No Greywalker For Me

 

"Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until a two-bit perp's savage assault left her dead for two minutes. When she comes to in the hospital, she sees things that can only be described as weird-shapes emerging from a foggy grey mist, snarling teeth, creatures roaring.

But Harper's not crazy. Her "death" has made her a Greywalker- able to move between the human world and the mysterious cross-over zone where things that go bump in the night exist. And her new gift is about to drag her into that strange new realm-whether she likes it or not."

Whew, chile. What and where do I go from here? Listen, I got about 51 pages into FINALLY reading Kat Richardson's Greywalker before I decided to bail. And I mean my reading spirit was absolutely flooded to the brim with disinterest along this 51-page mark. Despite desiring to read the book for years (and owning it for probably longer), things just didn't work.

So where did it all go wrong for me, personally?

• Harper Blaine is the first-person main protagonist, and had a voice about as gray as the title itself. Some books can have a decent voice but a good premise to work with. Sometimes it's the opposite, but the voice keeps you glued. Here, Ms. Blaine didn't seem to come alive on the page. It's one of those cases where the author sees his or her character's liveliness differently than the reader, for sure. Which is natural, just like the impression of his or her character will not land with all readers. Blaine didn't land with me. I get the hard-boiled outlook, but she wasn't giving me much else. 

• The book led with the trigger moment before even establishing who Harper Blaine was as a person, woman, and character. Her profession as a private investigator was all we had. So not knowing anything about Blaine’s backstory and rise to become a P.I. did not sail the trigger moment when her world goes upside down (literally) after surviving an attack from a client. And a client who left her dead for a few moments until she awoke to this ability to see into the grey world. Jumping off a story with action is a good deal. But I still feel as if the lack of just a bit of backstory, along with a voice vacant of charisma, didn't keep me invested. With those two established quickly before the author sped us to the trigger moment would've helped.

• There was no crime scene nor body to nail the stakes. Harper was retained for a missing person situation and one about a  piece of missing furniture. So about 51 pages in, I asked myself, "where the hell is the body?" For me, I needed a crime scene and a body established. However, I believe the author could have gotten around to that if she had taken Harper to the dwellings of the missing person she was searching for to start energizing the investigative portions of the book. Doing so would have fueled not only my curiosity and imagination as to what actually happened and the promise of what was to come, but it would establish the stakes involved. I believe what the author did instead was put the grey walker situation ahead of the procedural portions. While interesting, doing so, effectively, caused me to look towards something else to read. I wish the author taught Harper and the reader about the grey world as we went.

• Oh, I almost forgot. There was no hint or ascertaining of time in the book that I managed to come across. However, being published in 2006, Harper was sporting an actual pager. For whatever reason, that bugged me. Secondly, she's a private investigator but had some off market, bootleg, brandless dude come and hook up an alarm system in her office after it was broken in to. Afterward, they went to have a steak. For whatever reason, that bugged me as well. I think the word confidence and competency in her abilities was my concern. As well as this sort of narrative shaping Harper to be of the much scrappier, ideal variety of P.I. that I just wasn't buying.

Whelp. That's pretty much it. Unfortunately, in my advancing age, I can only take what I can take.