Saturday, August 7, 2010

Review : Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews

 
Title: Magic Burns 
Author Illona Andrews 
Genre: Urban Fnatasy 
Series: Kate Daniels #2


 




 
I'm convinced that in every series, one book must fail in order to do world building and story line arcs for the rest of the series. In this series, I really think it was the first book-Magic Bites, that took the hit. There was so much to explain that it really confused the heck out of me, and if it wasn't for the fact that Curran finally made an appearance late in the book I'm not sure I would've been able to get through it. This book was so much easier to read and the storyline was much more enjoyable to me then the whole guardian revenge one-but that storyline was needed to explain how Kate got to be the way she is today. 

  
Magic and technology collided, and now magic waves appear without warning. When the magic goes up, all technology pretty much fails. Once the magic is on, weird things happen and it's up to Kate Daniels to help people with the messes that occur when the magic is on.  Every seven years a magical flare happens, and then all things magic really go haywire. This can't be good for Kate...especially when someone has stolen the shape shifters secret maps, and she realizes that it's much more then just an ordinary theft-it has to do with the flare and a goddess wanting to come back to life during the flare... I enjoyed this book so much more then the first one in the series-I think because the magical world had already been set up in book one, and we got the condensed version in this book, which I thought was so much easier to understand then how it was explained in book one. 

What I love most about Kate is that she's tough, and even though there isn't really an ounce of softness in her, she's still likable. She's gradually letting people into her life, even though she was brought up not to trust anyone or let anyone get close to her for fear they'd be used against her because of who her biological father was. (In this book we still don't know who it is.)  I loved the tension that is gradually building between her and Curran, the Lord of all the Shape Shifters.  Ah, Curran...what can I say about this guy that hasn't already been said before? It was in this book where I started to understand why everyone loved him so much. He's such an Alpha Male-stubborn and bossy, but totally likable. I'm just in love with this series!! I was going to review all three books at once, but that would have been one monstrous review! 


Crush Meter: High 
Sigh Meter: Medium 
Action Meter: High 
Sleep Meter: Medium 
Ethan/Merit Sizzle Meter: Medium (because it's really just starting to build in this book)