Magic Bites

Magic Bites is a fantasy novel written by a husband-and-wife team going by the pseudonym Ilona Andrews. The storyline centers around a strong, resourceful woman, Kate, who is sort of a film noir detective placed into an alternate view of Georgia. In this version of our universe, the hard-exterior-caring-inside woman is ready with a sword, able to wield magic, and taking on vampires, shape-shifters, and other nasties.

There are several things to be aware of to help with the full enjoyment of the story. The first is that the book is very clearly laid out to be the first in a series. It's like reading the first novel of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There's going to be a lot of threads left unraveled, and a lot of curious things left unexplained when you finish this. You have to expect that and perhaps have the remaining books on hand so you can keep reading. You don't pick up "Fellowship of the Ring" and end up upset that you don't find out what happened to Frodo, Sam, and the Ring. You just keep reading through Two Towers.

Next, Magic Bites often gets put into the "Romance" category of books. I wouldn't call this a romance, and people who are solely looking for bodice-ripping action along with a happily-ever-after wrap-up will probably be disappointed. Yes, Kate is a woman in her mid-twenties who is drawn to the handsome men around her. But that's not the focus of this story.

Instead, the focus is on Kate trying to navigate the ever-shifting world of magic and technology and to figure out just what current baddie is launching an assault on her area. There are political negotiations with the various factions, trying to figure out who is hiding what for what reasons. I enjoyed the level of detail. Clearly the authors put a fair amount of work into developing their world, the different groups and sub-groups, the way that magic comes and goes in waves and how the local populace has learned to cope with this all.

There are some great descriptions in here. One of my absolute favorite pairs of lines in any book I've read recently has to be this: "I rode one of the pack's horses, a solid, thick-muscled creature of undeterminable [sic] shade somewhere halfway between mud and soot. He pounded the ground with his hooves as if suspecting that the thin layer of soil masked a nest of wriggling snakes and he could get at them if he just stomped hard enough." Brilliant!

Now, that all being said, I do want to point out a few issues I had. First, this version of Atlanta clearly has quite different versions of vampires and werewolves and other creatures than we'd seen in most other stories. The vampires, for example, are pretty much remote-control mindless drones that external people control. But we don't learn that early on - we just hear they are "vampires" and are told both that they "study" Kate and that they are "free of thought". This makes no sense to me as a reader, especially because they are being called "vampires". There needs to be a clearer explanation of how these specific creatures work in this world, if they aren't "typical" vampires. It would be like calling something a "cat" but then later in the story casually explaining to us that they are five feet tall, purple, and have long trunks.

Another issue has to do with character dialogue. I get that Kate is a rough, tough, speak-first-think-later type of person. It's who she is and that's fine. However, it seems that many people she encounters who should be much more mature, weathered, and wise, also say and do fairly silly things in order to move the plot in a certain direction. They don't act consistently with what their character should need to have learned in order to reach his or her position in the world. In a few cases I read a scene and it seemed to me as if it was a teenager taking the actions rather than a mature adult. While with Kate one could say "Kate is just that way, and she's managed to survive", the rational feels less compelling when nearly every character seems to possess that same lack of judgement.

Still, this is the first novel, and authors often have these kinds of issues with their first novel as they develop motivation and grounding and a sense of "depth" for their characters. All in all Magic Bites is a quick read, a fun read, and it has some nice twists and turns. Well recommended.

Rating: 4/5

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