Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

I finished this one a while ago, during my March UF kick.

 

 It has taken me a while to actually get to the point of posting the review. This series had been recommended to me at least ten times, by ten different friends. Kate Daniels, the MC, was widely heralded as defining the kickass UF heroine. She did not disappoint.

Plot summary: This series is set in an Alternate Universe Atlanta, where magic and technology vie for, I guess, supremacy. Sometimes the tech is in control, and sometimes the magic knocks out all of the technology. Buildings fall. Phones fail. Electricity goes out. When magic prevails, the city runs on magic.

 Kate Daniels is a sort of an independent contractor, charged with a form of magical law enforcement. At the beginning of book 1, we know almost nothing about her. A close friend, father figure of sorts, is murdered, and she takes on the responsibility and burden of finding out who. Also in this book, there is an unidentified creature that is murdering members of the magical races throughout Atlanta. It is in this book that Kate meets Curran, the Lord of the Beasts, a were-lion creature.

 Review: As a first book, Magic Bites is good. The world building is solid and intriguing. Kate is as advertised. She is not a shrinking violet, she is definitely not one of those shrinking violet women that show up in PNR waiting to be claimed by their mates. The story was well-plotted, and the villain was genuinely evil.

There is plenty within the world to provide scope for additional books, and Kate herself is fascinating. The question of who, and what, she is remains unanswered, and will, no doubt unfold over the subsequent books.

 Easy 4 star read. I've already downloaded the second one.

Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock) by Faith Hunter

I actually read this one before the beginning of March Magic & Mayhem, but I'm just now getting around to reviewing it.



Brief (No spoilers) Plot Summary:

Jane Yellowrock is a skinwalker who specializes in taking care of, permanently and with extreme prejudice, rogue vampires. This is a UF in which vampires have gone public, but other magical creatures remain under the radar. So far as Jane knows, she is the only skinwalker in existence. She is capable of shifting into various creatures, including creatures where she needs to drop mass or gain mass, but her natural shape when shifting is some form of big cat. Jane has been hired by the vampires of New Orleans to take down a rogue vampire who is on a rampage and has placed at risk their position in New Orleans. Her job is to take care of their problem.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

This is a pretty good, if somewhat uninspired, entry in the rather crowded UF genre. Faith Hunter is a competent writer. There are similarities to the Sookie Stackhouse series (less humor, but the requisite sexy vamps) as well as even more significant similarities to the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. I prefer Mercy Thompson to Jane Yellowrock.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed Skinwalker. I am a sucker for stories set in New Orleans -- there is something very atmospheric about New Orleans, with its voodoo history, and this prediliction of mine extends all the way back to Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. If vampires exist anywhere outside of Transylvania, New Orleans is the place.

I really liked Jane Yellowrock. She is a badass tough girl, and is a fully capable heroine. There is almost no romance in this installment, although there are a couple of male characters introduced who will likely fill that role in later books.

This one isn't as unique as the Downside Ghosts series referenced below. Faith Hunter is treading ground that has been well-trod by other authors before her. Nonetheless, for fans of UF, this is a solid effort, and is well worth a read. 3 1/2 stars.

Review: Fury of Fire by Coreene Callahan

I picked this one up for 3.99. It's book 1 in a new PNR/UF series with dragon shifters.




Overall, I really enjoyed it. It is set in Seattle, Washington, which is, of course, about 4 hours north of my kitchen table, where this review is being written. There are good guys and bad guys: the Nightfury dragon clan is the good guys, while the Razorbacks are the bad guys. The basic premise of the book is that the dragon shifters, who stay under the radar of human society, are all male and lack the ability to produce dragon females through reproduction. This means that, in order to reproduce, they must mate with humans. Unfortunately, as sort of a cosmic joke on the dragons, human females always die while bearing dragon young. The world building is interesting and I really liked the author's use of the energy concept.

The heroine of the book is Myst Munroe, a nurse practitioner who is first to the scene when a patient gives birth to her half-dragon son. Caroline dies during the birthing process. Myst is taken, along with the baby, to the lair of the Nightfury dragons, where she bonds with the leader, Bastian. She is an exceptionally strong human female, and becomes the subject of a tug of war between Bastian and Ivar, the leader of the Razorbacks. Ivar has big, and not very friendly, plans for humanity.

A number of the reviews on amazon suggested that this book is very similar to the Black Dagger Brotherhood, written by J.R. Ward, and that this detracted from the reader's pleasure in the story. I haven't read BDB, so I can't speak to that. I did thoroughly enjoy this first in a series. Bastian is a very powerful hero, and Myst is no shrinking violet. Their mating was convincing. The dragon males are all, of course, fiercly masculine warriors who are highly attractive to the women they use for feeding and mating.

The book is well-written and well-edited, as well. I noticed very few proofing errors. The dialogue is convincing, and the characters are complex enough to be individually interesting. Ms. Callahan introduced a number of interesting secondary characters: Rikar, Angela Keene, and Forge, all of whom I expect to see again in future novels. Overall, I'd rate it 4 stars. I've already pre-ordered book 2:




which is scheduled for release on June 5.