Title: Grave Dance
Author: Kalayna Price
Series: Alex Craft, #2
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Roc (Imprint of Penguin)
Date Published: July 5th, 2011
Edition: Paperback
Rating:
After a month spent recovering from a vicious fight with a sorcerer, grave witch Alex Craft is ready to get back to solving murders by raising the dead. With her love life in turmoil thanks to the disappearance of Fae Investigation Bureau agent Falin Andrews and a shocking “L” word confession from Death himself, Alex is eager for the distractions of work. But her new case turns out to be a deadly challenge.
The police hire Alex to consult on a particularly strange investigation in the nature preserve south of Nekros City. The strange part: There are no corpses, only fragments of them. A serial killer is potentially on the loose, and Alex has no way to raise a shade without a body, so she’ll have to rely on the magic of others to find leads. But as she begins investigating, a creature born of the darkest magic comes after her. Someone very powerful wants to make sure the only thing she finds is a dead end—her own.
My Review:
In Alex Craft’s world magic — whether of the Witch or the Faerie variety — is pretty much the normal. But things are starting to get a little weird, even by Alex’s standards. Strange creatures are starting to attack people and the very veil between worlds seems to be coming apart. Now it’s up to Alex (whether she likes it or not) to solve the mystery behind the strange going-ons in order to keep herself and her friends safe.
I liked Grave Dance. Like it’s predecessor, the world Kalayna Price has created with the Alex Craft series is rich and easy to visualize despite being so complex and extraordinary. But unfortunately, the story didn’t seem to take off as quickly as Grave Witch did and so the beginning of the book was a little slow going.
Once the story did gain ground, the book felt like a fascinating play on a mixture between The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. This part of the book I enjoyed tremendously and if the whole book had felt like that it would’ve easily been four or more stars for me.
I loved that PC almost seemed to Alex as Toto was to Dorthy. I don’t know if Price meant to create these parallels, but I saw them all the same and thought it was so much fun!
Despite the story taking a little bit of time to get going, Alex remains a strong lead character and the world within her world is one of the more fascinating urban fantasy worlds I’ve read about. I’m particularly interested in the Faerie world and I’m looking forward to learning more about it as the series progresses.
As for the love interests, I’m honestly a big fan of both of them. Even though more emphasis has been put on Falin so far, Death (as we know him) is a really mysterious and intriguing character who I’m hoping we’ll learn more about in future books. Right now I just want to keep both of them, they’re both totally drool-worthy.
So Alex Craft is a really fun and interesting series. While this book didn’t feel as strong as the first book in the series, some of that could of had to do with my mood at the time I read it. So I’m really looking forward to reading on. Price has created very strong foundations with the first two books and I can only see this series getting better and better.
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