Magic Mourns
Ilona Andrews
Paranormal
Grade: C+
Setting: Set immediately after the events of "Magic Strikes" and sometime before Kate and Curran's "big meal".
I've been reading a lot of paranormal books lately. After the most recent, Patricia Briggs outstanding "Hunting Ground", I found myself in a loop. I reread Brigg's Mercy Thompsons. Then I reread her Alpha and Omega's. Desperate to break my rereading loop I picked up "Must Love Hellhounds" which had an Ilona Andrews story, a writer whose style I find quite a bit like Brigg's. Let's talk about "Magic Mourns" for a minute.
This is the story of Andrea, Kate's friend, fellow knight and current only holder of her "secret". Andrea is in the office when she receives a report of a large dog chasing a shapeshifter. She takes her second best gun from the safe (the best gun would be overkill and besides, it requires too much paperwork) and drives to the rescue. When she sees that the shapeshifter turns out to be none other than Rafael, a werehyena that is courting her and annoying her simultaneously, she has second thoughts of a rescue. And then she sees the dog -- a huge, house sized Hellhound. This is a short story and I don't want to get too much more involved in plot reveals. I will add that Andrea, of course, has a big secret of her own and doesn't really want to get involved with Rafael but as they battle the bad guys and deal with the dog they find themselves wondering if they can't somehow come to a happy conclusion about their relationship issues. Andrea is a solid, kick butt style heroine and Rafael is really pretty engaging. So why did these two drive me to taking a month long break from paranormals? They didn't -- but the addition of greek gods to a universe crowded with vampires, shapeshifters and magic waves did. It just felt like so much kitchen sink overkill, like the author was trying to throw me off the scent of possible plot errors by pulling out all the stops. So I decided that my crankiness is probably due to over reading the genre (heck, maybe even over reading in general) and I have wisely decided to take a break of at least a month. Naturally, I already have two killer novels waiting for me for after my 30 days is up. ;-) But expect to see a lot of romance and mystery reading over the course of the next few days.
The tea: Stick with something warm and comfy for the next little while.
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