Magic Breaks (Kate Daniels, #7) by Ilona Andrews

Synopsis: As the mate of the Beast Lord, Curran, former mercenary Kate Daniels has more responsibilities than it seems possible to juggle. Not only is she still struggling to keep her investigative business afloat, she must now deal with the affairs of the pack, including preparing her people for attack from Roland, a cruel ancient being with god-like powers. Since Kate’s connection to Roland has come out into the open, no one is safe—especially those closest to Kate.

As Roland’s long shadow looms ever nearer, Kate is called to attend the Conclave, a gathering of the leaders from the various supernatural factions in Atlanta. When one of the Masters of the Dead is found murdered there, apparently at the hands of a shapeshifter, Kate is given only twenty-four hours to hunt down the killer. And this time, if she fails, she’ll find herself embroiled in a war which could destroy everything she holds dear…

Review:  I know I’m late to the party on this one. I surprise even myself, especially since I read Burn for Me first! *slaps self* Bad bad!  But I finally got around to it.  Ilona Andrews is like old faithful. You know you’re getting a good read no matter what.  While I thought this was a good book, it wasn’t my favorite.  There’s a ton of action and it definitely meets the level we’ve come to expect from them.  This one wasn’t a quotable for me as past books though.  I found myself missing Curran a great deal.  Of course, Kate misses him too but that doesn’t cure the itch for their lack of interaction.  They went through a lot of turmoil in the last book so I was expecting the results of that to carry over to this one, but it was as if none of that happened.  I totally guessed Andrea’s new situation, so I snickered to myself a bit on that one. There are game changing moments that are established, but we don’t really see the follow through here.  All of it will have to wait for future books so I was left wanting to read them ASAP.

I also wasn’t so sure about the love scene. I mean, the scene was fine, it’s just that the placement felt a little random. It was like it was an after thought that the authors realized they needed to add  into the book before its end. There have been prior books where sex isn’t depicted at all and I didn’t enjoy it any less.  And because the tone of the book is so action and fantasy oriented, I think placing better overtones throughout the book would have made me think “finally!” instead of “that was random.”

Julie’s short story as a bonus read  was a decent introduction if they want to consider a spin-off.  However, I think I should have waited to pick it up until later because I was still trying to digest the ending of the main story. As a result, I wasn’t as invested as I wanted to be.

Overall the developments were interesting but this can easily fit into the “transition” book category for me. The one plus with waiting so late to read it is that the wait for the next book won’t be quite as long. So yay me!

 

 

This article has 1 Comment

  1. Great review and pretty much my feelings exactly. . . I know that Ilona and Gordon had some personal issues as well as publisher issues during the time they were writing this one. I don’t see how any author, no matter how good, wouldn’t have at least a bit of personal upheaval show up in their writing. I love their work enough to overlook ‘bumps’ and it sounds like you feel the same. Cheers!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *