For Bib (not proofread due to atrocious lack of sleep)
For some reason, when I'm feeling really bad physically, I read. Since I've been feeling shitty this past week, I read the Kate Daniels books by Ilona Andrews (Magic Bites+Burns+Strikes+Bleeds+Slays).
I stumbled onto this series by looking through various Urban Fantasy books on Amazon, so I don't know if anyone on here reads them, which I guess means that this is destined to be my first ever spoiler-free semi-proper book review. I'm all aflutter.
The back cover type synopsis, if I had to write it, would go something like this: In a world where a magical backlash occurred after centuries of technological advancement, alternating waves of magic and technology wash over the city of Atlanta, where shape-shifters, necromancers, guilds of mercenaries and an Order of Knights struggle for domination. Kate Daniels, a trained killer with a big mouth, a magic sword, and a personal history that, if revealed, would put her and everyone around her in mortal danger, steps out of the shadows in order to avenge her guardian's death, which forces her to navigate the murky waters of power politics and dangerous romantic entanglements while attempting to fight nightmarish monsters without revealing her identity.
The Kate Daniels books are built along the familiar lines of a central mystery each book, with a thread of slow-developing, slow-reveal series arc weaved in. Standard tropes abound, some better executed than others. Personally, I'm a sucker for the antagonistically hot love/hate relationship with the romantic interest, which is very well done in this series. It's not dragged out so much that you're just sick of it, and fights, arguments, disagreements and misunderstandings are generally resolved in a reasonably timely manner, so the books manage to avoid these two annoying traits of the trope, making it that much more fun to read. It also helps that I actually like both the male and female leads, even though I want to punch them both at times, which, in this case, is an indication that the writer made the characters and their relationship work for me, as opposed to making me hate them. Sadly, other plot threads don't work as well.
In the first couple of books, Kate's origin story somehow manages to be simultaneously too obvious and too opaque. The information that is hinted at comes across as not juicy enough to merit the attempt at drawing out its reveal, and it's only after the initial (unsurprising) reveal is out of the way that we start getting pieces of information that are actually intriguing. Laying out the basic facts earlier in the series and then portioning out the actual meat of the matter in morsels would've worked better. As it stands, we got way too much hinting at the basic facts in a not very subtle way for way too long, without any particular reason to see the basic facts as something that's worth building an arc over. I was mostly thinking that it's gonna be a series with a weak overall arc, which is fine, but 5 books in, it doesn't seem to be the case anymore, so I think they dropped the ball on that one, though they're picking it up now and seem to be running with it.
The bookly mystery/big!bad plots are generally the weakest aspect of the series. They're pretty basic fare; stumble-onto-bad-thing, realize bad!thing is worse/more mysterious than it might seem, figure out who's behind bad!thing/what bad!thing is, and finally, win big fight. Each such plot is interspersed with a red herring or two, danger due to investigating the bad!thing, and a large helping of lovingly cannibalized mishmash of various mythologies. The plots aren't bad so much as they're just not particularly exciting. There are some nice touches here and there, but mostly, the plots only serve as a background or, at best, a catalyst for character development, which is the real saving grace of the series.
The heroine, Kate, though she initially comes off as a standard Man with Breasts type, actually turns out to be a well crafted character. Even though she has some not-so-mysterious ancestry that gives her some extraordinary powers, and a slightly more mysterious upbringing that gives her some extraordinary skills, those assets are (mostly) balanced out by her being genuinely fucked up emotionally, which is portrayed very realistically, and by her complete lack of skills in areas in which she wasn't trained or gifted, which includes not just atrocious social skills, but also her being a truly terrible detective, which is rather refreshing for an urban fantasy series of the mystery/crime/horror variety. She is flawed in ways that are not only understandable and relatable, but are also consistent with her back story, and, perhaps most importantly, she's flawed in ways that affect both her work and her personal life to an extent that is neither minor nor insignificant, and, shockingly, she actually learns from her mistakes and grows as a character and as a person.
Characterization in general is a strong point in the series. Even though the story is told from Kate's limited (despite her exceptional observational skills) POV, most of the other characters are properly fleshed out, consistently portrayed, and easily differentiated, which is a huge bonus for me, as I suck at remembering names, so I have a hard time following even otherwise compelling storylines if I can't easily recognize the players.
On the cusp of characterization and world building, we have the Order and the Pack, two of the central organizations featured in the books, each with distinct structures and goals that are clearly laid out. Despite Kate's tendency to view everyone as an enemy, the information and the characters are sufficiently fleshed out, so that we can get a well rounded view of these two cultures, even though we see them through the protagonist's POV.
I also really like both the concept and the execution of the alternating waves of magic and technology washing over the world like weather. You get a real sense of the magic waves eroding technology, and of tech waves washing magic away, and somehow it just clicks, without having to read chapters (and sometimes several books) of long winded exposition just so you can wrap your head around the basic premise.
This premise also makes for an interesting and sometimes thought-provoking background, as people have to go without certain things entirely, due to the unreliable nature of the environment, while doubling up on other things so that they'll be available both during tech and during magic. Lighting, for instance, comes in two varieties, one magical and one tech, and they switch automatically when the "weather" changes, but you gotta pay your bills for both, which is a nice little touch, and similarly, if you want to protect your home, you need wards for magic time and solid, lockable doors for when magic is down, as physical barriers might not be enough to keep things out during magic, but wards won't work during tech, and things like weapons and transportation pose similar challenges. And then there's all the stuff that's simply gone, like air travel, and on the flip side, stuff that always works, such as horseback riding or swords.
Another favorite aspect of mine is how the knowledge that was gained during the technological era (before the first magic wave hits, at some point in our near future), is retained and can be applied to magical phenomena. Contraptions meant to detect and test magical traces have been built and added to the existing arsenal of forensics labs, and there are dual-purpose cars, built to run normally during tech, and on some form of enchanted water engine during magic. Fields like forensic science, medicine, biology, even surveillance, have expanded and incorporated magical aspects, instead of being replaced, so that while most of the technology-based structures, such as sky scrapers, for example, have mostly been reduced to rubble, the world hasn't become a stone age Swords and Sorcery type place, and has retained its urban aspects and feel, which I believe is rather important in urban fantasy.
The writing itself is neither spectacular nor horrendous. Most of the time it's straight forward, without drawing too much attention to itself and without too much self indulgence, and it gets the job done. The dialog tends to be solid, and the descriptions aren't too flowery and don't suffer from an overabundance of adjectives, which happens to be a pet peeve of mine. On the other hand, there's at least one writing tick that seriously got on my nerves. It seems like the writers are in love with this particular sentence structure:
Syntactically bizarre, this structure is nevertheless repeated over and over again. A mere smattering, these are all examples from flipping through the first book. Lacking any stylistic or substantive justification, this repetitive writing tick drove me nuts. I think I've made my point.
To be fair, the writing does improve in subsequent books, including less of that ^.
The following, also from the first book, gives a better idea of the overall tone and style:
The Kate Daniels books start out a bit shaky, but quickly become a fun, easy read. The KD world really worked for me, with its solid premise and lots of little touches that help ground it in reality. The wide range of characters was an unexpected bonus, as was the existence of actual couples who aren't the boring friends/parents but actual players who have personalities and are allowed to be both interesting and sexy(!) without being either perfect or all the same. Both the plots and the writing are hit and miss, and the overall series arc takes too long to get going, but these things do improve as the series progresses. I'd classify it as not genius but still thoroughly enjoyable romantic horror in an urban fantasy setting. If apocalyptic chick-lit sounds good to you, then I'd definitely recommend this series.
I stumbled onto this series by looking through various Urban Fantasy books on Amazon, so I don't know if anyone on here reads them, which I guess means that this is destined to be my first ever spoiler-free semi-proper book review. I'm all aflutter.
The back cover type synopsis, if I had to write it, would go something like this: In a world where a magical backlash occurred after centuries of technological advancement, alternating waves of magic and technology wash over the city of Atlanta, where shape-shifters, necromancers, guilds of mercenaries and an Order of Knights struggle for domination. Kate Daniels, a trained killer with a big mouth, a magic sword, and a personal history that, if revealed, would put her and everyone around her in mortal danger, steps out of the shadows in order to avenge her guardian's death, which forces her to navigate the murky waters of power politics and dangerous romantic entanglements while attempting to fight nightmarish monsters without revealing her identity.
The Kate Daniels books are built along the familiar lines of a central mystery each book, with a thread of slow-developing, slow-reveal series arc weaved in. Standard tropes abound, some better executed than others. Personally, I'm a sucker for the antagonistically hot love/hate relationship with the romantic interest, which is very well done in this series. It's not dragged out so much that you're just sick of it, and fights, arguments, disagreements and misunderstandings are generally resolved in a reasonably timely manner, so the books manage to avoid these two annoying traits of the trope, making it that much more fun to read. It also helps that I actually like both the male and female leads, even though I want to punch them both at times, which, in this case, is an indication that the writer made the characters and their relationship work for me, as opposed to making me hate them. Sadly, other plot threads don't work as well.
In the first couple of books, Kate's origin story somehow manages to be simultaneously too obvious and too opaque. The information that is hinted at comes across as not juicy enough to merit the attempt at drawing out its reveal, and it's only after the initial (unsurprising) reveal is out of the way that we start getting pieces of information that are actually intriguing. Laying out the basic facts earlier in the series and then portioning out the actual meat of the matter in morsels would've worked better. As it stands, we got way too much hinting at the basic facts in a not very subtle way for way too long, without any particular reason to see the basic facts as something that's worth building an arc over. I was mostly thinking that it's gonna be a series with a weak overall arc, which is fine, but 5 books in, it doesn't seem to be the case anymore, so I think they dropped the ball on that one, though they're picking it up now and seem to be running with it.
The bookly mystery/big!bad plots are generally the weakest aspect of the series. They're pretty basic fare; stumble-onto-bad-thing, realize bad!thing is worse/more mysterious than it might seem, figure out who's behind bad!thing/what bad!thing is, and finally, win big fight. Each such plot is interspersed with a red herring or two, danger due to investigating the bad!thing, and a large helping of lovingly cannibalized mishmash of various mythologies. The plots aren't bad so much as they're just not particularly exciting. There are some nice touches here and there, but mostly, the plots only serve as a background or, at best, a catalyst for character development, which is the real saving grace of the series.
The heroine, Kate, though she initially comes off as a standard Man with Breasts type, actually turns out to be a well crafted character. Even though she has some not-so-mysterious ancestry that gives her some extraordinary powers, and a slightly more mysterious upbringing that gives her some extraordinary skills, those assets are (mostly) balanced out by her being genuinely fucked up emotionally, which is portrayed very realistically, and by her complete lack of skills in areas in which she wasn't trained or gifted, which includes not just atrocious social skills, but also her being a truly terrible detective, which is rather refreshing for an urban fantasy series of the mystery/crime/horror variety. She is flawed in ways that are not only understandable and relatable, but are also consistent with her back story, and, perhaps most importantly, she's flawed in ways that affect both her work and her personal life to an extent that is neither minor nor insignificant, and, shockingly, she actually learns from her mistakes and grows as a character and as a person.
Characterization in general is a strong point in the series. Even though the story is told from Kate's limited (despite her exceptional observational skills) POV, most of the other characters are properly fleshed out, consistently portrayed, and easily differentiated, which is a huge bonus for me, as I suck at remembering names, so I have a hard time following even otherwise compelling storylines if I can't easily recognize the players.
On the cusp of characterization and world building, we have the Order and the Pack, two of the central organizations featured in the books, each with distinct structures and goals that are clearly laid out. Despite Kate's tendency to view everyone as an enemy, the information and the characters are sufficiently fleshed out, so that we can get a well rounded view of these two cultures, even though we see them through the protagonist's POV.
I also really like both the concept and the execution of the alternating waves of magic and technology washing over the world like weather. You get a real sense of the magic waves eroding technology, and of tech waves washing magic away, and somehow it just clicks, without having to read chapters (and sometimes several books) of long winded exposition just so you can wrap your head around the basic premise.
This premise also makes for an interesting and sometimes thought-provoking background, as people have to go without certain things entirely, due to the unreliable nature of the environment, while doubling up on other things so that they'll be available both during tech and during magic. Lighting, for instance, comes in two varieties, one magical and one tech, and they switch automatically when the "weather" changes, but you gotta pay your bills for both, which is a nice little touch, and similarly, if you want to protect your home, you need wards for magic time and solid, lockable doors for when magic is down, as physical barriers might not be enough to keep things out during magic, but wards won't work during tech, and things like weapons and transportation pose similar challenges. And then there's all the stuff that's simply gone, like air travel, and on the flip side, stuff that always works, such as horseback riding or swords.
Another favorite aspect of mine is how the knowledge that was gained during the technological era (before the first magic wave hits, at some point in our near future), is retained and can be applied to magical phenomena. Contraptions meant to detect and test magical traces have been built and added to the existing arsenal of forensics labs, and there are dual-purpose cars, built to run normally during tech, and on some form of enchanted water engine during magic. Fields like forensic science, medicine, biology, even surveillance, have expanded and incorporated magical aspects, instead of being replaced, so that while most of the technology-based structures, such as sky scrapers, for example, have mostly been reduced to rubble, the world hasn't become a stone age Swords and Sorcery type place, and has retained its urban aspects and feel, which I believe is rather important in urban fantasy.
The writing itself is neither spectacular nor horrendous. Most of the time it's straight forward, without drawing too much attention to itself and without too much self indulgence, and it gets the job done. The dialog tends to be solid, and the descriptions aren't too flowery and don't suffer from an overabundance of adjectives, which happens to be a pet peeve of mine. On the other hand, there's at least one writing tick that seriously got on my nerves. It seems like the writers are in love with this particular sentence structure:
Lean and phlegmatic, with a narrow, intelligent face, he looked more like a campus intellectual than a bartender.
Thirty city blocks long and eight blocks deep, it cut through what used to be Midtown like a dagger.
A couple of inches taller than me, the Beast Lord gave an impression of coiled power.
All but invisible from the highway, the fortress sat in the middle of a clearing.
Dangerous as hell, they had raised necromancy to the level of art.
Syntactically bizarre, this structure is nevertheless repeated over and over again. A mere smattering, these are all examples from flipping through the first book. Lacking any stylistic or substantive justification, this repetitive writing tick drove me nuts. I think I've made my point.
To be fair, the writing does improve in subsequent books, including less of that ^.
The following, also from the first book, gives a better idea of the overall tone and style:
I glanced at Derek. The boy wonder didn't melt into a pile of goo, although his gaze was glued to Rowena's chest. Avoiding eye contact. Good strategy.
"Sorry we're late."
"Not a problem. Please follow me."
We did, climbing the staircase up the long hallway.
"You've been here before?" Derek asked, his gaze firmly fixed on Rowena's ass shifting under the shimmering green silk a few steps above us.
"Wiggles," I told him.
He blinked, then realized I wasn't referring to Rowena's backside. "Wiggles?"
"She's about fourteen feet long, triangular head, gray and blue scales…"
He was clearly drawing a blank. "Nataraja's pet snake," I explained. "It bolted a few weeks ago. I found it for him at the request of the Guild." Mentioning that I spent four solid days camped out in a swamp, covered in peat and muck, without a change of clothes, would have completely cramped my style.
The Kate Daniels books start out a bit shaky, but quickly become a fun, easy read. The KD world really worked for me, with its solid premise and lots of little touches that help ground it in reality. The wide range of characters was an unexpected bonus, as was the existence of actual couples who aren't the boring friends/parents but actual players who have personalities and are allowed to be both interesting and sexy(!) without being either perfect or all the same. Both the plots and the writing are hit and miss, and the overall series arc takes too long to get going, but these things do improve as the series progresses. I'd classify it as not genius but still thoroughly enjoyable romantic horror in an urban fantasy setting. If apocalyptic chick-lit sounds good to you, then I'd definitely recommend this series.