Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Magic Bites & Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

I'm doing another dual review. You know, sometimes it's just so much easier to do it that way. :) Here's a quick, funny story. When Magic Bites first came out, I bought it & promptly forgot all about it. Every time I'd go to the bookstore, I'd see copies of it & think "I need to buy that book." Duh. Anywho, I finally found my copy over the weekend & read it.


Magic Bites & Magic Burns are both about Kate Daniels, a mercenary of sorts whose life is not without it's difficulties. In Magic Bites she's dealing with the death of her mentor by shady & magical means. In her quest to find his killer, she hooks up with shifters. The Alpha of the shifters is a man named Curran. He's a lion (I think...sometimes they like to switch things up on me). Curran is the ultimate Alpha & he likes to play mindgames with Kate. Gotta love mindgames. LOL!

There's magic afoot & Kate finds herself in the midst of an epic battle between bad and badder. *Okay, so I made that up.* Basically in both books she's kicking butt and taking names. She's the basic kick butt heroine seen so often in urban fantasy.

Things I liked about the books:


Curran. He's hot & he's almost feral. Fascinating.

The basic world-building. Different than so many of the same world building that's so prolific in UF.

Kate. She's tough, no-holds-barred and isn't afraid to take matters into her own hands.


What I didn't like about the books:


Kate. In some ways she's just too much. Too strong, to single-minded and too...something. Also doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut.

Her Past. It's hinted at & some things are told, but there's too much left out. That's especially obvious in Magic Burns. Hints are one thing; outright ignoring & expecting us to just figure it out on our own? Annoying.



All in all, these are interesting books. Not my favorite in the UF world, but not bad either. We shall see how I feel when the next one comes out. :)


My Ratings:

Magic Bites-C
Magic Burns-C+

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