Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews
Series: Kate Daniels (#6)
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Mercenary Kate Daniels narrates a surprising trip with her bite-me humor. The pack of her mate Curran, werelion Beast Lord, need rare medicine from Europe to save children who die from stuck shapeshifting. Europe offers them barrels of the drug ifthey guard a spoiled princess. Knowing the invite is a trap, of course they sail right in.
2.5 stars
Okay, before everyone freaks out, let me explain something here. My modus operandi for reading books I’m really looking forward to is to go into them blind. I don’t read reviews, I ignore status updates from friends, and sometimes, I don’t even read the book blurb. So that’s what I did going into this. I ignored everyone and everything.
Don’t do that.
You need to prepare yourself. There’s a lot of fucking drama in this book. For me, too much drama. I spent over two hundred pages feeling like this:
I already have rage issues (as some of you know), so you can understand how it could be…upsetting to be that mad for nearly two thirds of a book.
One of the reasons I love this series so much is because it’s stayed away from the kind of relationship-based angst that leads to my epic bitch fits. I can get that crap anywhere and pretty much everywhere else, and so these books had become a sort of safe harbor for me. Not so much with this one.
Aside from the drama-llamas, I had other issues, but I won’t go into them as I don’t want to spoil anything. I will say this, there were plot inconsistencies, there were actions and behaviors that were so out of character that they were hard for me to swallow, and in the end, everything was too quickly and neatly tied up with a bow.
Deus ex machina, people.
I’m not sure if it was all the rage I’d endured or my annoyance at the way things seemed to resolve themselves, but by the admittedly epic climax I wasn’t as emotionally invested as I should have been. There’s a scene I’m pretty sure I should have cried at but I didn’t because by that point I was almost…indifferent.
I still love Ilona Andrews. This is still one of my favorite series of all time. I have infinite faith in them to continue to deliver, but for the reasons I listed above, this book is just not one of my favorites.
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