Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Magic Bites is an exciting urban fantasy with a unique premise and detailed world-building, somewhat marred by an unsatisfying twist in the story's central mystery.

I give Ilona Andrews a lot of points for creativity here. In Magic Bites' near-future setting, magic and technology come and go a bit like the weather; when magic is working, tech isn't, and vice versa. The shifts are unpredictable, but it can be assumed there will be several per day. Andrews explores all the aspects of this situation and the ways people find to cope with it (magic-powered light bulbs to back up electric ones, horseback travel, etc.).  I loved the well-thought-out explanation for why telephones occasionally work during a magic phase. Especially haunting was the image of downtown Atlanta, its skyscrapers crumbling a... Read More

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

No sophomore slump here! Ilona Andrews follows — and tops — her debut novel with an excellent sequel, Magic Burns.

We get some more world-building. Andrews explains, in a way that flows smoothly with the story and doesn’t feel like an infodump, the theory as to why the magic and tech have gone wonky in the first place. We also learn about magic flares, which occur roughly every seven years. During these upsurges in magic, powerful and dangerous summonings can be done. As Magic Burns begins, a magic flare has kicked in and Kate finds herself entangled in the mystery of a witch coven who disappeared after getting in over their heads.

Kate is growing as a character as this series progresses. In Magic Burns, she lets a few more people into her heart, and I ... Read More

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

After I finished the first book of Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series I was seriously worried that we were headed down the path to another of the too-powerful-to-be-believable heroines. The characters were interesting and Ms Andrews' idea for bringing magic and technology together was good, but I seriously wondered if our heroine was going to be another Anita Blake who develops new powers every other page.

But, Ilona Andrews gets a big thumb up for letting her heroine get her butt royally kicked several times in Magic Burns.  She’s still a really bratty, smart-mouthed girl who happens to be really, really powerful in magic and other things. But, here’s the great part: there is a good explana... Read More

Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews

I didn't know how much I'd missed Ilona Andrews' writing until I started reading Magic Strikes. Part of it is the prose. It's vivid, it has a great streak of humor running through it, and best of all, it's smooth. The reader is never jolted out of the story by a grammar snafu or an awkward phrase.

Part of it is Andrews' continued use of a wide variety of myths. Andrews is one of the few urban fantasy authors who seem to realize folklore is a huge sandbox. The human imagination has dreamed up all sorts of things that go bump in the night; why stick to just vampires and werewolves? I won't reveal what creatures lurk within Magic Strikes, as that's part of the central mystery, but it's different from anything Andrews has done before.

... Read More

Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews

Ilona Andrews has done a wonderful job of walking that fine line between tough, sassy heroine and ridiculous, overly powerful superwoman. Kate Daniels is a unique character in a genre that is largely populated with carbon copies of the same woman. Kudos to Andrews, who has once again managed to balance the qualities of power and vulnerability to perfection.

Magic Strikes doesn’t pick right up where Magic Burns left off. Time has passed for Kate and Andrews didn't feel compelled to fill in every little detail that happened off-screen. But, events have again conspired to lure Kate into situations where her loyalty to friends and fears of her past come into conflict. That tension is part of what makes these books worth reading.

An underground gladiatorial games of sorts provides the backdrop for the story as new... Read More

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews

Ever since that teaser chapter at the end of On the Edge, we Ilona Andrews fans have been dying to get our hands on Magic Bleeds. Curran stands Kate up, and when she calls the Keep trying to reach him, his people give her a humiliating brush-off. Not knowing why this happened, and what happens next, has had us anxious for months! Well, fellow Andrews fans, this is the book you’ve been waiting for. And the first thing you want to know, I’m sure, is “is it worth the wait?”

In a word, yes!

Kate Daniels is my favorite urban fantasy series, yet between books, I sometimes forget just how much I’m craving this character, this voice. I don’t realize how much I’ve missed it until I can sink into it again. When I reached these lines —

Who the hell would attack the Steel Horse ... Read More

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews

Kate Daniels is a hard-as-they-come heroine with magic, swordsmanship and a very interesting history. Ilona Andrews delivers another wonderful installment with Magic Bleeds. As good as the books have been so far, Andrews takes the elements of action and personal interaction that are at the core of good urban fantasy and uses them artistically to tell another great story.

Kate is special among the glut of urban fantasy heroines because she loses fights, gets hurt, and has not compromised her standards just because she's in love. She is still a bad-ass, but you have to respect her for making tangible sacrifices in order to do what needs to be done.

In Magic Bleeds, Kate tries to balance her obligations to the many interests in Atlanta against her personal desires and we can see how she gets caught wantin... Read More

Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

Kate Daniels has opened her new business, Cutting Edge Investigations, but there’s just one problem: no clients. “If things kept going this way,” she muses, “I would be forced to run up and down the street screaming ‘We kill things for money.’” It’s not that she needs the money, really; it’s more that she wants to be a successful, independent businesswoman rather than just Curran’s consort.

So when a case comes her way, Kate takes it, even though it’s not the sort of mission she’s used to. Elite bodyguards were protecting an inventor of magical objects at a remote cabin in the woods. Someone got past the guards, killed one of them, and absconded with the inventor and his dangerous project. Kate must find out where the man and his device have been taken, especially once she uncovers a terrible truth about the device’s function.

Meanwhile, Kate and Curran are toge... Read More

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

This volume includes the novella Magic Gifts — previously seen as a free download at Ilona Andrews’s website this past Christmas season — and the full-length novel Gunmetal Magic, a spinoff of the KATE DANIELS series starring Kate’s best friend Andrea Nash. Magic Gifts is placed at the end of the book but should actually be read first, and there is chronological overlap between the two.

Magic Gifts is sort of a “monster of the week” episode, in which Kate and Curran try to have a romantic date but end up trying to solve a mysterious death and stop a cursed necklace before it can kill again. Meanwhile, there’s a power struggle in the Mercenary Guild that also needs Kate’s attention. It’s filled with action and funny bickering, and is a short read that’s... Read More

On the Edge by Ilona Andrews

As I started reading On the Edge, my biggest question was, would lightning — or magic — strike twice? Could Ilona Andrews write something just as great as her Kate Daniels series, in a completely different universe? The answer, it turns out, is yes!

The world-building is a little more familiar, but Andrews puts an original spin on it. There’s an Otherworld full of magical beings, called the Weird, and there’s our mundane world, called the Broken. Andrews’ twist is the Edge, a realm that lies between the two. “Edgers” can travel freely among the three worlds, but are second-class citizens in the Weird and the Broken. They often have magical abilities, but these abilities are usually not as strong as those of Weird-dwellers.

The heroine, Rose, is an Edger. As an outcast teenager, she put in years of grueling practice... Read More

On the Edge

I’m a big fan of Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series. In fact, Andrews is one of my favorite urban fantasy authors, so my expectations were high when I picked up On the Edge, and I was not disappointed.

On the Edge is set in a world like ours where magic and our reality are separated by a mixed area called the Edge. Magic works there, but so does technology, so it's an interesting blend and a real no-man's land. (I felt like I was looking into some really rural area where people knew about the outside world, but were not very interested in it.) The Edge is threatened by a force that seeks to steal all the magic, and kill everyone who has magic in the process.

On the Edge features a lot of the usual urban fantasy themes and characters. The main character, Rose Drayton, is super-talented, very pretty, selfless, ... Read More

Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews

William Wolf didn’t get the girl in last year’s On the Edge, but he certainly won over plenty of us readers. In Bayou Moon, the second Edge paranormal romance by the husband-and-wife team that makes up Ilona Andrews, William gets his turn to shine and to meet his match in a scrappy Edge woman.

Cerise Mar has just become de facto head of her wild but tight-knit family after the disappearance of her parents. At first it just looks like the Sheerile clan, the Mars’ sworn enemy, are stirring up trouble again. But Cerise soon learns that a sinister organization called the Hand is behind the kidnappings. William wants revenge on the Hand’s leader for reasons of his own. On a journey through the Mire, a treacherous Edge swamp, William and Cerise’s paths (and schemes) converge.

The trip through the Mire moves a little ... Read More

Fate's Edge by Ilona Andrews

Fate's Edge is the third in the EDGE series by husband-and-wife duo Ilona Andrews. While the EDGE books feature recurring characters and plot threads and can all be categorized as paranormal romance, each book so far has a different "feel." On the Edge was a fairy tale; Bayou Moon, with the dark mad-science secrets at its heart, had something of the Gothic about it. Fate's Edge is a caper story. Sure, the protagonists have some personal demons to face, but for the most part the book is sheer rollicking fun.

The hero is Kaldar Mar, whom we met in Bayou Moon as Cerise's cousin, a gambler and something of a con artist. The heroine is Audrey Callahan, herself an accomplished thief and grifter. She's about to leave behind her lif... Read More