Publisher: ACE
Pages: 349
ISBN#: 0441018521
My Recommended Age Group: Adult
Released: May 25, 2010
Audiobook read by: Renée Raudman (Love!)
In series: Magic Bites (#1), Magic Burns (#2), Magic Strikes (#3), Magic Bleeds (#4), Magic Slays (#5)
Our Rating:
Atlanta would be a nice place to live, if it weren’t for the magic. When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it rose.
Kate Daniels works for the Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid, officially as a liaison with the mercenary guild. Unofficially, she cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wants to handle—especially if they involve Atlanta’s shapeshifting community.
When she’s called in to investigate a fight at the Steel Horse, a bar midway between the territories of the shapeshifters and the necromancers, Kate quickly discovers there’s a new player in town. One who’s been around for thousands of years—and rode to war at the side of Kate’s father.
This foe may be too much even for Kate and Curran, the Lord of the Beasts, to handle. Because this time, Kate will be taking on family…
My thoughts:
Whoa! What? Hold on there!
Okay, so I thought Magic Strikes was the ultimate in Kate Daniels action. I'm sorry - where was everyone to tell me that I was sadly mistaken? Ilona Andrews - I don't know how you did it, but you did it! MAGIC BLEEDS is officially now the ultimate in Kate Daniels action. Yep. Stick a stamp on it because it's official. Might as well call it MAGIC ULTIMATE ACTIONY ACTION-PANTS, because, that's really what it is.
You know, what I really love about Ilona Andrews and the Kate Daniels books is the way that while this is an ultimate actiony action-pants book, there is also quite a bit of emotion thrown throughout. I bought this as an Audible book (for multiple reasons - one of which is the narrator Renée Raudman) and there were many times that I seriously considered hitting the button to make the narrator read faster. I would listen on my daily walks and stare incredulously at the marmots chilling alongside the river. How could they sit so calmly when uber drama was unfolding? How could the geese with their new babies swim by so serenely while my all I wanted to do was smack Kate, Curran, and some other choice characters in the head and pull them back to reality.
It's a good thing there were no easy to catch woodland creatures about. I probably would have snatched them up, shook them by their furry shoulders and begged them to tell me why my two favorite characters couldn't pull their heads out of the rears and come back to reality.
That being said - whoa tension! With every new Ilona Andrews book that comes our way, Andrews takes the story up a notch. Packed with action that left me breathless (and caused me to unknowingly increase my MPH walking speed) and tension that almost caused harm to my fun furry friends along my walking path, MAGIC BLEEDS was an excellent fourth book in the series. All those questions that have been building about Kate and her past from the first three books? Well, of course they're not all answered in this book. That would just be silly. A decent chunk of them are though and, as we would expect, we are now left with even more questions about what will happen next.
I loved this fourth installment because of the action and the character growth. One thing that Andrews excels at is always making me think that the story is going one way (I usually expect the predictable scenario) and then taking it in a completely different direction while all the while leaving me completely satisfied.
All in all - I approve.
Overall: A+
