Black Magic Sanction (Rachel Morgan, Book 8)

“I wouldn’t miss a Kim Harrison book for anything.”—Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels Black Magic Sanction is the most complex and emotionally charged adventure yet in author Kim Harrison’s New York Times bestselling series featuring bounty hunter-witch Rachel Morgan.  A spellbinding story set once again Cleveland’s vampire, demon, and other supernatural beings-infested Hollows, Black Magic Sanction has the intrepid Rachel trapped in a life-or-death battle against her own kind in a sensational urban fantasy that shows why Kim Harrison deservedly stands in the superstar ranks alongside Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, and Laurell K. Hamilton.

From Publishers Weekly

The eighth bewitching but overly dense Hollows adventure (after 2009's White Witch, Black Curse) updates the travails of Rachel Morgan, delectable magical jack of all trades. Having recently learned that Rachel is a witch-born demon whose children would be demons, a white magic coven is shunning her and accusing her of black magic. They offer her a terrible choice: sterilization or imprisonment in Alcatraz. Trent Kalamack, drug lord and elf in hiding, offers to get the coven off her back, but her double-crossing ex-rat ex-boyfriend, Nick, shows up and lands her in more hot water. As Rachel battles those she thought were on her side, her survival depends on a paranormal cornucopia of elves, demons, vampires, gargoyles, pixies, and even a leprechaun. This thrill ride celebrates the can-do spirit of one of urban fantasy's most charming witches. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The current high tide of flip, hyperactive supernatural fiction has lifted Harrison’s Hollows novels about young, lovely, athletic witch Rachel Morgan onto best-seller lists along with similar series by Kelly Armstrong, Charlaine Harris, and Patricia Briggs. In her eighth outing, Rachel is still learning the ropes as far as her powers go. In the first chapter, she’s nearly seized by a lunatic demon. In the second, she has a blowout in a grocery store with a member of the coven of moral and ethical standards, who tries to take her directly to a judicial meeting concerned with her conduct. The third chapter is a kind of breather. During the rest of the yarn, Rachel bounces or gets bounced from one ouchy captivity or near-captivity situation to another, and by the end, it has been firmly established that she ain’t no ordinary witch; heck, she can hop cross-country in broad daylight! She can also dish it out and take it, verbally as well as physically. Lacking any plot, this, uh, adventure depends on the latter ability, on several other characters’ parts besides Rachel’s, to keep on keepin’ on. If it were filthier than it is (sorry, romance fans, no sex for Rachel), it might be amusing in the manner of early John Waters flicks (Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble). Consider it a for-fans-only volume. --Ray Olson

Charlaine Harris

“I wouldn’t miss a Kim Harrison book for anything.”

From the Back Cover

In New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison's most complex and nuanced adventure yet, bounty hunter and witch Rachel Morgan fights a deadly battle—mind, body, and soul Black Magic SanctionRachel Morgan has fought and hunted vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, and other supernatural dangers as both witch and bounty hunter—and lived to tell the tale. But she's never faced off against her own kind . . . until now. Denounced and shunned for dealing with demons and black magic, her best hope is life imprisonment—at worst, a forced lobotomy and genetic slavery. Only her enemies are strong enough to help her win her freedom, but trust comes hard when it hinges on the unscrupulous tycoon Trent Kalamack, the demon Algaliarept, and an ex-boyfriend turned thief. It takes a witch to catch a witch, but survival bears a heavy price.

About the Author

Kim Harrison is best known as the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Hollows series, but she has written more than urban fantasy and has published more than two dozen books, spanning the gamut from young adult, accelerated-science thriller, and several anthologies and has scripted two original graphic novels set in the Hollows universe. She has also published traditional fantasy under the name Dawn Cook. Kim is currently working on a new Hollows book between other, nonrelated, urban fantasy projects.

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