So, I technically finished Kim Harrison's The Drafter yesterday, but I'm still napping on and off from vacation, which is why I'm sitting here updating at the start of the weekend.
Harrison's Hollows series was fabulous, but it also got started kind of rough. I found myself having similar issues with The Drafter, as, while really entertaining and readable, there were a few places where another revision for better clarity would have been really welcome.
Anyway, the plot centers around Peri Reed, who works as a spy for the government agency Opti. Peri is fairly well off, driving a snazzy car and wearing really nice clothes. Peri also has the ability to Draft, which basically allows her to rewrite the last 30 seconds or so of history to change the timeline in her favor. As we open, she and her Anchor, Jack, are breaking into an office to get files from a corrupt business. (Anchors are folks who help ground a drafter after a draft... basically helping reconcile two very different timelines and helping drafters recover memories that they lose for various periods after a draft. About 1/3 of the way though, for instance, Peri loses 3 years.)
Anyway, the job goes bad, as someone who isn't supposed to be there confronts Jack and Peri with a list of corrupt Opti agents, all while claiming Peri's name is on the list.
Of course, Peri forgets most of this after drafting to prevent getting shot.
In the mean time, we also meet Silas, who works for the alliance. Silas also wants the list of corrupt agents as a way to bring down Opti once and for all. As the book goes on, we find that he and Peri also have a bit of a history together that she has no recollection of.
The plot is convoluted, but very entertaining, as Peri works with both factions, slowly recovering her old memories on the way to the finale.
The problem I kept running into was all the varying timelines, missing memories, and the fact that people were talking as the draft was going on only to have the timeline restart got very disorienting. It had a tendency to derail the narrative, depending on what's actually going on.
While the ending has all the hallmarks of spinning off into a new series, which might really help iron out some of the issues, it also ends in such a way that one doesn't really know where she;d go next.
As with her previous novels, her supporting characters, like Howard and Taf (two alliance members who help out Peri for part of the book) are probably the best parts of the book as a whole. One wishes they'd have had more to do throughout the course of the book.
Honestly, it's a fun read, but wow, I really wish she'd done one more revision.
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