Magic Shifts by Ilona Andrews

It's rather stunning what happens when you pick up a book written by true craftspersons. I usually end up staying awake past my bedtime, devouring it eagerly, until reason or sheer inability to keep my eyes open forces me to close. This was my experience with Magic Shifts, which I managed to pick up the same week it hit Amazon.

Kate and Curran have left the pack, in order to save Atlanta from death and destruction wielded by her father, Roland. She has acquired a magic bond to the land and its inhabitants that she hasn't even begun to figure out yet, which may make ongoing episodes interesting as she comes into her powers. They have formed their own security and investigation business, Cutting Edge, and moved into what passes for suburbia in post-Shift Georgia.

When an old friend from the pack, Eduardo (a were-buffalo) disappears during what should have been a routine job for the Mercenary Guild, Kate and Curran hunt for him, and stumble into a really nasty mess.  A powerful, vindictive magical being has come to town, and is taking control of humans and turning them into monsters.

The plot thickens when Kate's father, Roland, plays the devoted paternal type, rather than the psychopathic megalomaniac, and invites her and Curran to dinner to quiz them about their wedding plans.

Kate and Company seem to flail their way from one situation to another, dealing with the new and unexpected adversary, spending time with "Dad", navigating politics with the Pack they have left behind, and taking on a new challenge, reforming the Guild. But at the tail end of the book, Curran actually puts together  plan to confront the monsters which works, in far less pages than it should have. Did we run up against a word count limit?

Good story, lots of fun, and a few "in" references for old geeks.

Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews

 The action ramps up rapidly in this book. The Beast Lord Curran leaves town to visit with a potential ally out in the deep woods north of Atlanta, while leaving the Consort Kate to deal with the Conclave between The People and The Pack. When Kate, with her complement of badass bodyguards arrives, they are somewhat surprised by the arrival of Hugh D'Ambray, Roland's henchman, at the conference. D'Ambray produces evidence that the Pack is guilty of murder of one of the top Masters of the People, and things go crazy. The Pack delegation is attacked by vampires, and they flee under fire back to their Stronghold, fighting all the way.

The scent and fur evidence on the murder victim indicates that it was indeed a Pack member who committed the murder, so Kate and her allies must try to find the culprit before war breaks out. They try to sneak into the People's territory to the bordello where the murder took place, and end up fighting a long running battle all the way in and out again, though they do discover the identity of the murderer. When D'Ambray and the People arrive a day or two later to demand the murderer be turned over, he is frustrated when Kate turns the murderer over to an incorruptible county sheriff instead of to Hugh or his pet police force.

Betrayal from within the Pack, however, ends up with Kate teleported to an inescapable prison far away, where D'Ambray intends to keep her until she consents to ally with him in Roland's service. When Curran finally arrives to rescue her, the next several chapters read like the description of one of the best FPS games of all time, and the action continues to get more intense until the last couple chapters, which are curiously anticlimactic, in my opinion. It will be interesting to see where Andrews goes with this new plot twist.

Slam-bang, thank you gang, action!

Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews

Kate and Curran's pack, as well as the rest of the lycanthropes in the world, must deal with the hazard of its children going "loup", losing control of their shapeshifting and becoming little more than ravening monsters. Some of them do it at birth, while others face the crisis in adolescence, and it is heartbreaking for the parents and family to watch a child being put down for the safety of the pack. There is, however, a cure called panacea (how appropriate), a chemical and magical concoction that cures "loupism". The formula is secret, and the compound expensive and difficult to obtain from those who manufacture it. In Magic Rises, Kate and Curran and some of the best and brightest of the pack journey to the Carpathians in Europe for the opportunity to earn two barrels of panacea.

How much of this story is about advancing the overall plot arc and how much is about exploring more of the world than that portion of it which we have seen in the earlier Kate Daniels books is up for grabs, but we get the opportunity to see Kate & Co. encounter sea monsters and were-dolphins, so it can't be all bad, right?

It turns out that the entire trip is the result of a ruse designed by Roland's warlord, Hugh d'Ambray, in order to bring Kate to Europe, so he can implement his own agenda. Kate and her pack spend two thirds of the novel trying to discover his game plan.

There appear to be some events in this novel which are definitely setting up Kate's eventual rumble with Daddy. First, Kate's soft heartedness rescues a man whom Hugh has hung in a cage to die slowly, and I surmise that he may be key to providing Kate with access to books of magic which will allow her to learn more words of power sometime in the near future. Second, Kate encounters an ally overseas who is actually more powerful than Roland, though the power may be geographically localized - can't hurt to have powerful friends, can it? Third, Kate stumbles into the method for creating the blood armor that we recall from her earlier conflict with her aunt, Erra. Definitely comes in handy.

Kate also may have come to some emotional revelations in Magic Rises. I think she and Curran fully realize their love for and commmitment to one another, and both of them vow not to run away from that commitment when the final battle with Roland takes place. She also begins to understand, through some key conversations with pack members, that despite her "humanity" she is truly part of the pack and will be defended by them to the end. Contrast this with what is likely in Roland's case; that he is served only by those who fear him.

Transitional story? Perhaps. We'll need to see the next Kate Daniels book to be sure.

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

So, this novel is a move to the POV of a secondary character in the Kate Daniels universe, Andrea, Kate's best friend, who is a former Knight of the Order, and a beastkin, often looked down upon by "normal" weres and plain vanilla humans. She is a partner in Kate's private investigations business, and gets the chance dropped in her lap to have her own adventure.

True to form with this series, an old god from a forgotten pantheon rears its ugly head, trying to gain power in the new world after the Change. This time around it's an Egyptian serpent god, and Andrea and her friends must ally with its enemy, another jackal-headed former god Anapa, or Anubis.  We get to know Roman, the Volhv (priest) of the Russian mythos gods, a bit better in this novel, which is fun. An evil priest, but really a nice guy, ya know?

Andrea is also having a relationship crisis, as she has been estranged from her lover, Raphael, who is alpha of the were hyena pack, the boudas. It was outside of her control, as she was arrested and interrogated by the Order when she revealed her furry nature, and she didn't dare to involve him in her troubles at that point - she left her best friend, Kate, ignorant of her situation, too, after all. There's some pretty good dialogue, and of course you know at some point they'll quit yelling at each other and have wild were-creature sex, after all.

The problem I had with this story is that I really couldn't tell, aside from some of the background, situational information shared about Andrea vs. Kate, any real difference between them, as far as the story line was concerned. Kate attacks and kills all the bad guys with magic; Andrea uses guns and bows and swords. They both have bad attitudes and trust issues with other people in their lives. They're both pair-bonded with a leader of a were pack. Neither has any respect for authority. Maybe I'm missing the subtleties, but there's not a lot to differentiate whether you're reading a Kate adventure or an Andi adventure. Both good mind candy to while away an hour or two, but...

One fun passage:

"Unlike several other Scandinavian organizations, the Norse Heritage wasn't interested in the preservation of Scandinavian culture. They were interested in perpetuating the Viking myth: they wore furs, braided their hair, waved around oversized weapons, started fights with wild abandon, and generally acted in a manner appropriate to people embracing the spirit of a pirating and pillaging barbarian horde. They took in anyone and everyone, regardless of ancestry and criminal history, as long as they demonstrated the 'Viking Spirit,' which apparently amounted to liking violent brawls and drinking lots and lots of beer."

Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

One of the things I like about the Kate Daniels series is that Andrews likes to weave old and forgotten mythologies into the story. In the last book, Magic Bleeds, she used Babylonian references, and in Magic Slays, we encounter some figures from Russian folklore, like Chernebog and Baba Yaga. Just a nice reminder for me of some of the stories I used to read, in Bullfinch's and other sources (For some reason, the title "Albanian Wonder Tales" comes to mind).

Kate's fledgling PI agency is definitely not doing well when she gets a visit from a
member of the Red Guard who offers her a job. Kate can't very well turn it down without having to go to her mate, Curran, for another loan from the Pack to keep things afloat, so against her better judgement - does she have any better judgement? - she takes the case. Her old friend from the Order, Andrea, who disappeared for a long span after she lost control of her were side during the battle with Erra in Magic Bleeds, is back on the scene, and Kate brings her on board the agency to help out. Andrea was thrown out of the Order for not being fully human, broke up with Rafael the bouda, and really has nowhere else constructive to go anyway, so she agrees to help.

It turns out that a squad of the Red Guard were supposed to guard an inventor, Kamen,
while he worked in secret on a device that sucks the magic out of a given geographical
area. The net effect is that all of the humans and other beings that rely on magic to
survive when tech is "down" will die immediately. In a city the size of Atlanta, this would be a major catastrophe, as well as being a bit of inconvenience to Kate and her friends.

Kate discovers some new relatives, and gets back a little bit of her forgotten past. She manages not to do anything too stupid in her relationship with Curran. In the end, an unprecedented gathering of all of the disparate magical groups in Atlanta is required
to solve the issue.

A new group that Kate becomes aware of in this book is a group of "human only" terrorists, The Keepers, whose goal is to rid the world of all magic and magical creatures, thus assuring themselves of power and happiness. Might be some sort of political commentary here about xenophobia or white supremacy, but it's not laid on too thickly. I'm fairly certain we'll see more of this group in the future, as Kate continues to have new adventures.

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews

Interesting, though not particularly surprising, that the three books I've most recently been reading have "Magic" in the title; Magic on the Line, Magic Bleeds, and Hard Magic. Magic Bleeds is the fourth in the Kate Daniels series.

The "romance" between Curran and Kate has hit a rocky patch, due to a misunderstanding about their last "date", when Kate believes Curran stood her up, while Curran thinks Kate ran away. He was late due to having been injured, and she was gone when he arrived. Of course, they snipe back and forth over the phone for several days in this novel before actually getting together and talking it out, while we readers are thinking, "For Pete's sake, just get over it!" Well, when they do, fireworks result, and Andrews finally succumbs to the need for a fairly graphic sex scene, after admirable restraint through the first three books on Kate's part. We'll see if it comes to permeate the series over time, or not.

Someone or some thing has attacked various high visibility targets in the Pack, the People and the mercenary Guild, leaving behind virulently infected bodies. As a probationary worker for the Order, Kate is tasked with investigating the situation. She comes to discover that a long-forgotten deity from Babylonian times, Erra, is the culprit. Erra is accompanied by seven demigod types: Tremor, Darkness, Deluge, Beast, Torch, Gale and Venom, who are undead controlled by Erra, each with very specific magic powers. Kate and her allies must face each of them in turn and destroy them in order to destroy Erra.

It turns out that there's a family connection here for Kate, which precipitates and interesting scene where Erra, who turns out to be Roland's (Kate's biological father) sister, sits down to a tense tea in Kate's apartment. Near immortal, amazingly arrogant, and horrendously powerful, Kate's auntie will be a major challenge.

The theme continues of Kate slowly learning to trust her lover, Curran, and the rest of her friends, and revealing the secret of her origin to some of them. It may be her downfall in the end, or it may be her salvation.

Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews

Third in the Kate Daniels series, this one continues in a fine tradition. Someone or something has the ability to slaughter shifters at will, and Kate, as the representative of the Order, is investigating things right up to her eyebrows. Kate's young protege, Derek, comes down with a major crush on a girl who's involved with the bad guys, but who claims to want out. When he tries to secretly meet with her to effect a rescue, he is attacked and left nearly dead. Unlike in most situations where shifters are wounded, Derek is unable to heal, and so Kate adds another mystery to her plate.

In the meantime, Kate's old acquaintance, information broker Saiman, asks her to accompany him to the Midnight Games, a preternatural version of Ultimate Fighting. He's a part-owner in the concession that runs the games, and a new team, the Reapers, is dominating the fights now, which is bad for Saiman and his business, so he needs Kate to find out how they're cheating.

Curran's security chief, Jim, has been quietly investigating the shifter murders, trying to keep Curran from having to get involved, but when Derek goes down, it's inevitable. When Jim and Kate and Saiman decide to form a fighting team of their own to take on the Reapers, he forces his way on to the team - who's gonna stop a pissed-off werelion?

Once again, it turns out some old deities are involved in the caper, and the Reapers are just minions trying to bring them back into power. There's some fun stuff in the byplay between Curran and Kate, and we learn a bit more about who Saiman really is, as well. I still like the fact that Kate has a bit of self-control left where it comes to her romantic inclinations, and that the books have not yet dissolved into paranormal porn.

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

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.

Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

It took me a long time to track down this series of books. I found the 2nd one in the series first, at the Friends of the Library bookstore, then a couple of months later, in the same place, found the 3rd, so when I was at Hastings last week I broke down and bought a copy of the first one - brand spanking new, so I could get started reading them finally.

This series falls into that rather tired sub-genre of urban fantasy; tough chick beats up on supernatural monsters (as opposed to cynical alpha male beats up on supernatural monsters). Hamilton, I think, started it with her Anita Blake series, followed by a whole host of imitators, of various competencies and calibers. Andrews, however, brings what seems to me to be a little fresher viewpoint to the whole sordid affair.

One positive thing, which may disappoint some folks, is that she manages to avoid the obligatory sado-masochistic orgiastic sex scenes every fifty pages. She also has a little different take on shapeshifters and vampires; the shapeshifters of all varieties in Atlanta band together for support and protection, aside from those who are merely vicious blood-crazed loup garoux (that should be an x for the plural, right?), and the vampires are actually mindless undead automatons, controlled by humans and other beings with necromantic powers. The world Kate Daniels lives in also suffers from waves of magic that sweep through the city at random, causing technology to fail for a time, while magic gains in power, though it is always lurking somewhere in the background, for those who know how to manipulate its energies.

Kate is a mercenary, a bounty hunter for hire to dispose of any magical predators or nuisances. She had formerly apprenticed with the Order, a band of magical knights who are all powerful magic users, but had some problems with authority, and left their tutelage to free lance. One of the members of the Order was her god parent, Greg, and when he is murdered by creatures unknown, she decides she must find the culprit herself. For some unknown reason, the local head of the Order agrees, and gives her their support and endorsement.

One great little bit of conversation between the knight-protector:
"You know anything about investigative work?"
"Sure. Annoy the people involved until the guilty party tries to make you go away."
Sounds just like most of the supernatural PIs I've enjoyed.

And later, when she's talking to the king of the shapeshifters, Curran:
"What happened to the alpha wolf?"
"LEGOs"
"Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn't it an island?
"He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle."
ROFL...LEGOS

So, Kate must learn to work with the shapeshifter pack, the vampire navigators, and the knights of the order in order to collar the killer. The whole book works quite nicely as a setup for the series, laying out the major players, Kate's enemies and allies, and setting the scene in the magical version of Atlanta. Fun stuff, and I hope her writing continues at this level for a long time.