Grave Witch (Alex Craft #1)
by Kalayna Price
Introduction
My urban fantasy bookclub selected Grave Witch for our March read, so I picked it up off my unread books shelf (more than a year’s backlog of reading if I don’t buy anything new!) and read it in one day.
Genre /Intended audience
Urban Fantasy (UF) / Adult with some explicit sex and plenty of violence
Narration
First person past tense as told by the main character Alexis Craft
Characters
Alexis (Alex) Craft — a witch and private detective
Casey — Alex’s sister
Detective John Mathews — Alex’s friend on the force
Detective Falin Andrews — new detective who seems to take an instant dislike to Alex
Caleb — Alex’s fae landlord and good friend
Roy Pearson — a ghost who follows Alex asking for help getting justice for his death
Tamara and Holly — Alex’s two female friends
Setting
Nekros City, in an alternate version of our world in which the fae had revealed magic seventy years prior, in the process revealing entire cities and states previously hidden in folded space.
Plot
As a grave witch, Alex Craft has a talent for all things dead, including the ability to see and talk to Death himself. As a private investigator, she is called upon to raise shades of the dead for the living to question. Unfortunately, her business isn’t going well and she is broke. When her sister calls her in on a high profile case involving the murder of an up and coming Humans First politician (Theodore Colman), she takes the case. Things get weird from there. First she raises a Jane Doe shade for the police and it gets out of control, which shouldn’t be possible. She can’t raise Colman, which also shouldn’t be possible. To top off what is shaping up to be the worst week ever, someone takes a shot at her (and would have killed her if Death hadn’t intervened). Alex spends the rest of the book trying to survive and also solve several mysteries that all come together by the end.
About the Author
Kalayna Price has written five books in the Alex Craft series and also a second urban fantasy series. For more information see Goodreads or the author’s website.
My Opinion
I decided to write a review immediately after reading Grave Witch, because it is the sort of novel I’m likely to forget rather quickly. It isn’t a bad book — I enjoyed reading it — but it was not a great book. The author is talented and everything about the story was interesting enough, but it was just like nearly every UF novel I’ve ever read. The male characters, love triangle, and even the bad guy were all standard fare. Alex’s relationship with Detective Falin Andrews was too much like Gin’s relationship with Donovan Caine in Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassin series. Alex’s grave talent is reminiscent of Anita Blake’s reanimation skills (though different enough).
Several story elements aren’t completely explored — particularly the nature of the soul collector Alex calls Death. We see other soul collectors, so is he really ‘Death’ or just one of many soul collectors? It isn’t clear. Hopefully, further entries in the series will settle such issues.
I do like that Alex is not particularly kick-ass aside from her specific gift, and using her grave magic has serious consequences. It was a quick and easy read, and I recommend it to fans who are not burnt out on the genre. In the end, I was interested enough that I might read additional books in the series, but then again, I might not.