Book 43, 2018
Magic Gifts by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
After reading Gunmetal Magic, I took the time this morning to read the novella included at the end. It was Magic Gifts by Ilona Andrews, and it's also part of the "Kate Daniels" series. The novella, however, followed Kate and Curran, and it happened in the same time frame as Gunmetal Magic.
Kate and Curran plan to go out for dinner and just relax and enjoy themselves for once. Their date goes pear-shaped when a young man at a neighboring table gives a necklace to his date, and it chokes her to death. Now, the vampires that the two were navigating are loose, and they storm the restaurant in search of fresh blood. Kate and Curran dispatch the vampires, but now they have to field questions from the police, the People, and the victim's family. When the necklace is removed from the girl's throat, her father reaches for it in a trance, but the mother snatches it away and claps it on her young son's neck, instead. She seems uncaring of his fate, which compels Kate and Curran to take the boy with them, in hopes of removing the necklace before it hungers again and kills him.
What should have been a simple task turns out to be more than they bargained for. The necklace is magic, and covered with runes. In order to decipher the runes, Kate and Curran must deal with the People (those who pilot vampires), a band of neo-Vikings, an undead Viking warrior, and a metal-working dwarf. At some point, Kate must also deal with the Guild and clean up the shit show it has turned into. All in a day's work for the Beast Lord and his Consort.
Another fantastic installment to this verse. I always enjoy Kate and Curran's bickering, as well as Kate's snarky sense of humor.
Favorite lines:
♦ Jim looked like he was carved from a block of solid muscle. Logic said that at some point he must've been a baby and then a child, but looking at him one was almost convinced that some deity had touched the ground with its scepter and proclaimed, "There shall be a badass," and Jim had sprung into existence, fully formed, complete with clothes, and ready for action.
♦ "Best date ever. Well, until people died and vampires showed up. But before that it was awesome."
♦ "It's hard to believe, but I go whole days without worrying about your likes and dislikes."
♦ Next to the vampire cantered a freakishly large black poodle. His name was Grendel, he was my dog, and while he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he loved me and he was handy in a fight. A few dozen yards behind us, an enormous lion trotted. When shapeshifters transformed, their animal forms were always larger than their natural counterparts, and Curran the Lion wasn't just large. He looked prehistoric. Colossal, gray, with faint darker stripes staining his fur like whip marks, he moved along the road at an easy pace, seemingly tireless. Which is why I'd ended up with The Dude. I had walked into the stables and told them I'd be traveling between a vampire and a lion the size of a rhino and I needed a horse that wouldn't freak out. True to the stable master's recommendation, The Dude seemed unflappable. Occasionally, when Curran flanked us, he would flare his nostrils a bit while the other horses shied and made panicked noises, but mostly The Dude just pounded his way forward in a straight line, convinced that the lion was a figment of his imagination and that the vampire ahead of him was just Grendel's deformed mutant brother. We were our own three-ring circus.
♦ Some men got excited by white lace and a translucent negligee. My love muffin got excited by a woman dressed to murder.
Sorry, not sorry, but that long paragraph deserved to be immortalized.
:D
Automatic five stars!
*****
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