Friday, October 05, 2007

#53 Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

My Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.

Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up such problems. But when her guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta's magic circles: the undead (Vampires) and the shapeshifters (more than just wolves).

This book had a completely unique way of looking at vampires, shapeshifters, and magic, and I'm not sure I cared for all of it. I definitely didn't like the concept of vampires "piloting" other vampires remotely, nor the fact that they were portrayed as completely emotionless bloodsuckers. The concept of magic or technology being "up" was also a bit hard to get used to—especially the fact that only one or the other could be in effect at any given time. I'm much more synergistic in my approach to life and thus have a hard time dealing with absolutes. And this one definitely seemed a hard one to swallow, at least for me personally.

Overall, I'm not sure how I felt about this one. On the one hand, I enjoy the urban fantasy genre very much, but on the other, this was this author's first novel and I'm sorry to say, you could sort of tell with the writing. There were many things that could've been done better. That said, I do hold out hope for the second novel in the series, due out in March of next year. By then, she may have refined her writing technique a bit more and I won't be distracted by the lack of finesse in the writing. :) We shall see....

BookCrossing journal page for this book

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I still can't remember if I am getting this book from somewhere. I have been hearing alot about it and your review has also made me even more curious...

I think I will have to get a copy soon.

Cherie said...

Shawnna originally had a bookring for it, but when she deleted her shelf, she lost the list of names. I knew that Geniedances was after me so I sent her the book just last week. I also noticed it was still on Needsun's wishlist so I put a note about sending it to her after. Since Shawnna finally got around to emailing me and saying that was fine, if I knew who still wanted to read it, to kinda organize where it went, etc. So perhaps you were gonna get it from her?

I'm not gonna reannounce it out on VLAD or anything, I'm just working off people I know of that still wanna read it, so you want it after NeedSun then?