Death and Relaxation by Devon Monk

I've enjoyed some of Monk's earlier work, so I thought I'd give this "new" one a try. The town of Ordinary, Oregon is, of course, filled with various supernatural creatures, living more or less in harmony with humans, but it also is home to vacationing gods, like Odin, Thor and Heimdall. While in town, they are required to set aside their god powers, which is where the Reed family comes in. The Reeds have, for ages, taken care of the transfer of god powers for safekeeping, and/or in the unfortunate event that a temporarily mortal god is killed while in town, they find a new vessel for the power.
At present, the Reed family in Ordinary solely consists of three sisters, all of whom work for the police department, with the eldest, Delaney, serving as chief, as her deceased father. So when Heimdall's body washes up on the beach, she not only has the responsibility to investigate his murder, but must carry the burden of his power until she is able to find the human who is destined to become a god.
Not Monk's best work, but semi-amusing.

Infinity Bell by Devon Monk

Meh.

Matilda and her co-conspirators are being hunted by nearly all the houses, from one end of the continent to the other. Her brother has concluded that the world as they know it is about to come to an end, and they must find their grandmother's diary which will give them the clues they need to travel back in time to the Wings of Mercury event, and re-ring the bell which created the Immortals. I got about  third of the way into this book and realized that, as I suspected by the end of House Immortal, I simply didn't care what happened any more.

Monk has written plenty of better stuff.

House Immortal by Devon Monk

 I'm not sure what to think of this start to a new series. On the one hand, Devon Monk always writes some pretty good fiction. On the other, I didn't really get hooked on any of the characters enough to make me care what happens to them, though some of the ideas Monk explores in this book were just good enough that I finished it, and may pick up the sequel at the library.

On a steampunk-ish future Earth control of all resources has been distributed between twelve Houses (Why does it have to be twelve? Is that a genre specified number?)  Those who do not belong to one of the major 11 houses, who are trying to remain independent are part of House Brown, and are constantly under threat of being wiped out by the other houses.

A couple of centuries before this series begins, there was a group of people who were subjected to some supernatural event called The Wings of Mercury, which killed nearly the entire population, except for twelve "immortals", who seem to be indestructible. After a war in the recent past, when House Brown came into being, the immortals all took service with the houses, bound into essential slavery in exchange for the rest of the houses allowing the rebels of House Brown to survive.

The protagonist in this little tale, Matilda, may turn out to be the thirteenth immortal. She was created, it seems, by her brother, who is a genius in the art of stitching living beings together (there seems to be some overlap with ideas from Monk's other steampunk series). Her father and mother were both killed by House White for illegal medical experimentation, but so far the houses have found her brother useful. At present, however, he is being held captive by Orange in a plot to give the head of Orange immortality. When one of the immortals from House Silver shows up on the scene, badly wounded, it triggers a series of events that will draw Matilda into deeper conflict and entangle her in the inter-House plotting and jostling for power.

One good little exchange of dialog,

"OCD?I"
"Feng Shui."
"Is it contagious?"
"Hardly anyone gets it."

The jury is still out. I'll put the second book on hold at the library and see if it goes anywhere fun.

Stone Cold by Devon Monk

Soul complements Allie and Zayvion are expecting a child, and the "action" begins with Shame and Terric, plus most of those Authority figures we've come to know, attending a baby shower at their home. Monk has done a wily and creative thing here, introducing us to a relatively peaceful environment, making us care about Allie and the baby, which rachets up the tension even more intensely when the inevitable crisis arrives, and Eli Collins and his government thugs begin their program to destroy or enslave all the Soul Complement magic users.

Things get extraordinarily dark very quickly, when Collins appears through his gate (wouldn't you think our heroes would have figured out some way to block that passageway after their experiences in Hell Bent?) and beats Shame and Terric to "the draw" with bullets vs. magic, killing Shame, and kidnapping Terric. Terric is carried off to the evil doctor's secret lair (how cliche, eh?) to be the subject of torture designed to strip him of his magic and to use that magic to power a small army of "suicide bomber" zombies - people who were formerly infected with the tainted magic during the events in Monk's Allie Beckstrom series.

Shame goes to "heaven", where he encounters all of his beloved dead, including his father, his lover Deesa, and his personal "bound" ghost, Eleanor, who is now freed from her chains. He is convinced that he must return to life, such as it is for someone who is Death personified, so that he can rescue Terric and save the world for truth, justice, and the magical way. When he returns to his body, he finds that he has been mostly dead for a week, and to say he's still a bit under the weather would be putting it mildly. Nevertheless, he heads off with Sunny the leader of the Hounds, his former assistant Dash, and his old friend Cody to rescue Sunny's boyfriend, Davy, and his soul complement Terric, whose location they have recently miraculously discovered. One of his first acts upon his return, however, is to re-bind Eleanor's ghost to him when his hunger for life energy sucks most of hers down into the gaping black hole that is his soul.

A battle ensues, with a certain amount of collateral damage, including Sunny, whom Shame drains of life when she gets within his blast radius - and binds her to himself, just like Eleanor. Once again, Collins and his allies manage to escape, though it's Shames avowed goal to kill the man leaving another hundred or so pages to struggle, and the rogue government agent, Krogher, has all of his zombie bombers primed and waiting to destroy all the soul complement pairs, giving his group unrivaled power in the world.

Extraordinarily dark, difficult, and definitely a fitting ending for this short series.

Hell Bent by Devon Monk

 So, it's been a few years since the final novel in the Allie Beckstrom series, and we're switching protagonists to Shame, the Death magic user whose soul complement is Terric, and the pair has been serving as the co-heads of the Authority after magic was neutered by the events in Magic for a Price.  Only soul complement pairs can now "break" magic and make it perform as powerfully as it used to, and most of the Authority members have quietly faded into the woodwork.

But someone has been committing murder by magic, and it becomes Shame and Terric's responsibility to find the culprit, even as they are removed from their position and replaced by a chairman more suited for quiet times. It has been rumored that some shadowy branch of the federal government is trying to figure out how to use soul complements as weapons, and so the known pairs have mostly fled or gone into hiding. Only Allie and Zayvion, Shame and Terric remain in Portland, and stubbornly refuse to leave their home.

I'm not generally enamored of the self-pitying, anti-hero, which Shame appears to be, but his attitude almost approximates self-hatred, or at least hatred of the monster he thinks he has become, constantly fighting the temptation to use Death magic to siphon the life out of everyone and every animate thing he encounters. For the most part, he's coping in the traditional manner - boozing, smoking and avoiding human contact, aside from the ghost, Eleanor, who has haunted him for years now. When a government assassin gets him in her sights, he rapidly finds himself more engaged emotionally than he prefers to be, and she finds ways to get him properly motivated to pursue the killer.

This novel seems like a pretty good setup for a new series, continuing an old idea. Monk always writes an entertaining tale.

Cold Copper by Devon Monk

 When Cedar, Mae, Wil, Miss Dupuis and the Madder brothers arrive in Des Moines in the middle of a blizzard, they find themselves bound by an old promise the brothers made to the grandfather of a priest in that town, and must divert from their purpose of hunting down the Holder to deliver a favor owed. I wonder, however, nearly immediately if Monk is repeating a plot gimmick here from the first book, as it  turns out that chasing down the children who went missing "after the star fell from the sky" is part and parcel of their quest to find the pieces of the ancient weapon, which wreak death and destruction wherever they land. Or, could it be that the nature of the Holder causes these sort of events, using weak young children to power its mischief? The jury is still out on that one.

Rose and Captain Hinks remain in Kansas, and their little bit of romantic paradise is rapidly put through the wringer when she catches the man she loves frequenting the local bordello. I suspect that all is not as it appears here, either, since Hinks is actually a U.S. Marshall, and it is likely that he is playing a role in pursuit of the president's investigation, and simply hasn't let her know, having been single far too long. Rose makes the acquaintance of a very charming fellow, Thomas Wicks, who lures her away to, of all places, a library, and may be able to give Hinks a run for his money in Rose's affections.

Oops, I was wrong about the number of books in this series. Near the end, when Cedar recovers another piece of the Holder, and says he has six left to find, the Madder brothers tell him that they have already found another shard.

We get a few more hints about the Madder brothers, and a new insight into orphan Rose's nature, and Monk plays some fun games with the literality of a binding promise, and see Cedar and Wil's curse lifted from them and born by another for a time (I could have said "by a spell for a spell", but that was just a bit too folksy, eh?).

Another plot device that seems to repeat here is that the chief antagonist in the novel is another powerful man who is bringing modernity to Des Moines, in the form of universal telegraph lines of "cold copper" which will join them with the entire nation, perhaps the world, and who is willing to do whatever it takes, no matter how evil, to accomplish his goals and to gain power for himself, Mayor Vosbrough. Perhaps there's a moral to the story arc of power corrupting, and technology enabling power to  grow more rapidly than is "natural".

Nearly every chapter in this multi-threaded tale ends with a minor cliffhanger, leaving us with the desire to get back to that part of the story quickly, yet we are returned to the solution of an earlier dilemma from another plot thread. Monk is definitely at or near the top of her game these days. Hope she can maintain it for a good long time.

Tin Swift by Devon Monk

 Monk has written a great second novel in her new Age of Steam series. Some time has actually passed since the end of Cold Iron, and the ragged little band consisting of the Madder brothers, Rose, Cedar, Mae, and Wil, the wolf, have been slowly making their way east from Oregon to Kansas. As we pick up the tale, they are crossing Idaho, past Fort Boise on the way to the Bitteroots. Mae is being driven out of her mind by the geas set upon her by the coven where she grew up to return to them, now that her marriage vow is broken by Jed's death. When they stop in the town of Victory to seek supplies, they find that the entire population has been wiped out, and the bodies multilated.

Cedar senses the presence of one of the fragments of the Holder, as well as the scent of their old "friend" Mr. Shunt, who has made it his mission in what passes for his Strange version of life to harass and kill Cedar and his friends. When they trigger a trap left behind by Shunt, the townsfolk reanimate and attack. In the ensuing battle, the Madder brothers stay behind to battle the zombies, allowing Cedar, Wil, Rose and Mae to make their getaway. Not unscathed, however, as when the trap sprung, Rose was infected with a fragment of the Holder which Shunt left behind, and its evil begins to drain her life force. They must get Mae to the Coven, and get Rose the help she needs.

An odd sort of rescue takes place when Captain Hinks, a glim gatherer with a steam airship at his command, shows up on the scene just in time to rescue the quartet from the zombie horde. Hinks is an undercover U.S. Marshal, working for the president, hunting down corruption in the glim trade. He has an archenemy, General Alabaster, a traitor whom he exposed long ago, and who is now allied with Mr. Shunt and dogging the steps of both Hinks and our adventurers. Cedar and company pick up a few new allies as well, and become acquainted with the league of folks who are also on the trail of the Holder, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

We catch a glimpse of the nature of glim,
"Glim, more precious than diamonds or gold, used to power ships on air, water, or land. Used to heal the sick, cure the blights, turn the tide in wars, and make anything and everything stronger and longer lasting. Glim was even rumored to extend a man's life well beyond his years."

We begin to see some hints that although Cedar has always regarded the curse laid on Wil and himself as, well, a curse, the Pawnee gods may have had something else in mind. Cedar and Wil are the only ones who can sense and track the Holder, and they may be destined to save the world, so to speak.

"Cedar's ability to sense the Holder gave him an edge on those others looking for it. Whether his sensitivity to the weapon was a product of the Pawnee curse in his bones, or pure bad luck, he didn't know and didn't care."

"Cedar looked taller, inhuman, like a hunter out of legend, or some kind of warrior of old come to put the land right."

And a little bit of poetry from Monk,

"We all deserve happiness, Rose. Our lives should be filled with it whether the days are dark or sunny. Happiness doesn't beg permission. It just walks across our threshold, sets itself down beside us, and waits for us to notice."

Lots of great action, evil ploys, and even a bit of romance as Cedar and Mae finally admit to their feelings, and other little affairs begin. Since the Holder split in seven pieces at the conclusion of Cold Iron, and were scattered across the country, and Cedar is bound by his promise to the Madders to find them, and given that they find one of the fragments in this book, I'm guessing we have six exciting sequels coming our way.

Dead Iron by Devon Monk

 This new series by Devon Monk has a steep learning curve. It seems to me radically different in setting and tone than her Allie Beckstrom series. We begin in the American West, somewhere between the Blue and Wallowa Mountains (an area quite familiar to me) in the fictional town of Hallelujah, where a mysterious yet flamboyant man, Shard LeFel, is bringing the railroad to town, and the hopes of its residents are pinned on the prosperity it will bring. To their chagrin, should they ever find out, it is actually being built for the purpose of providing a channel for The Strange, supernatural, possibly psychotic, and predatory creatures to feed on the nightmares and fears of helpless humans. The near caricature of the false religion practiced by the townsfolk - all the trappings of Christianity but none of the heart - contrasts oddly with the slightly more noble and sometimes altruistic behavior of the werewolves, witches, zombies and seers in their midst. I'd say that there are good, evil, and in-between folks in this story, but the good is awfully hard to find, and not where you'd expect it.

There's a fun bit of tension in the early part of the novel when the reader, of course, can see that the shapeshifter, Cedar Hunt, who is hunting for a missing child, and the witch, Mae Lindson, who beseeches him to help her find the man who killed her husband Jeb (who like James Bond simply refuses to die quietly (and the villain likes to brag about his plans, too)), actually are aiming for the same target, and we wonder how long it will take before they figure it out.

Cedar is wracked with guilt for having murdered his own brother when he first experiences the change, and by some strange coincidence comes into possession of his dead brother's pocket watch in the early stages of the tale. The Madder Brothers, whom we immediately dislike and file away into the "big stupid bad guy" category, turn out to be a bit more of a complex surprise that we bargained for.

The foundling shop girl, Rose Small, seems like a bit part when we first encounter her when Cedar goes into town for some supplies, but her role in the coming conflict is huge, and she may just be the one character in the story who has her head on straight. She has the uncanny ability to see the truth through illusion, as well as the talents of a "deviser" and ambitions far larger than her surname would imply.

LeFel has a more personal motive in kidnapping the boy, capturing a wolf, and sacrificing a witch; to return to the world from which his brother exiled him three centuries ago, and to obtain vengeance for his exile. If he does not return soon, the mortal world will kill him, who was born immortal. He has a sidekick, Mr. Shunt, who is a Strange of a very strange kind, and whose merciless evil makes him the perfect minion, aside from the minor problem that all of his tasks seem to fail in the end.

A great start, and I hope an indication of a long and prosperous series. I this whole Steampunk genre is still finding its way, as each time I've found something under that label, it's been a new adventure. Heaven help us if the themes ever grow old and stale.

Magic for a Price by Devon Monk

 So, the wells of magic in Portland are poisoned, the city is surrounded by hostile magic users, and the most powerful set of soul complements is in charge of the world magic authority, and wants to destroy or enslave Allie and her friends. Time to rock n roll, eh?

Allie, Zayvion, Terric and Shamus are barely recovered from the last battle, but it's time for them to step up and take on the coming wave of attackers. A conclave of all the concerned parties; magic users, the police and the Hounds, is called, and Zayvion nominates Allie to take charge. She decides that the first and most important thing to do is to clean the contamination from the magic wells, then to delay or stop the incursion of the Seattle magic users who are on their way, and finally to somehow or other defeat Leander and Isabelle.

Allie consults with her father's spirit, which is still possessing her at times, and he tells here that he believes that by filtering the magic through Stone, the gargoyle/magical construct, and then seeding the wells with the result, they can be cleansed. The wells have been sealed for a while now, and must be opened to cleanse them, as well as re-sealed so that the invading magic users can't tap them to attack with, so Allie decides that she and her three friends, with the addition of Dr. Collins, can get the job done, and they head off for the each of the wells, in succession.

I think this is the final book in this series, as things go more or less according to  Allie's plan, though not without pain and struggle along the way. Allie's dad's spirit is finally removed from her body, and she learns about most of the details of her missing past. Magic is clean once more, evil is destroyed, and most of the good guys survive the battles. And, by the way, the moral of this story, like so many others these days, is that you can't go it alone, you have to trust and love your friends.

Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk

It's odd how my first impression of this book, upon reading its final passages last night, was that events were just stalled out. At the risk of giving away some spoilers, first, the magic plague that is killing people in Portland does not yet get cured, second, Allie's inability to use magic without becoming horribly ill is not solved, third, Isabel and Leander remain at large, trying for world domination. So, nothing happens, right?

Wrong.

While Allie and her friends are hiding out from the Authority, which has been taken over by the death magic user (and possible murderer of children) Jingo Jingo, they acquire one powerful ally in Roman, former keeper of the Gates, who trained Zayvion. He undertakes a mission to contact the Overseer (leader of the world's version of the Authority) to let her know what's happening in Portland, and tell her the truth about the plague. They also come up with a plan to take samples of all four types of magic from the wells, and have Dr. Collins (think of Hannibal Lecter with some of his figurative teeth pulled) analyze them to find out what's causing the infection and how to cure it.

They find that Davy, who has been suffering from the plague since its early days, has been changed somehow by Collins, into a being that is corporeal at some times, and ghostly at others, which isn't exactly a cure, but beats dying, perhaps. They are able to finally bring detective Paul Stotts aboard as their ally, and Zayvion and Victor restore some of his memories so that he'll believe what's going on in the city. Allie finds out that Stone, her pet gargoyle, is more important than she thought. Cody gets his memories restored, and his ghost is reunited with his body, giving him vast magical powers once again.

There are a number of other things that happen that would definitely be spoilers, so I won't relate them here. So, while the major plot elements and conflicts aren't resolved, and perhaps even escalate to the next level, lots of smaller events change the playing field quite a bit. Definitely looking forward to Monk's next book.

Magic on the Line by Devon Monk

The seventh in the Allie Beckstrom series, Magic on the Line seems like a transitional novel, part of a longer volume marking the change in leadership of the Authority from the old guard to the young turks, perhaps. After the battle with Leander and Isabelle and their minions at the Life Well, Allie's convalescence is cut short by her interview with Bartholomew Wray, the outsider who has been placed in charge of the Authority after the crisis. Wray and his cronies rub Allie the wrong way from the beginning, seeming to be more interested in a political coverup than actually getting to the bottom of the problem and protecting the public from the evildoers.

At the end of Wray's "investigation", his hand-picked team is primarily put in charge in Portland, and the former leaders are Closed (have their magical memories and abilities wiped), including Shamus' mother, Maeve, plus most of the magic users from Seattle who had come to help out the Portland Authority during the recent magic storm and resulting crises. Zayvion, of course, was forced to Close them, and he goes into a guilt-ridden funk for a time, which Allie has to work through with him.

The Veiled are now infected with a magical plague, and when one is able to escape from the wells where they have been confined, they infect the living with the disease, causing a horrible death among magic users, and merely flu-like symptoms among normals. Allie's friend and fellow Hound, Davy Silvers is bitten and infected by one, and a great deal of the time in this story is spent dealing with his illness, while trying to understand how it is spreading and how it may be stopped.

Allie is still possessed by her dad's ghost, but they seem to have worked their way to an uneasy yet handy alliance - he always seems to come up with some magical tidbit or contact she needs when the going gets rough. Allie, herself, becomes violently ill whenever she works any significant magic, though for some reason she really doesn't do a lot of investigation into why that might be. Stone, the gargoyle, also seems to be stricken with an odd malady, but Allie isn't all that curious about that situation, either. I think Monk was just overwhelmed with all the necessary plot elements to move the story in the direction it's going, and didn't have enough room in the paperback format to deal with all of it in Magic on the Line. The way the book winds things up makes it obvious that resolution on these and other issues will take some time.

Allie and her friends must rebel against the authority of the new Authority in order to save the city from the plague and malicious magic. We've seen this coming for a while now, as the old ways of doing business were getting a bit raveled around the edges. For the preternatural branch of the police to deal with some of the new threats, they're going to need to know more about magic than they've been allowed, and for Allie's Hounds to help her avoid getting killed, she's going to have to clue them in on reality, plus she's going to have to stop keeping secrets from her best friend, Nola, or lose that relationship. Change is in the wind.

Magic on the Hunt by Devon Monk

I had to grab a copy of Magic on the Hunt as soon as it came out, so I could find out what Allie and her allies were up to. The situation in magical Portland is still very unsettled, though the corporate Veiled have been imprisoned, as well as the beast-man Greyson. But it appears that Leander has managed to slip from the land of Death into the mundane world, and his megalomania can't mean anything good is going to happen.

It seems, in this book, that all of the "adult" members of the Authority have their own plots and power plays going on, while only Allie and the younger generation actually have the best interests of Portland and its residents at heart. Allie is still inhabited by the spirit of her dead father, which turns out to be a good thing several times through this installment, beginning when she and Zayvion are attacked at her apartment. Zayvion is knocked unconscious and Allie is immobilized by magic, as Dane, a close ally of Sethra (kidnapped head of the Authority), and his thugs interrogate her. But Dad's magic is somehow able to penetrate those bindings and the bad guys are temporarily driven off.

Throughout the book, Allie, Zayvion, Shamus and Terric repeatedly disobey or ignore orders from on high, and keep going from frying pan to fire in their efforts to stop Leander and find out what's really going on in the war of the wells. Making things more complicated, Allie's best friend Nola shows up in town, dragging Cody along, and she intends to move to the city permanently, so she can be closer to her boyfriend, head of the supernatural task force in the Portland police. Allie tries to protect her from the effects of the war, but Nola's a big girl, and resents Allie's interference.

Nothing really new or surprising develops with Allie and Zayvion's relationship, aside from some magical bits towards the end of the book. There are some good plot surprises that caught me napping, as far as the whole plot/counterplot thing. The only disappointment for me was that the ending seemed to leave us in another unresolved situation, leaving us waiting for the next sequel. I know that Monk has a story to tell and it's going to take a lot more pages to get to the end of it, but maybe just once we could get a longer "super-sized" book for our money.

Magic at the Gate by Devon Monk

There are just some things that just go directly to the pleasure center of the brain, such as that first plunge into the hot tub on a snowy winter evening, or the first gulp of Gatorade after a strenuous workout on the racquetball court. Getting to finally crack the covers on my new copy of Magic at the Gate, the latest in the Allie Beckstrom series, was one of those things.

The story picks up right where Magic on the Storm left us hanging on the edge of the cliff, with Allie stepping through the gate into Death, trying to rescue her lover, Zayvion's soul. Most days, the living can't, well...live...on this side of the gate, but Allie is fortunate in two ways. First, she's accompanied by Stone, her "pet" gargoyle, and by touching him constantly, she can actually breath the air in Death, for a time. Second, her father's spirit lives inside of her head, and he is also able to lend her some of his power to survive on the other side.

Her journey, while strange, is fairly uneventful until she reaches the place where Zayvion's soul is held in chains by Mikhail, a dead magician, while a crowd of the Veiled, other dead magic users, feeds on his energy. There are plots afoot, which her father has been a part of, on this side of the gate, too, as even the dead seem to have an agenda, including a return to power in the land of the living...Portland. Make what you will of that.

Allie is able to bargain with Mikhail to take Z's soul back, but she has to pay a steep price to do so. I kept thinking Monk was going to pull a trick out of ancient mythology, and let Allie lose the soul forever because she looked back at the wrong moment, but tradition was not satisfied. After getting Zayvion's soul back in his body, he still is in a coma, which allows the author some time to let Allie get to know the survivors of the battle during the wild magic storm a bit better, and to begin to work with them to deal with the latest threats to the city.

Dozens of the magic storage disks that her father invented were stolen by the folks who betrayed the Council during the battle, and someone has been using them to give the Veiled an energy source that makes them able to manifest more solidly on this side of the gate, and to work magic here, as well. Gates are opening up all over town, and the remaining good guys are being run ragged trying to close them down before creepy crawlie nasties get through.

Lots of great action, a few good reveals, and plenty of conflicts left to resolve, mysteries to solve. My only gripe is that it was over too soon.

Magic on the Storm by Devon Monk

The fourth book in Monk's Allie Beckstrom series is pretty good, but I'm not certain it was quite as good as the previous novel, Magic in the Shadows. Allie has been training with the magic users of The Authority for a few months now, though we don't get to read about what that training really entails, it's just mentioned in passing here and there. She's been training with Zayvion and perhaps some others in physical self-defense, learning to use swords, knives and other implements of mass destruction. She's also gotten a building rented for her Hounds to use, where they can meet, or stay when they've nowhere else to go.

There's a storm brewing...literally and figuratively. The magic users in the Northwest have become aware that there's a massive wild magic storm brewing, much like the one that cost Allie a big chunk of her memory and some downtime in a coma in the first book, Magic in the Blood. There's also a storm brewing within the Authority, itself, between the factions which have different ideas about how magic should be used and who should control it.

Allie's old enemies, Chase and Greyson, are still out for her blood, and her father's ghost. Greyson has been confined by the Authority. The magic users are trying to figure out how to free him from his half man/half beast state, but Chase can't wait, and when the wild storm causes magic to surge, she breaks him loose. Allie, Zayvion and Shamus try to track Greyson down and either recapture or kill him, but in the middle of a storm, anything that can go Murphy's way, will.

Before you get all excited about running out to buy this one, I gotta tell you it ends in a cliffhanger, to be continued in the next book, Magic at the Gate. I'd hang on till you can read them both straight through, knowing what I know now.

Magic in the Shadows, by Devon Monk

Monk's Allie Beckstrom stories just keep getting better and better. She may be really hitting her stride now. In the third book in this series, Allie has mostly recovered from her last adventure, and she's supposed to begin training in the proper use of her magic with a member of the Authority, Maeve. She also has a date with Zayvion Jones, which one would think would just pass quietly, normally, but it just isn't in the cards for anything to go smoothly where Allie is concerned. Allie is also haunted throughout this novel by the ghost of her father, and she's not quite sure whether his spirit is trapped in her brain somewhere, or if she's merely delusional.

On the way to the restaurant with Zayvion, they get sidetracked when Allie hears someone or something being attacked in an alley. As a result, Allie draws the attention of a sorceror who has been transformed somehow into a monstrous beast, which not only eats flesh, but likes to slurp up magic, too. Dinner at the restaurant goes fairly smoothly, except that as they are leaving Allie can't resist fiddling with the magical chains that bind one of the stone gargoyles out front, and the gargoyle goes missing...for the moment.

Once again, there are multiple plot threads here as Allie juggles responsibilities. She needs to work out her relationship with her father's company and ex-wife. Her friend from Magic to the Bone, Nola, shows up in town to try to take custody of a mentally damaged magic user who was involved in Allie's father's death. She must learn to control her magic so as to pass the Authority's test. Detective Stott needs her to Hound the source of some nasty blood magic. One of the Hounds, Danny, needs her help to rescue his girlfriend, a fellow Hound, from her involvement with some nasty bad guys, and the rest of the Hounds have become her responsibility with the death of Pike.

We begin to see Allie grow up a bit in this book. She has to learn to trust her friends more, take advice from people who care about her, and absorb a lot of information about the true history of magic, and her place in its community, in a big hurry. Plenty of action here, and once again as Allie solves some of her problems, she gets a whole new bag to deal with.


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Magic in the Blood, by Devon Monk

One of the things I like about this book, the second in the Allie Beckstrom series by Monk, is that it very closely reflects something that I've noticed is true about life. If you have a set of problems or challenges, and you begin to work your way through them, you can probably overcome or eliminate a certain subset of those problems, but in the meantime, some other ones will come along, and you'll end up, in any given short time period, with a new set of problems, consisting of a few of the old, plus a few of the new, with another subset of both new and old problems solved. At least, that's how it appears to me, most days.

So Allie begins this book with some old problems, such as her memory loss from overuse of magic, the ambiguous nature of her relationship with Zayvion, getting settled in a new apartment after the old one was trashed in Magic to the Bone, figuring out where she fits in the business empire her father created and willed her a controlling interest in, meeting with the police to clear up some details surrounding her last case, deciding what type of relationship she may have with her father's widowed fifth wife, and so forth.

And then we have the new problems. One of them is actually an old problem which resurfaces, when a criminal named Trager, who Allie testified against to put away in prison for thirty years, is released early. He corners her on a bus, and threatens her life if she doesn't bring him a man named Pike, a fellow Hound who was also instrumental in convicting Trager. He also works blood magic on her which connects and binds her to him, so he can summon her whenever he wants.

Allie also has an encounter of the strange kind with her father's ghost, who warns her about mystical things which are happening in the city. She also begins to encounter some other, more malicious, ghosts, which show up whenever she's working magic and "eat" her magical energy.

At her meeting with the police, Stott, the head of a somewhat secret special department within the police force which deals strictly with magical crimes recruits her to help him solve the mystery of the abductions of several young girls. Her old Hound friend, Pike, recruits her to help him lead The Pack, a loosely bound group of fellow Hounds who try to provide each other with backup and support.

Despite her challenges, however, Allie begins to rethink her lone wolf stance, and to realize that she has some friends and allies, which may perhaps counter the opponents that just keep cropping up. She risks becoming a pawn in a political and magical struggle, and must learn some new coping skills quickly to survive the coming battles. This second book in the series is, I think, an improvement on the first, and I can only hope that the sequels continue to build.

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Magic to the Bone, by Devon Monk

Magic to the Bone is the debut novel in an urban fantasy series by Devon Monk. The heroine, Allie Beckstrom, lives in a world where magic has been harnessed and controlled for use in many ways in which electricity is used to power our lives. Although it's not explicity stated, it seems that magic tends to pool in places where many people congregate, like the big cities, and there are "dead zones" in less populated areas. Most of the action in this novel takes place in Seattle, but Allie does get away a couple of times to her friend Nola's farm near Bend, Oregon, where the magic is thin, at best.


Allie is the daughter of a powerful businessman who has made his fortune in the technology that harnesses the magic for everyday use. She's also a Hound - a person who has the talent to track magical effects back to their originator, which comes in handy when someone misuses magic. When an acquaintance of hers is attacked by magical means, she traces the signature of the magic back to her father, who of course denies any involvement. The next day, her father is murdered by magic, which a number of other Hounds track back to Allie, and the mystery begins.

This book is a little confusing. It jumps right in, and explanations of the fantasy world, its history, and Allie's place in it seem to fall a little haphazardly amongst the events of the novel. To further add to the confusion, one of the prices Allie pays for using her own magic is amnesia, which she attempts to control by writing important things down in a notebook. But, when things get hot and heavy - in the plot and in her personal life - she forgets to write them down, and it causes some odd situations.

For example, her memories of her college days studying magic are pretty sparse, and she believes that she really wasn't very good at learning how to do complex magic. But her friend, Nola, has a totally different slant on those days. Incidentally, one of the things Allie has apparently forgotten is how she came to know Nola, or at least Ms. Monk has failed to inform the reader in this book. Nola mentions in passing that Allie was better at magic than her memories indicate, but it's left as a throwaway comment of sorts, and never thoroughly explored.

Allie seems to have a problem with impulsive behavior where romantic relationships are concerned. In the course of the story, she begins a new one with Zayvion, a rather mysterious fellow who her father hired to follow her around (we don't ever find out why), and who had a previous business relationship with Allie's stepmother, and who may or may not be part of a super secret group of magic policemen. This new love affair yoyos through most of the story, and might continue as the series does.

Interesting premise, interesting characters, and plenty of potential for further adventures. There are several more books in the series already published, which I intend, cautiously, to read.

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