And so it … ends?

Originally The Witch with No Name was to be The Hollows grand finale. And it certainly feels like that. Blowing up the past, shaking up the power structure of not only the demons and elves but also the vampires, saving the world, saving magic itself, and changing everything. It’s one heck of a busy book.

Head up, I stomped along, eyeing the few pedestrians. Slowly my good mood was tarnished. Love died in the shadows, and it shouldn’t cost so much to keep it in the sun. But as Trent would say, anything gotten cheap wouldn’t last, so do what you need to do to be happy and deal with the consequences. That if love was easy, everyone would find it.

The vampires are a big part of this book–dealing with what vampire ‘souls’ are, especially for those that have died their first death. The ’living vampires’ in this series have been cool worldbuilding the whole time. In the end, the solution to that is a neat way to tie up a problem I didn’t even know I had. I really do wonder how long Harrison had been planning that!

But of course, don’t leave out the demons.

Al leaned close, voice dangerous as he whispered, “We don’t forget, Rachel, and it’s not as if it was our ancestors who were betrayed. It was us.”

There is so much more about the very beginning of the demons here–and reminders that they’re very nearly extinct–and have been around a long time.

Oh, and Al is a great second example (after Trent) of us, the readers, coming to know and love the villains of the series.

“Rachel is a pus bucket full of miracles,” the demon added, eyes rolling. “Thank you, Bis. I don’t know these new lines yet.”

He… has done some really terrible things over his thousands of years. But he’s cute with the girls and nice to Rachel, so we’re just supposed to forgive that? He really does seem to have changed. This is a hard one.

I remember a few books back when Rachel called on the witches of San Francisco to ring their bells and work together to help her–and nothing. This time around, it’s the demons she’s calling out to. And I think that’s pretty much where this series has gone. Demons may do some terrible things–but in the end, they’re also just people. Super long lived powerful people, but still people. And people of all stripes can be good–or evil.

I love how much crazy stuff happens in this book. I love that it was set up as a finale, given Harrison the permission to do some crazy things that you normally don’t see that often in long running series. And I do appreciate getting a happy ever after epilogue (see later)

Overall, that’s quite the book. It actually gives a good point where you could end. And a lot of people probably thought that was the end. But I have the benefit of having read these a decade later, and there’s more! We’ll just have to see how in the world Harrison handles that.

Onward!

The ending

So. That ending (spoilers!):

Suddenly we have a time jump decades in the future. A wedding! And it’s not Rachel…

It’s such a mostly happy sort of epilogue to the series. Everyone is still about and happily ever after. It’s a great sort of end to the series–but it’s certainly going to be interesting to see how Harrison deals with this, knowing that she came back to the series years from now/a few years ago.

We shall see!

I do love this scene though:

Jenks’s wings shivered against my neck. I hadn’t even felt him land. “This coming from the demon who let a live Tyrannosaurus rex eat him so he could blow him up from the inside during the last ten minutes of the film?”

Al frowned. “I do my own stunts. It was in the script.”

Which was true. Al had five Oscars to his credit and had produced and directed movies that had earned twice that many. As he had said, Al did his own stunts, and the dinosaur had been real, reengineered from old DNA using sophisticated magic and some of Trent’s more illegal machines. The one they didn’t blow up was on loan to the San Diego Zoo.

One thing that bothered me a bit thought?

All the things that Rachel has done in this series, all the times she has saved the world (worlds!), and it all ends with maybe a baby? Oy.

(But it’s not actually over, not just yet!)