Wednesday 18 January 2012

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Magic in the Blood - Devon Monk

Release Date: 01/01/12

SYNOPSIS:

Allie Beckstrom knows that there's a price to pay for using magic ...She's suffered her fair share of migraines and gaps in her memory during her time working as a Hound, tracing spells back to their casters. But now Allie's been visibly marked by magic with a mysterious iridescent tattoo. She's not only lost all memory of how she got it, but also of the man that she's supposedly fallen in love with. Oh, and as usual, she's completely broke. So when the criminal magic enforcement division of the police asks her to consult on a missing person's case, things start to look up. At first, it seems to be a fairly straightforward way of earning some money - but like most things in Allie's life it soon turns into a dangerous mix of underworld criminals, ghosts and blood magic. This time Allie is going to discover it takes more than magic to survive...


REVIEW:

OK, I love a good Urban Fantasy story and when you add a price into the mix for the use of the characters magic it has extra danger for the use of power, however coming into this series with the second book, I was left wondering for quite a while what I’d missed in the previous as it kept being alluded to throughout.

Don’t get me wrong, I did have fun with this title, but I felt that something was missing for me as a reader as I hadn’t gotten to know the character prior to the consequences that seem to have affected her in the end of the previous story which left me wondering about her associations alongside having to figure the world and her role out in greater detail. The writing is crisp, the character was interesting but without the background I felt I was on the backfoot from the beginning. I’ll reread this book when I’ve read the original story Magic in the Bone.

2 comments:

Angela Addams said...

Yes, that's the trouble with sequels --it isn't often, I find, that you can pick up subsequent books from the original and know what's going on.

Pat Hollett said...

Thanks for the insight Gareth. Always good to know before picking up a book. :)