Title: Magic Bites
Series: Kate Daniels #1
Author: Ilona Andrews
Genre: Urban fantasy, Romance
Publisher: Ace Books
Format: eBooks
ISBN: 9780425264201
BOOKSHOP || AMAZON || BARNES & NOBLE
Summary: When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.
Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta’s magic circles.
The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings—and the death of Kate’s guardian may be part of the same mystery.
Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she’s way out of her league—but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
My Review of MAGIC BITES
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews was an unexpectedly addictive page-turner. I bought the book a couple of years ago on a whim.
It was sometime after I devoured the Night Huntress series and was on the prowl for something else to sink my talons into. But then it got buried under the TBR tower. And you know how that goes: out of sight, out of mind.
That is, until a few weeks ago, when I cracked open Magic Bites and found myself oddly hooked.
The story itself isn’t perfect. It has all the usual quirks and flaws of a first novel in a series. It sometimes slips into those little PNR tropes we love and despise. There are parts where the pacing sucks, the exposition is vomit, and the themes aren’t rocket science.
But…
Gods, it was worth it. Despite all its weirdness and imperfections, Magic Bites is pumped with delicious snark, refreshing takes on monsters, and a city at the mercy of the battle between magic and technology.
It was everything I used to love about urban fantasy novels; it was everything I didn’t know I was missing in my life until I took a chance on it.
I have no regrets.
Mostly.
Everything I Loved About
Magic Bites
1. Kate Daniels
It’s been a million lifetimes since I’ve genuinely enjoyed a female character as much as I have Kate Daniels. I went into Magic Bites expecting Kate to be whiny, annoying, and love-struck at the first sign of interest from male characters. Or worse, an aggressive brute who behaves more like a caveman with a gun than a woman on a mission.
Don’t get me wrong; I love when female protagonists step outside societal expectations and bend gender norms, but I’m not a fan of a female character crafted to be, well, a man with tits. I like a bit of balance when it comes to protagonists, a mix of the masculine and the feminine.
And in my opinion, Kate Daniels fits the bill. She is sarcastic, antagonistic, and always weighing up situations with a pragmatic eye. She’s got a bit of an ego, but she can back up that bark with some bite.
She’s also incredibly loyal, empathetic, and protective of those she feels responsible for. She has moments of weakness, and embraces them. She knows her own strengths and limitations, even if she ignores the latter half the time. And she has some of the best comebacks ever. I love how daring she is, even to a fault, because she wouldn’t be Kate Daniels without that boldness.
Also, almost everything she tries to help with ends like this…
Her role in Magic Bites is also pretty cool: she’s a merc who, upon the suspicious death of a beloved guardian, forms an investigative liaison with the Merciful Knights—a guild of sorts that she has a tangled history with and low opinion of.
As you can imagine, this leads to so much adventure, drama, and strange encounters, but I clung to every page as if I’d drown if I didn’t see the story to its end. And, really, I was there for this badass heroine full of flaws and snarky insults.
A few quotes that are so deliciously Kate Daniels:
“I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it.”
“Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core.”
“Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my patience had run dry. I crouched and called out, ‘Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.'”
“These were unsafe times. But then in safer times, I’d be a woman without a job. The safe-tech world had little use for a magic-touting mercenary like me.”
2. Magic versus Technology In Georgia
“Magic could not be measured and explained in scientific terms, for magic grew through destroying the very natural principles that made science as people knew it impossible.”
One element of Magic Bites that I absolutely enjoyed was the conflict between magic and technology. This struggle was such an interesting and refreshing experience, bringing the world and its characters to life off the page.
Though set in an alternate Atlanta, Georgia, the world is quite similar to our own in terms of tech. They have cell phones, cars, computers, and guns. However, because the world is constantly bombarded by magic that comes and goes like tsunami waves, much of the technology is disrupted. This plunges the world into a grittier, darker place where magic and monsters thrive.
In many ways, the magic in Magic Bites isn’t complicated or revolutionary. It does suffer from a few tropes, but I still found myself drawn into this world, attracted to its magic and the way characters are forced to evolve with it.
Magic is treated as a living thing, not sentient, but certainly not passive. It can’t be fully controlled, contained, or destroyed, and it’s accessible to everyone to some degree. There are those who can learn to harness it, to hone their skills in a particular corner of magic, but for the most part, anyone could do a bit of magic…no matter how disastrous the results.
“It took a qualified wizard to detect a summoning in progress. It required only a half-literate idiot with a twitch of power and a dim idea of how to use it to attempt one. Before you knew it, a three-headed Slavonic god was wreaking havoc in downtown Atlanta, the skies were raining winged snakes, and SWAT was screaming for more ammo.”
This tug of war forces the characters to be resourceful and adapt quickly when the tides shift. This created a layer of urgency and tension to the quick-paced plot, as I was already aware circumstances could change at any moment.
And I….I loved this about the book. I loved how bizarre and unexpected every twist and turn became because the world itself felt like it might swallow me alive.
It was refreshing and exhilarating to read.
3. Slow Burn Enemies To Lovers Romance
I’m going to do my best not to drop spoilers here, but no hard promises.
Magic Bites is a slow burn romance novel. A true slow burn, that is. So there’s not really any kissing, sex, or witty flirting in the this book. If anything, it begins much like an enemies to lovers, with Kate and Curran preferring death over viewing the other as attractive. There’s spite, sarcasm, power plays, and mutual annoyance.
So why am I talking about romance if there isn’t any in the book? Well, potential couples have to start somewhere. I love how we meet Kate and Curran as two very different individuals, but similar in all the wrong ways. They’re both stubborn, aloof, and love to get even, which makes every encounter between them taught with tension and rife with comedic insults. But perhaps the best part for me is learning about who they are at their core without all the googly eyes getting in the way. Sometimes, when characters have explosive chemistry, readers lose all sense of who the characters are by themselves.
But Magic Bites only introduces a smoldering whisper of possibility of something more. It’s so subtle and nuanced and buried under the characters’ own personal conflicts, but it hums in the background, patiently building.
For now, though, Kate wants nothing to do with Curran and he wants nothing to do with her. And I’m loving all the hate to love you and love to hate you vibes.
4. Refreshing Take on Monsters
All I want to say about the monsters in Magic Bites is I didn’t expect to be surprised. Vampires and shifters are often so overdone in exactly the same ways, that it can sometimes prompt an involuntary eye roll. There are only so many alpha wolf dudes battling against gorgeous vampires I can take. So I wasn’t sure if Magic Bites was going to regurgitate the same old tropes we’d expect.
It. Did. Not.
I was pleased to see the vampires weren’t elegant and glamorous; they were hideous, alienating, and blood thirsty. And they didn’t have a mind of their own. In fact, vampires in Magic Bites were empty meat shells that necromancers took for joy rides. No one became a vampire through a bite or draining of blood; they became vampires much in the same way people donate their bodies to science. And well before that, they had to pass rigorous physical exams and other pre-reqs that would deem them fit to become a vampire.
At first, this concept was a little weird to me, probably because I hadn’t seen it in a story before. It was refreshing, intriguing, and a little creepy.
I won’t talk about the shifters because there’s so freaking much to unpack there, but I will say there were some unique twists thrown at some old tropes. That’s all I’m sayin’.
What I Wasn't Crazy About
1. Too Much Exposition At Times
As much as I enjoyed the intense, immersive world-building that went into Magic Bites, I found moments too exposition-heavy for my liking. Kate explains everything from Pack protocol and tech versus magical waves to the nuanced conflicts between each of the response teams (like the Paranormal Police or Merciful Knights). Alone, these snippets were actually awesome. They added so much depth to the world, conflicts, and even the relationships between the various characters.
That said, I found it irksome when the same details were rehashed repeatedly throughout the novel. It felt like hand-holding to me, as if the authors didn’t trust readers to remember those details.
As a result, the pacing occasionally suffered, dragging the story to a sluggish crawl right. Sometimes this happened right in the middle of an intensive scene, so it was one of my least favorite quirks about the story.
2. Hint Hint Hint
Throughout Magic Bites, we gain insight into Kate’s past, parentage, and personal trauma. And I loved how easy it was to empathize with her, to cheer her on and wish for vengeance. That’s why the constant little hints at some parts of her past kind of bothered me.
Without spoiling it, there’s a detail about Kate readers are made aware of. We know it’s there. We have our theories. But it’s never addressed in the first book. It felt like we delved into the core of who she was, but we didn’t get an honest gander. Just the promise of one. It was like the detail was deliberately staring us in the face, but wouldn’t relent and reveal.
I kept expecting to understand, to find out what all the hint hint hint was about, given Kate constantly referenced it, but we didn’t get an explanation until book two.
It didn’t ruin the story for me, but it was a slight annoyance.
Final Verdict
Magic Bites was addictive, hilarious, and full of fantastical magic. It’s kind of like a high fantasy wrapped in an urban setting, which was entertaining. It was everything I didn’t expect it to be, but that’s why I found myself so invested in it.
The story isn’t isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explore deeply complicated themes or tackle any sort of ideology. In short: it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Yet, it still manages to give readers an immersive world to crawl into, complex characters to fall in love with, a never-ending roller coaster of shite hitting the fan, and a few fights of laughter in between.
Quick recommendation note: Magic Bites contains strong language, sexual innuendos, and a few areas some readers might deem problematic. So, I wouldn’t recommend it for younger readers, anyone easily offended, and those who generally don’t enjoy urban fantasies or paranormal romances. It’s probably not going to be your cuppa tea, guys.
