Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews

Drafted to work for the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, mercenary Kate Daniels has more paranormal problems these days than she knows what to do with. And in Atlanta, where magic comes and goes like the tide, that's saying a lot.

But when Kate's werewolf friend Derek is discovered nearly dead, she must confront her greatest challenge yet. As her investigation leads her to the Midnight Games--an invitation-only, no-holds-barred, ultimate preternatural fighting tournament--she and Curran, the Beast Lord, uncover a dark plot that may forever alter the face of Atlanta's shapeshifting community.


Dude...where to begin? This book was the ultimate in insanity...the best kind! It starts out with a bang and continues on from there. You can't ask for more than that. I'd been told by Ms. Andrews that I would be receiving a copy of Magic Strikes from her publisher, but it never showed up. So, today I went and bought a copy. I am so glad I did!

Talk about a great book. I admit, books 1 & 2 were good, but not great IMHO. I had issues with the lack of history and not knowing what exactly was going on with Kate. In Magic Strikes, that's all cleared up nicely. And what a trip!

This book had some of the best one-liners I've read in a long time. Since the book is told from Kate's POV, her dry wit is very, very apparrent. Anyone who's read Ilona's blog will be VERY familiar with the humor, since it is obviously Ilona's own brand. Extremely tongue-in-cheek and cracked my butt up numerous times.

The play between Kate & Curran was downright smokin' this time around. They just kept getting...well, I won't go into detail, but I will say that Kate & Curran 'shippers will be thrilled. :)

As I said at the beginning, the action starts from the first page and doesn't end until the last. There's a lot going on and it gets a smidge confused, but it's a fun confused. A lot of stuff is introduced in this book, specifically a variety of Indian gods and other things. Truthfully, I got really confused with all of this and most of it went over my head, but due to the way it was written, I was okay with that.

Usually when I'm confused by a book, it ends up being a DNF and goes into my donate box, but in the instance of Magic Strikes that didn't happen. 99% of that has to do with Kate. She does something at the end of this book that just blew me away. Self-sacrificing is an understatement (and no, I will not go into any more detail than that). As I said too, more of Kate's history is revealed in this book. We find out why she has to do certain things and we find out why she is the way she is. Let me put it this way, you will NOT believe it, so I won't even try to tell you. You have to read it yourself.

Was the book perfect? No. There were some very strange editing issues w/ some funky word usage that made me have to reread certain passages a couple of times to make sure it made sense. However, there's not that much of it and after going over the areas a second time, it's much clearer.

These books are extremely ambitious for as little pages as they are. 310 pages and there is more action in those pages than some books I've read with 500 or more.

If you're a Kate Daniels fan, I don't think you'd be disappointed. I hadn't reread books 1 & 2, so I was going into this book blind and I was able to follow along fine. I think it's best to have read books 1 & 2, but if you haven't, you could read this one okay.

And Curran? Is now on my DIK list. Whoo-boy!



My Rating: B

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+