A review by erebus53
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

medium-paced

3.0

The story is typical of YA published in 2007. It's heteronormative, casually misogynistic, and full of werewolves and vampires. The vampires are brainless monsters though, and the gore and body-horror bits are liberally flexed. I do wish that the romance angles weren't so liberally peppered with red-flags. Men nagging you to go out with them might make you feel important? but it's also obvious that these dudes are not emotionally capable, and have serious issues with boundaries.

I've had good previous experiences with GraphicAudio productions, but this one is badly done. Dialogue is cut together poorly with some parts of dialogue overlapping or questions answered over the top of being asked. Some of the sound effects are utterly inappropriate – silently pulling a door closed is not a "Crrreeeak-kaThunk!" moment, and a roaring, magical, water-powered car should not sound like a child's bubble blowing machine.

The setting of the world is fairly intuitive, and is shown rather than told, which I really liked. Although the key plot points are predictable, there are some extra short stories on the end that I found quite fun. I liked the focus on Russian folklore.

This would have been a lot better if there was less fixation on describing clothes, (and less combat), and more tension around emotional vulnerability. I'm not enthused to read more of this series, but might pick the next one up if I get really bored.

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