Waking the Witch-Kelley Armstrong

	Title: Waking the Witch Author: Kelley Armstrong Genre: Urban Fantasy Pages: 309 Publication: Dutton, 2010 Source: Bought Rating:

The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah is a terrifyingly powerful young witch who has never been able to resist the chance to throw her magical weight around. But at 21 she knows she needs to grow up and prove to her guardians, Paige and Lucas, that she can be a responsible member of their supernatural detective agency. So she jumps at the chance to fly solo, investigating the mysterious deaths of three young women in a nearby factory town as a favour to one of the agency’s associates. At first glance, the murders look garden-variety human, but on closer inspection signs point to otherworldly stakes.

Soon Savannah is in over her head. She’s run off the road and nearly killed, haunted by a mystery stalker, and freaked out when the brother of one of the dead women is murdered when he tries to investigate the crime. To complicate things, something weird is happening to her powers. Pitted against shamans, demons, a voodoo-inflected cult and garden-variety goons, Savannah has to fight to ensure her first case isn’t her last. And she also has to ask for help, perhaps the hardest lesson she’s ever had to learn.

Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong is the 11th novel in The Otherworld Series. I knew that it was part of a series, but I was not aware that it was so far into the series. I bought it anyways, thinking that it did not seem it was going to be a problem.

It follows Savannah as she takes on her first paranormal private-eye case. She is taken to the sleepy town of Columbus, Washington she finds that things are more serious than she initially thought. There are various twists and turns revolving around normal events as well as supernatural events. Outside of the supernatural twists, the story is the basic who-dun-it detective novel. Those twists are what really make the story shine. Armstrong’s use of magic is seamless and well executed.

Savannah’s back story was explained well when necessary, but I still found myself getting confused at points. Her relationships with her co-workers as well as her relationship with her mother were what really confused me. The whole ending of the novel revolved around something that happened in another book, which really confused me. If I had known this I would have started with the beginning of the series.

I would recommend this novel for someone who likes these types of novels, but definitely start at the beginning of the series so you can have the entire back story.