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 these magical problems. But when Kate's guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta's magic circles.
The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings -- and the death of Kate's guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she's way out of her league -- but she wouldn't have it any other way...
Oh, lawdy. I really did not invest a lot of time reading this one, and didn't get a lot out of it. Mostly that was because I spent the entire book wondering if this was the first one in the series. Because, see, Magic Bites just does not do a good job of introducing you to the characters or world. It's like that old joke: "My mother taught me how to swim by taking me out to the middle of a lake and pushing me overboard." "She wasn't trying to teach you to swim!" Magic Bites is the lake, and the authors are the mother, pushing you overboard and going, well, you'll either drown or swim, and have fun figuring out which one it's gonna be!
It might actually be better to start with a later one in the series because I read the first couple of chapters of the next book (you know how they give you a preview of the next book in mass market paperbacks). The recap of the series so far - that authors always put in the later books in the series because people have terrible memories and also sometimes don't always read the books in order - does a good job of explaining things, and talks about secondary characters in a way that's missing when you read Magic Bites. In this one, people just pop up chock full of backstory that's never talked about. For example, early on in the book, Kate's friend Jim is introduced by him showing up kinda irritated because she skipped out on a job they were supposed to do together. All we get from the scene is that Jim is a shapeshifter - we don't know what kind of shapeshifter, or how Kate and Jim met, or if Kate even likes him or not, or the job they were supposed to do together (which sounds interesting) or or or anything. Sometimes it felt like the description on the back cover was more fullsome than the actual text.
The book is narrated in the first person, so I guess it's more realistic that no, when you see someone you know on the street you're not thinking, "I first met my friend Rachel when we were both attended Our Lady of Humble Prayer Camp, during which we bonded over our mutual love of hair ribbons and clarified butter. More recently, we went out dancing together and she still owes me for the drinks." It's more like, she holds out $20, and you think, "I'm glad she brought that money, I didn't want to ask her for it. Also, her shoes are hot." And meanwhile, you all could be anything from friends to pimps relationship-wise. So yeah, maybe it's more realistic for Kate not to explain any damn thing, but that's not helpful when the character is narrating a book. Readers need context and background and without it, people are just like unmoored boats, floating around in the mire of my mind, which is not how anyone wants to read a book.
It just all seems like a lot of ideas jumbled together - I didn't hate it, exactly, but it didn't hold my interest very well, although I'm not sure that's put me off the next books in the series. More editing, more insight as to what's actually going on in Kate's head, better explication of events and world building - it's not impossible. I feel like it has potential, and I'd need to re-read it at least once more before writing it off completely. I've already forgotten most of what happens in Magic Bites, which isn't a strong recommendation, but a different frame of mind might make all the difference. I guess we'll see.
Bayou Moon, by Ilona Andrews
The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is a fairy tale -- and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny.
Cerise Mar and her unruly clan are cash poor but land rich, claiming a large swath of the Mire, the Edge swamplands between the state of Louisiana and the Weird. When her parents vanish, her clan's longtime rivals are suspect number one.
But all is not as it seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feint and espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into the Edge -- and Cerise's life. William, a changeling soldier who'd left behind the politics of the Weird, has been forced back into service to track down a rival nation's spymaster. When William's and Cerise's missions lead them to cross paths, sparks fly -- but they'll have to work together if they want to succeed. . . and survive.
I probably won't make a lot of sense on this post, and that is Linda Ronstadt's fault, because as soon as I look at the title, all I can hear is Ms. Ronstadt singing, "I'm goin' back someday, come what may, to Blue Bayouuuuuuuuuuuu..." It was so bad, I wound up singing it the entire day I read Bayou Moon, much to the aggravation of the people around me. I did enjoy this one more than Magic Bites, as it doesn't suffer from that same weird non-background-info-giving problem, which might be because it's technically the second in a series, or it might be because they took a different approach to writing it.
That familiar sunrise
Those sleepy eyes
How happy I'd be...
It's a much chunkier book, and switches perspectives between the two main characters William and Cerise. I dunno about you folks, but I greatly enjoyed reading all of Cerise's lines out loud in a super thick southern Louisiana drawl. It really added to the experience. That was also something Bayou Moon had going for it that Magic Bites did not: a funny, or at least sardonic heroine. I liked Cerise more than Kate, and honestly, I'm not all together sure why: both are investigating the death/disappearance of someone close to them, both deal in being kick-ass fighters who seem to be modeled after John Wayne's cowboy impersonations. I liked Cerise's sprawling, fighting family, who were vivid secondary characters. Even with the large cast of characters, I could tell who was who, pretty much. In contrast, Kate seems very much orphaned and alone, and even her relationships with her "friends" didn't feel very real. I do like a good secondary cast, and I appreciated the sense of responsibility to her family that Cerise had. Of course, that could maybe also have been because she reminds me of the lead character in the movie Winter's Bone, which I absolutely adore, who also wants to locate her parent and save her siblings and her farm.
Saving nickels, saving dimes
Working til the sun don't shine
Looking forward to happier times
On Blue Bayou
Some of the parts between William and Cerise were just too. . . much. It embarrasses me when characters in books come on real strong, I want to be like, chill. Get ahold of yourself. Especially when you finish the book, and you're like, hey, that took place over 48 hours! Yet these people met, angsted, declared their mutual love and decided to live happily ever after. It's not that fast in Bayou Moon, although it's pretty darn fast. I prefer my main pair to have some restraint, although they do alright for the first half of the book, when they're going through the Mire.
Where the folks are fine
And the world is mine
On Blue Bayou
The setting is delightful - very swampy and atmospheric, and unlike Magic Bites, I could picture all the locations pretty clearly, which aids immensely in my enjoyment of a book. I did get kinda bogged down by the end of the book, it suffered a little from the authors trying to wind up way too many storylines and surprise twists, so that the first like, two thirds felt fairly evenly (if a bit slowly) paced, then frenetic fighting all weighted down at the end. Plus, it suffers from Return of the King epilogue syndrome: just when you thought it was done, more stuff popped up to be taken care of. It felt rushed a bit, such as when Cerise's father gets found and rescued off-screen in the space of like, five pages, despite the whole point of the book being, ostensibly, Cerise's search for him. I guess we don't care about him as much as we do her mother, who is already worm food by that point.
Well, I'll never be blue
My dreams come true
All in all, I was intrigued by both books, although I definitely prefer Bayou Moon to Magic Bites. Bayou Moon is sort of a loose sequel to another book about the Edge (called, appropriately enough, "On the Edge"), so I might try that one on for size, and see if my issues with Magic Bites are because of the first-book-in-a-series problem or because I just can't get behind that particular series.
On Bluuuuuuuuue Bayyyyyyyyyouuuuuuuu
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