the assault, Harper now sees a different world/dimension that is a zone between our world and the next. In this space, everything is gray, misty, full of ghosts and monsters, and Harper has no idea how to cope with it. Confused and sick, Harper eventually meets up with Ben and Mara, a couple with connections to the world of the supernatural. Mara, who is a witch, assists Harper with her transition from human to Greywalker. As a Greywalker, Harper becomes almost a magnet for supernatural creatures. The supernatural is naturally attracted to her because they believe she is "one of them" and can assist them with unfulfilled quests and desires. With her connection to the Grey, Harper becomes involved with several clients, which end up becoming connected and intertwined throughout the book.

Greywalker is detective story that uses paranormal aspects to solve the cases. I adored the book as it started out and was fascinated by Harper's transition into a Greywalker. What turned me off about the book was the number of things happening all at the same time - too many villians, too many agendas, too many different species, too many unexplained events. The second half of the book became more and more complicated, with Harper constantly being sucked dry. In fact, the second half of the book I actually got tired of Harper constantly, constantly stating how tired she was, how wrung out, how nauseated, how sick, how weak, how cold - you get the picture. At one point, I wished she would just kill herself. I probably will buy a second book to see if Harper gains some equilibrium with the Grey and actually becomes useful, because the series does show some real promise.

The grey between life and death does feel like an overdone premise lately, but I was hopeful for this new book. I'm still hopeful, and might read the next installment from this author, but I need to get over this one, first.

There is plenty of action, but little in-depth characterization, which seems odd. As is the current trend, this book is written in the first person, so we should know every emotional feeling our heroine has, but we don't. She seems extremely disconnected with the other players. Even the one sexual relationship was a literal "wham-bam" that lacked substance, and came from out of nowhere. She comes home after being nearly killed (again), the next chapter immediately starts with her getting out of bed with a virtual stranger we had met a chapter or two before. Whoa! Hello? It was so completely out of the blue, I actually flipped back a few pages to see where I missed the setup.

Back to the action, which seems to be the only area that has substance. Too much substance. The author definitely doesn't disconnect from the ugly side of things. From the beginning we are thrown into the brutal beating that causes her to (apparently) die for a couple of minutes. You felt every bruise. From this point she gets pummeled and slashed on a pretty regular basis, meets a couple who supposedly understands "The Grey", takes on vampires, evil entities that will destroy the world, gets nauseous (a lot, and describes it constantly), barters her soul, puts her friends in danger... you can't stop reading, it's like watching a train wreck. You know it's bad form to keep ogling and watching the pain of the scene, but you can't seem to walk away.

Three stars because I couldn't put this book down, but to be honest, I'm a little ashamed that I didn't.

The concept of this book was great! Unfortunately the delivery left a lot to be desired. I actually had to force myself to finish the last third of it. All of the magical elements were left exceptionally vague, just a lot of mist and nausea. Now "the Grey" ,a spririt world between worlds, may be a confusing place but it is the authors duty to explain and visually describe in order to pull the reader in, make us understand. The Grey just sounded like a foggy night with a bad burrito in your belly.

The lack of description just continued over into the characters, none of which you'll be pining for at the end. The main character never gave a reason why you should really be rooting for her and care what happens to her personnally.Plus I was just past the middle of the book and thinking, when is the actual plot going to start.

Sorry this wasn't a book for me and I'll pretty much read anything in the fantasy/romance genre.

Private Investigator Harper Blaine is murdered and subsequently dead for two minutes. Revived by doctors, she awakens with the ability to walk within the "grey" - or the plane between this world and the next. This makes her more aware and susceptible to ghosts, vampires... otherworldly beings. Regardless of her new ability, Harper remains bland and uninteresting. As far as I can tell, she's still dead! Emotionally, anyway. Someone murders her and she doesn't even seek justice or revenge. The only tidbit into Harper's personal life the author offers is a pet ferret that has more personality than its owner.

Richardson's pacing and sense of story structure is baffling as well. Nearly an entire chapter is devoted to Harper having an alarm system installed. The love interest, however, gets sparse few paragraphs in separate chapters. In one chapter, whatshisname (gah, I can't even remember) wouldn't even acknowledge Harper because she blew him off, then several chapters later the nooky is implied. Don't bother to backtrack thinking you zoned out on any juicy details. They don't exist. While I appreciate the lack of gratuitous sex, there's nothing wrong with a little sexual tension. I mean, isn't that the point of introducing a romantic interest?

Worst of all, there is no mystery. I was not compelled to turn the pages because I wanted to know what was going on. I forced myself to read the book because I paid for it and hoped the story would improve. It didn't. When the climax surfaced, I didn't experience a series revelations because the author comes to conclusions that don't make any sense. Why does Harper side with one character over another? No explanation, but the author asserts it was part of Blaine's clever scheme to solve the case. Huh.

If you want satisfying urban fantasy with some mystery: Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Jeaniene Frost's Nighthuntress series and spin-offs, Tanya Huff's Blood Books, Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series. Anything but Greywalker. Eeesh. I can't comprehend the above average rating. I don't like to write negative reviews but this has proved to be cathartic.

Harper Blaine is a private investigator who was recently beaten so badly that she died. For two minutes, and then the EMTs brought her back, and after a few weeks recovering, she's getting back into the swing of things.

Except that she has continuing problems with her vision, hearing, and odd smells. As her hallucinations get worse, she seeks out help. After a number of conversations with various helpful people, Harper finally accepts the fact that she brought some of the unknown back with her when she was revived, and her link with that realm is here to stay.

In other words, she is a "greywalker", who can walk between this world and the Grey, which is a transition zone between here and whatever happens to most of us when we die. As a greywalker, she can both affect and be affected by spirits and ghosts that most of us never notice. Also, she becomes a highly desirable pawn for all other sorts of people who would like to access the Grey and its contents on occasion.

Not a bad premise, but the book could have been a lot more than it was.

Harper is SO skeptical that it takes her half of the book to accept something the average reader has figured out by the end of the first couple chapters. She has been through a fairly traumatic experience when all of this weird stuff starts, but after talking with Ben and Mara the first time and hearing some sort of semi-coherent explanation for recent events, and after seeing Albert the ghost, I would think a rational person would listen to what Ben and Mara have to say and start taking a lot of notes. Instead, Harper does a world class job of convincing herself It's Not Really Real, or It's All In Her Head, or It's Just Aftereffects Of The Injury.

Which brings me to the writing style. Yes, first person narrative can be a very dynamic and engaging way to write a novel. But this is not a good example of a fast-paced first person narrative.
- The VERY DETAILED descriptions of encounters with the Grey got so repetitive that I started skipping entire paragraphs because there was no new information and no new descriptions of what she was seeing. Again and again, we got a description of fog with a smell like corpses. Sometimes there would be creatures or ghosts within the fog, but the description of those was pretty fleeting, and it was back to more fog.
- There are a lot of things that could have been done to tighten up the writing, like saying "there was the fog, looking exactly like it had last time" or "after two days, I was getting tired of all this fog, so I went back to see Ben & Mara again because they were starting to make more sense than anything else I could think of". But no, we get multiple pages describing every single encounter with the fog over those two days. All the while the reader wants to scream "you ninny!!! Go back and talk to Ben and Mara about what is going on, IT'S OBVIOUSLY NOT GETTING BETTER ALL ON ITS OWN!"
- In another example, the description of her fight with the man who tried to kill her went on entirely too long and in way too much detail. Yes, it was awful. Yes, it hurt a lot. Yes, she died (for a little while) at the end of it. That whole part could have summarized as "I had been beaten so badly I died for two minutes in an elevator" and the novel would have been just as good, or maybe even better.


If Richardson could tighten up her writing, vary her descriptions a bit more when they ARE necessary, and give her heroine a bit less skepticism and a bit more common sense, this could be an outstanding series.

I do plan to give the second novel a chance, and here's hoping Harper hits the ground running the second time around.

Kat Richardson, GreyWalker, New York, NY. Roc Books, 2006
ISBN 0-451-46107-X) 339 pages

In GreyWalker, Kat Richardson's wonderfully eccentric and fun debut, we are lead down a dark and sometimes comical trail into the world of ghosts, witches and vampires. Kat's tough talking and gun totting heroine Harper Blaine, a female detective with a gift at seeing all things grey has a deadpan sarcastic streak in the spooky.

Grey, the word according to the parameters of this book is best summed up not by Harper but by the very unorthodox linguistics professor/paranormal philosopher Ben Danziger, "Now, if what we perceive is just a state of energy, then it follows that there may be other states we can not perceive because we exist within a different state. Beside our `normal world-our normal energy-there is a parallel or `parallel or `paranormal' world where other energy states dominate and a transition zone where the world states overlap. Like matryoshka dolls, nesting one inside the next. The transition zone is the Grey, and it has its special denizens." Richardson, Kat. GreyWalker. New York, NY: ROC, 2006.

Being that Harper suffered a near fatal assault at the beginning of the book, having said died for 2 minutes. She awoke with a queer ability to see into the supernatural world, hence forth becoming a GreyWalker, one who can walk thru both planes.
Unlike the cliché, where a reader would expect the individual to leap at the chance of having this "gift" and quite open to the idea, Harper is not. Harper Blain's whole perception in life is watching it thru a very basic colour pallet of black and white, excluding grey. The world is a very easily solved problem to the skeptic and Harper is a skeptic, down to the situation where she is pushed face first with a vampire, she still doesn't believe it. Until a confirmation from her pseudo spiritual tutor, Mara the witch then does the truth begin to sink in.

However, the fact the title character Harper is so strictly drawn out, it creates its own cliché a Bogie film noir character without the restrained sex appeal. The character at most was a cartoon of what every 1940's private detective was; the only separation was the gender-Harper was a female. With the concept of a Greywalker, I was surprised how rudimentary and unoriginal she was. Harper could have been exciting and daring, but instead the secondary characters stole the entirely. The vampires here fall into the Anne Rice School of intellectualized immortals except containing none of the yearning or passion. They were in essence similar to Blain's character base caricatures minus one vampire. The vampire in question was an upper-class, college student was refreshing, as was the home making witch, and the tech geek, sadly by the first few chapters I found myself asking, why I could not hear more of their voices rather than Harpers.
Frankly I was bored with her. The book illustrated Kat's ease with simply wording that allowed the reader to push on and with uncomplicated conflicts that made everything very approachable-too approachable. The struggles in this book were mundane, I wanted something that challenged the characters and allowed one to be shocked. There was no shock just a very obvious skeleton; a very a very straight foward introduction,a routine climax and languid conclusion.

However with this subject I could assume a second installment could play down some of Harper's non-developed persona. Or better yet let the witch and the vampire become larger characters in this tome.

Taking this book as what it is, a very light, fluffy read, I recommend it to all who may need something frivolous to pass the time with at air port terminals or long lunches alone.

This book was an excellent read! What a refreshing take on supernatural fiction! This author presented some interesting ideas and made them believable. While the ideas are not new, her take on them and her writing style were clear and well written. I would have liked to see more plot twists, but since the author's focus seemed to be more on character development and character relationships(which is what really made this book great), it would have just bogged down the overall story. It's funny, because one of the main complaints expressed by other readers was that there were too many subplots going on; I have to agree that that is true, but to me it seems believable in that a PI is not just working on one case at a time, but has several cases at once. I do have to agree with the othre big complaint that the main character Harper indulged in tooooooo much denial and was constantly reporting how tired she was. Still, that being said, this book was head and shoulders above many of the other books that are out there in this genre. I am looking forward to seeing many more books from this author in this series!

In Seattle private investigator Harper Blaine expected an apology and a check from her client, but instead he hammered her head with his fists and slammed it against the doorjamb before completing his beating of the sleuth. A few days later Harper awakens in the hospital where Dr, Skelleher informs her she had died for two minutes before they managed to bring her back.

Nothing is the same since the incident as now Harper sees ghosts and other paranormal essences that she cannot classify. Even stranger her clients take a gruesome twist as she has started to have walk-ins from the shadowy realm beyond the mortal plane. She needs professional help and a psychiatrist would cost too much money. So instead she turns to Linguistics Professor Ben "ghost guy" Danziger and his "bewitching" wife Mara to instruct her on supernatural 101, 102, and advanced courses. Life is not the same for this GREYWALKER though she tries by dating a normal antiques expert while she is one bite away from being the vampire king's dessert as she blunders on a case from beyond.

This is an amusing somewhat satirical fantasy mystery starring a delightful female who gaining an on the job education as an almost human sleuth. The story line is fast-paced, but belongs to the heroine who hopes by dating the norms she can keep one foot out of the graveyard. Fans will enjoy the delightfully entertaining detective story that moves back and forth between worlds as the tyro GREYWALKER learns about life, death, and a myriad of grey in-betweens.

Harriet Klausner

I've read many books of this genre or similar -- ie, authors like Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, & Kelley Armstrong to name a few of the more well known. Right now it seems like every few weeks there are a couple of new authors with a first book out on the shelves in the paranormal/alternate reality genre; most of these I've read have turned out to be disappointing. Sorry to drag on, but I wanted to emphasize that it is not a problem with what the author is writing, but the storytelling I felt was not as good as it could be. I felt very frustrated with the heroine's continued resistance to what was happening to her; in spite of repeated scenes where she nearly loses her life due to her refusal to believe or accept in the existence of the "grey" side. When she finally does take some kind of action to protect herself, it has significant consequences on her allies and not in a good way. Again, this seemed to be due to her reluctance to "think" any of the problems out or face them as "real." So, I gave the book a 3 stars due to the extremely resistant protagonist and the difficulty in connecting with such a character as a reader. Maybe it's just me, but I like a main character who doesn't drag their heels, kicking & griping "woe is me, I'm going to pretend nothing is wrong" until the final moment when the ---- hits the fan. The idea behind the story has potential, if the main character spends a lot of time with a counselor learning to deal with what's going on in her life instead of burying her head in the sand.

As others have already stated in their review, Greywalker has an interesting premise and the first half of the book, I really enjoyed reading about Harper Blaine as she starts to understand that her world is as little weird after being dead for a few minutes.

But with that said, the 2nd half of the novel is confusing, at least to me. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it because there were a number of characters who come along in the 2nd half that I really liked and the dialogue is especially good.

I just had trouble keeping track of what was going on. That may be my limitation, but it still seemed like the 2nd half was trying to do too much and felt it lost some focus.

Still, this novel is worth it although I'd recommend to buy at the used price or to check out at the library before committing.

I know that I'll be doing that for the second novel in the series, Poltergeist.