Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4) by Kalayna Price

Alex Craft is one of two grave witches in Nekros.  Since discovering that she is Fae, Alex has been trying to balance dealing with the drama that comes with it, her overly complicated love life and her business.  When a new drug called glitter hits the seat, Alex is tasked by the Queen, who believes that someone is trying to end her rule to find out the guilty party.  This is made even more difficult because Alex, who is not tied to a court is fading.  As a fae, Alex needs a tie to faerie to survive in the modern world and her unwillingness to pledge herself to any court makes this a big problem. Somehow, Alex has to convince the Queen to give her unaligned status, avoid the marriage that her father set into motion for her and find the person responsible for distributing a very dangerous drug.

Grave Memory, book 3 in this series was published in 2012, and I actually read it in 2013.  That's a long time between books.  While I read our previous review, I have to admit that because this series has so many moving parts, it took me a bit to catch up and get back into Price's world.  It was helpful that in many ways along the way, Price did recaps reminding us of who these characters were to Alex Craft and some of their history.

The story begins when Alex sees a man ride by on a unicorn. Yeah, I would stop and stare if I saw that as well.  It seems that a new drug called Glitter has hit the streets and people are dying because their life essence brings to life their worst nightmares.  Drugs are bad Mmkay.  I could have used a little bit more nuance with this part of the storyline.  There are various reasons people turn to drugs yet none of this was explored.  Essentially, Price puts drug use down to simple youth experimentation and then couples it with the most negative consequences.  The direction this took reminded me very much of those old eighties after school specials. Yes, I know I am dating myself so shut up about it.

Price spent a lot of time on Craft's romantic life.  At present, Alex's boyfriend is Death and this poses a problem because they're not really allowed to be a couple and so consequently he is in and out of her life.  Death cannot be there to talk through Alex's problems or even be a steady shoulder to lean on. In fact, Alex doesn't even know Death's real name or even how long he has been a reaper. Alex has known Death since she was a child and begged him not to take her mother's soul but she doesn't really know him and this bothers her more than she cares to admit. Then there's Fallon, who is sworn to the Queen and therefore cannot be trusted. This doesn't mean that the attraction toward Fallon has dimmed, it just means that Alex has acknowledged that there's no future between them no matter how many times Fallon tries to show his love for her. It's Fallon who jumps into muddy pond to save her life and Fallon who stands between Alex and the Queen whenever he senses that she is danger of losing her head to the monarch. The problem is that if the Queen orders Fallon to kill Alex, he must obey that order.  It seems that there are really no good options when it comes to romance for Alex.

Alex is one of the few disabled protagonists in this genre.  Alex is night blind and is losing her sight because of continued use of her magic to raise shades to solve murders.  Every time Alex uses her powers she is unable to see and at one point actually has to be guided around my Fallon.  My issue with this is that Alex often turns into a super crip.  She supposedly is trying to use her powers less because of a fear of going blind but throughout Grave Visions, Alex constantly uses her powers. Sure, there are reasons for Alex to rely on her power but my issue is that she never tries any other alternatives. Does this sound like someone worried about going blind to you?

Grave Memory (Alex Craft #3) by Kalayna Price

             
Alex Craft returns to pursue a new business venture – she’s always sold her Grave Magic abilities to interested parties but with her deteriorating eye sight which is only going to get worse unless she changes the focus of her work. So, she and Rianna try their hand at being private detectives, putting their full magical skills on the job, not just the ability to speak to shades.

And their first case is a major one. People are dying – committing suicide. Only this suicide seems to be catching, leaving a string of bodies across the city. And Alex may be the only one with the magical skills to figure out what’s happening. Investigating is hampered, however, by her fraying ties with the police – she’s been involved in too many mysterious and closed cases. Worse, when a case of ghouls breaks out in the city, the eyes of the authorities fall on Alex as the state’s only known Grave Witch.

Then there’s the fae. Thanks to her father’s hidden heritage, Alex is becoming a full Sleagh Maith which comes with its own learning curve. The Queen of Winter is also losing patience with Alex’s undeclared status and pressure is mounting on her to finally pick a court.

In all I think this book did an excellent job when viewed in relation to the previous two. In Grave Witch, we’re introduced extremely well to a very large and involved world with multiple concept s. It was, as I said at the time, a very good introduction novel that set us up well. Grave Dance, however, dropped a lot of new concepts, new developments, new world building and new meta on us in a very short period of time. It was a little overwhelming and, at times, a little hard to follow – especially with it only being book two in the series.

Now comes Grave Memory and it did an amazing job of taking all the pieces that had been dropped on us in Grave Dance and put them in a nice, understandable order. It had its own plot to avoid being just about the world building (and that, in turn, carried one of the concepts from a previous book about why ripping holes in the planes is such a very very bad idea) but it also took the chance to explore what had been dropped on us and remind us where the metaplot stood at this point. So we saw Alexis’ relationship with her father, her relationship with her friends – Caleb, Holly, Tamara and Rianna bringing us up to date on them. It reminded us of her faerie holding, defined exactly what her faerie blood meant and what that manes in relation to the courts and – again – what those courts where and what they meant to degree. We got to see where her almost-relationships with Death and Falin stood and what the principle oppositions were. We even got an expansion on the Soul collectors – not a lot, certainly not to reveal all of their secrets by any stretch, but it was another addition of information without adding more to our already very full plate.

I think this book did an excellent job of balancing and grounding the series, explaining the meta rather than advancing it, letting everyone do a quick recap and figure out where all the various players in this game.

The plot itself is also very nicely contained, though is likely to have hooks spilling into future books (not least of which the introduction of Briar). It had a lot of nice twists – the ghouls for one and the chain going back and I was still stuck on spell rather than what it turned out to be – and it was well paced with the information reveal. With a lot of investigations it can be hard to pace the detective work well – you need to not have every answer just fall in their laps, but at the same time if they work for too long without any reward it becomes frustrated and stalled. This book hit the balance. It also dominated, with so much else going on in Alex’s life, it would have been easy to have the plot of the book take a back seat to the actual meta – but it didn’t. We expanded Alex’s meta and sorted everything where it needed to be, but the plot, the saving lives, the finding the truth and the stopping of the bad guy remained the overwhelming primary focus of the story.

Review: Grave Dance by Kalayna Price, Book 2 of the Alex Craft Series

 Since the much publicised events of Grave Witch, life has got much better for Alexis. She has steady work, her name is well known (a mixed blessing) and things are much less desperate than before. But she also has some odd repercussions from it – a ghost sidekick for one, and her newly awakened fae blood means she has to do some more adjustments to help her round the iron-saturated world and dance around the fae codes of obligation and language.

But a quiet life can’t continue as the police call her with a curious case of disembodied feet which even she can’t raise a shade from. Further investigating quickly leads to the fae – which pulls her hip deep into fae politics where the Winter Queen is looking to snatch up the independent fae however she can. Alexis’s new status as feykin puts her more at risk; her new people can make demands of her and have expectations of her should her fae blood become known. Then there’s her developing magic which makes her in high demand among the courts – and the subsequent pressure for her to pick a side.

As if that weren’t enough, the Soul Collectors are also involved, magical glamour monsters are running rampant through the streets and seem to be targeting her, her best friend is caught in the cross fire, she may be in the middle of police politics, one of the fae agents is gunning for her, her old friend and now fae changeling wants her to inherit a castle and her long absent lover, Falin has reappeared with very conflicted loyalties.

It’s complicated to say the least.

I love this world. I really really love it. The fae and their courts are always a favourite of mine. The different magic systems, the Soul Collectors, the difficulties of fae language and the web of obligations around them – it just has so many elements I love

I can also feel that it’s really well built – just the way the different law enforcement agencies with their various acronyms are described makes me sure of it. The different and detailed way magic works, the different planes of existence and, so far, everything being extremely consistent. It’s a rich world, a deep world and a very well put together world. It’s one of those worlds that makes me think that Kalayna Price has books upon books of notes into which she’s poured a lot of effort to make sure her world works.

Grave Witch (The Alex Craft Series #1) Kalayna Price

Alexis Craft is a Grave witch, a witch with powers over the dead and their remains. She’s just entering into a ground breaking case where a shade can be used as a witness in court – which promises a much more steady income, a major concern of hers.

Or it was, that was before people started trying to kill her. And curse her. And kidnap her.  Because there’s another case she’s been dragged into – the murder of the governor. A murder that left magical traces on his body that only she seems able to sense. A murder that may be linked to a series of other brutal murders across the city – also with magical signs that are invisible to even the most sensitive witch, but not her.

With her family closely involved with the governor, she also finds herself being dragged back into her family circles despite a long estrangement – and perhaps they’re even more closely involved than she expects. Between family, a murdered ghosts, a mystery gun man, kidnapping fae and a soul consuming curse, she has a lot of pressure to solve this case and precious little allies: only Death who is acting severely out of character, and a police officer she’s just met and has no idea if she can trust.

The plot was fun, well paced and an actual mystery that was mysterious. There were a couple of times I got a little lost because of the size of the world and the sheer number of side characters and suspects, but I did pick it up again quickly. There was a lot going on but it all added to the character, the world and the story as well as the ongoing mystery that wasn’t revealed until the end of the book when things finally came together. I think the culprit was a little out of left field, I didn’t see it coming but nor do I think anyone could – because he was such a minor character that the reaction was less “HIM?! I never saw that!” so much as “Who is that again?”. But the journey was still interesting and kept me glued just to see Alexis fit into her world and try to take the many many elements of this mystery and bring it together

We have a very large world here, the fae were slowly being reduced as technology reason and disbelief took over – so they decided to reveal themselves to humanity. In the sudden surge of belief, the fae grew back to their old levels of power. Not just the fae – but fae lands were opened again, access to faerie and “folded land” opened up, expanding the Earth. They were joined by witches – the wyrd – who seem to have inherent magical talents and can learn more, seemingly at schools and by organisations. We seem to have different courts of the fae, many many different kinds of fae and a whole raft of political and legal issues arising from the fae and the witches. We have death – actually deaths, soul collectors who only Grave Witches can see, bars that lead to fae realms and a plethora of spells and charms on the market.

It’s rich, it’s diverse, it’s complex and there’s a lot of meat to it. The reference to law and politics suggests there’s a lot of behind the scnees world building and we’re not just looking at word dropping “hey let’s include this,” without any real substance – I think there’s a lot of work gone into making this world rich and internally consistent.