Sunday, August 16, 2015

Ilona Andrews - Magic Shifts

After breaking from life with the Pack, mercenary Kate Daniels and her mate—former Beast Lord Curran Lennart—are adjusting to a very different pace. While they’re thrilled to escape all the infighting, Curran misses the constant challenges of leading the shapeshifters.
So when the Pack offers him its stake in the Mercenary Guild, Curran seizes the opportunity—too bad the Guild wants nothing to do with him and Kate. Luckily, as a veteran merc, Kate can take over any of the Guild’s unfinished jobs in order to bring in money and build their reputation. But what Kate and Curran don’t realize is that the odd jobs they’ve been working are all connected.
An ancient enemy has arisen, and Kate and Curran are the only ones who can stop it—before it takes their city apart piece by piece…


Comment: This is the most recent installment in the Kate Daniels seres by Ilona Andrews. This is one of my auto-buy series so, as soon as the book arrived in the mail and I finished what I was reading, I immediately jumped to this one.

In this book, Kate and Curran are working together but away from the Keep and the Pack as agreed with Roland in the end of the previous book. They are living in a new neighborhood, they take care of their jobs and Julie and any pack member that leaves the Pack for good to stand by them.
However, something is threatening Atlante and Kate feels she has to do something, making her go on an adventure to solve who is behind the recent weird and fatal attacks. But this time the danger is too big and Kate might not be able to do it on her own...

Again, I was taken to this amazingly imaginative world and became completely entranced in it, to the point where I couldn't put this story down. I was very dedicated to know what would happen next because anyone who has read a book by this duo knows there's a lot of action, fast scenes and amazing sequences to follow. I've read a lot of their books to know the balance between out of this world action scenes and emotional issues is perfect and I was proven right again with this book.

I thought it would be weird to see Kate and Curran out of the Keep, becoming different than what I got used to see them, meaning an united Pack front. But the path this is taking suddenly makes sense I was convinced what is happening to them is the solution to happiness and I wasn't as bothered anymore. The authors are perfect writers and their stories feel well thought, well structured and wonderfully presented.

Once more, the villains in the story seem too well imagined to be something normal people could think of. We keep seeing how the research they did bears fruits because all the elements to "build up" the villains, the way they appear and how, the background and explanations, everything makes sense. Their writing and picking of the information to use in the story is brilliant and not many authors can write effectively and with their purposes in perspective.

There are some scene' details, which help the plot move along, that don't seem as easy to overlook when we notice the wrongness of them - if we do notice -  but I've came to think no author is perfect all the time. Nevertheless, the way the plot moves and how it seems there aren't no missteps in the path from one scene to another, the rest is just random noise.

I loved seeing Kate and Curran happy, or trying to live a life as happily as they can, worries and problems aside. Another great aspect of this series is, no matter how well we know the characters and think they are open books to us, in this case they keep on revealing new facets, new details about their personalities that make the reader learn more and know more about them. And I mean this in a good way, not that we get useless information to just fill blanks.

I also liked the secondary characters. I especially like seeing beloved characters showing up, being part of the plot still. They feel like a big family sometimes...

I know I might sound too vague but I don't want to spoil things. This series is so wonderful, I think it's an unique experience to read and savor each chapter, each book. I think it's difficult to find any other series like this one in terms of plot and execution in this genre, that is as great as this one.
For me, this rocked, despite the minor little details I think didn't have to exist.
Grade: 9/10

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