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A review by aimy_unabridged
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews
3.0
Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
Spice (scale at bottom ↓): 🔥
Tags: adult, single pov, badass fmc, crime solving, urban fantasy
To my complete surprise, I actually enjoyed the writing. I say “surprise”, because this book was published in 2007, and to say that I haven’t had much luck with books from that era is an understatement. There WERE a few instances in the prose where that typical early 2000s mindset reared its ugly head, mostly pertaining to gender roles and descriptions of physical appearances. But they were not nearly as bad as I feared. I’ve definitely DNFd books before for that reason.
Despite this being urban fantasy, there’s actually a decent bit of lore and world building, yet I never felt like I was force-fed paragraphs of exposition, as is often the case nowadays. Surprisingly, the world building felt pretty seamless.
I was also unnecessarily worried about the FMC. She’s described as a snarky badass, which usually means that I’m about to be presented with an immature class clown spouting badly written one-liners at the worst possible moments, not knowing when to shut up and be serious. “Sarcastic”, “badass” characters are difficult to write because often writers don’t know when to dial it down or they forget to counteract the snark with vulnerability. There’s a fine line before your “badass” character becomes a gimmicky caricature. But Kate Daniels is just the right amount of badass without coming across as cringe. And her snark is appropriately balanced with vulnerability. Her character overall felt pretty grounded and like someone I would actually want to be friends with.
I also really enjoyed the dialogue. It felt pretty effortless and organic. I often have issues with dialogue in modern books because it feels too much like the author having a conversation with themselves, like I can hear the author’s voice through the characters, and it takes me out of the story. That wasn’t the case here at all. The characters all feel decisively unique and distinct from each other. I often forgot I was reading all together, content to watch the movie in my head unfold.
My issues begin and end with the pacing. I was unbelievably bored throughout most of this book, because 70% of it is just Kate poring over documents, analyzing data, and occasionally meeting with some specialist who can help her answer some of the questions that come up as she analyzes said data. We just follow her along while she walks from point A to B, conducting forensic analysis. I wanted to put my head through a wall. It’s just extremely uninteresting to me.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that Kate goes into far too much detail describing certain structures and buildings. On top of all the slow paced forensic science, where we spend 70-or-so pages at a time just in Kate’s head as she contemplates her data, we get entire pages filled with unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the places Kate goes to to talk to those specialists I mentioned. At one point she goes to a grand casino to talk to this one guy and spends an entire page describing the building in excruciating detail. That happened A LOT. I don’t think I would’ve minded or even noticed as much had everything else been better paced.
The epilogue suggests that the sequel will be about another case that Kate needs to solve, and I’m undecided if I want to read it. I just really did not enjoy the criminology aspect of the story, and if there’s more of it, I’ll be just as bored.
* * *
Spice Rating:
🔥 just kissing, no touching, no intimacy (Tithe, Ironside)
🌶️ kissing, minor touching, no or off-page intimacy (Legendborn)
🌶️🔥 intense kissing, fade-to-black (The Queen of Nothing)
🌶️🌶️ kissing, touching, 1 tame explicit scene (ACOTAR)
🌶️🌶️🔥 2-3 tame explicit scenes (Fourth Wing, ACOMAF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️ multiple explicit scenes, dirty talk (Bride)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 multiple very explicit scenes, some kinks (ACOSF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ frequent intense explicit scenes, kinks (Soul of a Witch)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 intense, kinks, more spice than plot (Haunting Adeline)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ almost/ every chapter, intense, extremely kinky
[DISCLAIMER: I rate “spice” primarily for reader transparency.]
Spice (scale at bottom ↓): 🔥
Tags: adult, single pov, badass fmc, crime solving, urban fantasy
To my complete surprise, I actually enjoyed the writing. I say “surprise”, because this book was published in 2007, and to say that I haven’t had much luck with books from that era is an understatement. There WERE a few instances in the prose where that typical early 2000s mindset reared its ugly head, mostly pertaining to gender roles and descriptions of physical appearances. But they were not nearly as bad as I feared. I’ve definitely DNFd books before for that reason.
Despite this being urban fantasy, there’s actually a decent bit of lore and world building, yet I never felt like I was force-fed paragraphs of exposition, as is often the case nowadays. Surprisingly, the world building felt pretty seamless.
I was also unnecessarily worried about the FMC. She’s described as a snarky badass, which usually means that I’m about to be presented with an immature class clown spouting badly written one-liners at the worst possible moments, not knowing when to shut up and be serious. “Sarcastic”, “badass” characters are difficult to write because often writers don’t know when to dial it down or they forget to counteract the snark with vulnerability. There’s a fine line before your “badass” character becomes a gimmicky caricature. But Kate Daniels is just the right amount of badass without coming across as cringe. And her snark is appropriately balanced with vulnerability. Her character overall felt pretty grounded and like someone I would actually want to be friends with.
I also really enjoyed the dialogue. It felt pretty effortless and organic. I often have issues with dialogue in modern books because it feels too much like the author having a conversation with themselves, like I can hear the author’s voice through the characters, and it takes me out of the story. That wasn’t the case here at all. The characters all feel decisively unique and distinct from each other. I often forgot I was reading all together, content to watch the movie in my head unfold.
My issues begin and end with the pacing. I was unbelievably bored throughout most of this book, because 70% of it is just Kate poring over documents, analyzing data, and occasionally meeting with some specialist who can help her answer some of the questions that come up as she analyzes said data. We just follow her along while she walks from point A to B, conducting forensic analysis. I wanted to put my head through a wall. It’s just extremely uninteresting to me.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that Kate goes into far too much detail describing certain structures and buildings. On top of all the slow paced forensic science, where we spend 70-or-so pages at a time just in Kate’s head as she contemplates her data, we get entire pages filled with unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the places Kate goes to to talk to those specialists I mentioned. At one point she goes to a grand casino to talk to this one guy and spends an entire page describing the building in excruciating detail. That happened A LOT. I don’t think I would’ve minded or even noticed as much had everything else been better paced.
The epilogue suggests that the sequel will be about another case that Kate needs to solve, and I’m undecided if I want to read it. I just really did not enjoy the criminology aspect of the story, and if there’s more of it, I’ll be just as bored.
* * *
Spice Rating:
🔥 just kissing, no touching, no intimacy (Tithe, Ironside)
🌶️ kissing, minor touching, no or off-page intimacy (Legendborn)
🌶️🔥 intense kissing, fade-to-black (The Queen of Nothing)
🌶️🌶️ kissing, touching, 1 tame explicit scene (ACOTAR)
🌶️🌶️🔥 2-3 tame explicit scenes (Fourth Wing, ACOMAF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️ multiple explicit scenes, dirty talk (Bride)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 multiple very explicit scenes, some kinks (ACOSF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ frequent intense explicit scenes, kinks (Soul of a Witch)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 intense, kinks, more spice than plot (Haunting Adeline)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ almost/ every chapter, intense, extremely kinky
[DISCLAIMER: I rate “spice” primarily for reader transparency.]