The Hollows series by Kim Harrison is quintessential urban fantasy, which is good or bad depending on your tastes. It has all the hallmarks of a society mingling with supernatural witches, werewolves and demons, and follows expected tropes of a private detective, mystery plots, power-hungry villains and messy romances. What it has in somewhat more abundance than other urban fantasy, though, is a lot of size-play, partly because there’s a prominent pixie character, but also because the protagonist dabbles a size-altering or transformation spells.

It’s a long series with minor interaction between pixies and people seen pretty consistently throughout, quite often with Jenks, a four-inch pixie, riding on women’s shoulders or in their handbags, and the main character Rachel, a sassy witch-cum-private eye, or her hot vampire roommate, Ivy, often take swats at him. They make quips about his size, too. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the specifics of size you’ll find (in the books I’ve read so far!):

1. Dead Witch Walking: Jenks flies around the two main women; they try to swat him, he perches on shoulders and on Rachel’s earring. He also hides in her hair, and at one point he’s injured and they both pick him up and carry him. His wife also lands on the main girl’s toes at one point. This book has the added size-shifting of Rachel turning herself into a mink. She’s captured and handled by seemingly giant-sized men, and tries to interact with their female secretary while caged. Ivy carries her in a handbag, but this isn’t really shown.

2. The Good, The Bad and the Undead: there’s much less size-stuff in this one, though Jenks is always around; he hovers about the characters’ heads but that’s about it.
3. Every Which Way But Dead: The pixies move into Rachel’s desk for the winter and are often around the house, leading to more overall interaction. Rachel and Ivy occasionally make a grab at Jenks but he’s too fast, of course. There’s lots more of Jenks sitting on shoulders and riding in Rachel’s handbag, and at one point they have a snowball fight with all the pixie children attacking Rachel. Jenks leaves the house with all his family towards the end, however. There’s a nice new addition to the house as Rachel brings an elven sorceress home – when Jenks teases her she grabs him by the leg, threatening him, but she soon lets him go. As another tenuous moment, worth mentioning given the other size-themes present: at one point Rachel has a couple of gingerbread cookies, and bites off their heads, deliberately choosing one with the limbs in tact.

4. A Fistful of Charms: Things get interesting here as Rachel learns a charm to make small things big or big things small, but in this book it’s only used to make Jenks normal sized. This creates much less pixie interaction; they track down his son and the interaction is mostly between Jenks and him, though Jenks’ son does stand on Rachel’s nose at one point when she’s waking up. It is promising for the future though, that such a spell might resurface.
5. For a Few Demons More: There’s some good interaction with Jenks here; the usual attempted swatting, but also Rachel feels bad for him and keeps saying she wants to hug him. At one point she cups her hand around him to comfort him. He’s knocked unconscious and she picks him up and carries him around. His children, and then he alone, also help braid her hair. At one point we also see a darker side to Rachel, as she gets cursed and makes threats at him, saying she’ll squash him or pull off his wings and eat them like chips.

6. Where Demons Dare (aka The Outlaw Demon Wales): Here’s more of the same with Jenks hovering near the women, with little to recommend it. This felt really weak plot-wise, with a hefty chunk of repetition of themes from earlier in the series. One saving grace was that Rachel started calling her long-term antagonist, Trent, a “mouseburger” because she sees him as a small, pathetic man.
7. White Witch, Black Curse: Size-wise, this book has quite a good bit of content with Jenks as the weather is colder and he has to spend a lot of time hiding in Rachel’s scarf or handbag, and otherwise lands on hands a lot. Otherwise there’s not much to go on (Rachel does imagine biting the heads off FIB gingerbread men when some agents annoy her, for a real stretch), and honestly the stories are getting super bloated and samey at this stage.

Overall, there’s plenty of quite fun casual interaction between small pixies and the women characters of these books. It’s treated lightly, but is nicely described and gives a good feel for what could be possible with these size discrepancies. The books are very light reads which meander in places, so as a bit of popcorn reading they’re enjoyable enjoyable enough, though perhaps made that much more palatable for me due to so much size-play throughout.