Thursday, July 7, 2011

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, Book 2)
The second in the Kate Daniels series, this book picks up events shortly after the finish of Magic Bites. A rogue witches coven manages to mess up a ritual and call up the wrong ancient deity, causing mayhem in the city and mixups for Kate. A series of magic flares is also plaguing Atlanta, and the flip-flopping between the dominance of tech and magic keeps Kate on her toes.

While trying to recover some stolen maps for the Pack, Kate ends up rescuing a daughter of one of the coven members, Julie, from some undead water demons. Kate ends up in loco parentis for Julie for the duration of the story, as she investigates the fate of the coven, and battles with the dark forces in play.

Those forces are mainly made up of the Formorians, who are controlled in the same way as vampires by a minion of Morfran - the god summoned when the coven meant to call Morrigan. But Morrigan is hanging around the edges, as well, and her Huntsman leads Kate and the werewolves on a merry chase as he repeatedly steals the maps from them for his mistress.

Eventually things come to a head in a grand battle scene, which doesn't exactly top the epic struggle from the first novel, but at least retains parity.

One of the fun things about the series so far is that Andrews continues to develop the very confusing (to Kate) relationship with Curran, leader of the Pack. Kate is slowly discovering that his interest in her may be a bit more than just wanting to kill her whenever they meet. She also gets to know a couple more supernatural factions in town, the were hyenas and the Oracles of the Covens. It's an interesting transformation that Kate is undergoing, as she moves from being a loner to being surrounded by, if not friends, at least allies.

1 comment:

Beth D. said...

This is one of my favorite ongoing series. The coolest thing to me is that all of these places in Atlanta are usually real, but warped because of the magic/tech waves.