Blood Work by Kim Harrison

Overview from Barnes and Noble:
When Ivy met Rachel, the result wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Sparks flew as the living vampire and the stubborn witch learned what it meant to be partners. Now Kim Harrison, the acclaimed author of Pale Demon and Black Magic Sanction, turns back the clock to tell the tale—in an original full-color graphic novel.


Hot-as-hell, tough-as-nails detective Ivy Tamwood has been demoted from homicide down to lowly street-crime detail. As if rousting trolls and policing pixies instead of catching killers wasn’t bad enough, she’s also been saddled with a newbie partner who’s an earth witch. It’s enough to make any living vampire bare her fangs. But when a coven of murderous witches begins preying on werewolves, Rachel Morgan quickly proves she’s a good witch who knows how to be a badass.

Together, Ivy and Rachel hit the mean streets to deal swift justice to the evil element among Cincinnati’s supernatural set. But there’s more to their partnership than they realize—and more blood and black magic in their future than they bargained for.

My thoughts:
This was actually my original splurge book for my vacation, but the hardcover graphic novel was just too pretty to take on the beach with me so it had to wait until I returned for its chance to be read.  I discovered the Rachel Morgan series a few years ago and read through all the ones available in a pretty short period of time.  I have to admit, as I've said in reviews of two or three of the other books, when one of the main characters was killed off I almost stopped reading the series.  I recall I was pregnant at the time and was shocked that he was really dead.  Plenty of characters die, but it was so unexpected to me that I was shocked.  In this book, a prequel to the series, he is still alive and has yet to even meet Rachel, so it was nice to see him but I miss their dynamic.

I saw some complaints about this book online.  Readers who didn't like the graphic novel nature, who felt it didn't really tell a fleshed out story and that it was just an excuse to make more money.  I disagree, I liked that Harrison was telling a brand new story with the same characters instead of retelling or reinacting a current story as a graphic novel.  I am fine with books like that as well, I enjoyed Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter manga books or Diana Gabaldon's Exile, but it was a nice change for the whole story to be new.  I also liked how Ivy got a bigger build up of her character, we get to see just how much her association with Piscary has warped and made her who she is and how much she is unhappy with the way she is.  Ivy is always present in the other stories, but I feel like we as readers got to gain a better understanding of her from this.

Another neat feature was how the sketches Harrison got from the artists were shown along with her comments of approval or of changes that need to make.  I imagine it is hard to get the vision from the author to the illustrator and took a lot of work and perserverence on both sides.  I will be looking forward to the second graphic novel that is in the works.

Details
•Pub. Date: July 2011
•Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
•Format: Hardcover , 176pp
•Series: Rachel Morgan Series
•ISBN-13: 9780345521019
•ISBN: 0345521013

Biography from Barnes and Noble:

Bestselling paranormal fantasy author Kim Harrison went all the way through school with nary a thought of becoming a writer. A biology major in college, she took only the required English courses needed to graduate. So when the writing bug hit her later in life, she found herself at a real disadvantage with grammar, spelling, and other basic weapons in the scribbler's arsenal. However, her love of books was her saving grace. Always a voracious reader, Harrison instinctively recognized the role of plot, pacing, and character development in good storytelling. She set about writing with great enthusiasm and plugged away for the better part of decade, until she was able to bring her skills up to par.

Harrison's debut novel grew out of frustration with a growing pile of rejection notices. In an attempt to get publishers' attention, she set out to craft something deliberately weird and edgy. She conceived a motley cast of vampires, werewolves, pixies, and witches, including a sexy bounty hunter named Rachel Morgan, and threw them together in a short story. Then, her agent introduced her to editor Diana Gill, and together they refined and expanded Harrison's idea into a full length novel.

Published in 2004, Dead Witch Walking became a bestseller, launched a blockbuster series, and catapulted Harrison into a pantheon of paranormal superstars that includes Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Christine Feehan, and Sherrilyn Kenyon. As if to validate her inclusion in these ranks, Harrison's stories have also been included in several bestselling paranormal collections.