Two Talking Kitty Cats!

Dead Witch Walking - Kim Harrison

One of my guilty pleasures is reading vampire novels - but not the Anne Rice books, but the chick lit Vampire/magic/detective novels genre that is quite popular these days. So it made my day when I finally got a copy of Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison through BookMooch.com.
So I started reading and quickly realized that the plot made no sense. Apparently, the heroine of the story is a witch. She's not human. She has just quit the the I.S. (Interland Security?) which polices all non human entities. It feels like a cross between a private detective agency and the police department. Apparently if you work for this agency, you sign a contract for life, and if you quit, the I.S. can take out a death threat against you (Hence the name Dead Witch Walking). So Rachel decides to take down a big drug runner which in theory would save her from the I.S. death threat. The plot feels like a cross between a PG rated Anita Blake Novel and a Harry Dresdan Novel. Theres a lot of action, but the reasoning behind that action is not sketched out very well, so as a reader, I found myself going back into the book trying to find out why the characters were doing what they did.

The series might have potential, but the world Rachel lives in has so many strange, unnecessary quirks that seemed to be thrown in as an afterthought that the next book would have to have a lot more world building and a set of rules that will actually make sense to a reader.