Magic Strikes

Magic Strikes (2009) Ilona Andrews

This book opens with one of my favorite scenes. An old woman is atop a telephone pole, and the Order is called to get her down.

I trotted into the dark entrance to the apartment, where five members of the McSweeney family crouched in the gloom. “Tell me again why you can’t come out and help me?”

Robert McSweeney, a middle-aged, dark-eyed man with thinning brown hair, shook his head. “Mom thinks we don’t know she’s a banshee.”

I love everything that is unsaid in that scene.

This is the story where we learn a lot about Saiman (who I have mentioned before is one of my favorite characters (I sometimes think that I prefer the secondary characters over the primary in this series)). We learn what Saiman is, which explains a great deal about why is is the way he is.

“Give me an opportunity to fail,” Saiman said. “I promise that my corpse won’t interrupt your ‘I told you so’ speech.”

We also spend a good deal of time with Jim; he’s another secondary character I particularly like.

His voice was melodious and smooth. He never sang, but you knew he could, and if he decided to do it, women would be hurling themselves into his path.

She surveyed Jim and turned to me. “Congratulations, love. You traded up. Does he treat you well?”

“He’s a teddy bear,” I said.

Teddy bear looked like he was suffering from murder withdrawal.

We of course also learn more about Kate, which brings me to the bit that has always bothered me about this book. Kate always burns all traces of her blood, for fear that someone will figure out what she is.

At the end of the book, Kate finds herself in a cage, lying in a pool of her own blood–blood she is learning to control.

I’ve reread these pages multiple times, and it reads like Kate left a pool of her blood in the bottom of the cage when Curran rescues her, and as Hugh d’Ambray is fighting his way towards them.

Yes, the castle crashes, but it doesn’t seem like that would be enough to destroy her blood before Hugh came upon it.

And again, a terrible, horrible, awful cover from Ace.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Ace

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