Carolyn Cushman Reviews Magic Triumphs by Ilona Andrews and Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire
Ilona Andrews, Magic Triumphs (Ace 978-0-425-27071-4, $26.00, 327pp, hc) August 2018. Cover by Juliana Kolesova.
The Kate Daniels series wraps up in this tenth volume with some heartwarming bits, grave danger, and yet another epic battle. Kate and Curran have a baby, and Kate’s determined to keep her mad god of a father away from his grandchild. Meanwhile, she deals with Atlanta’s usual magical crises, but a new case involving the disappearance of the inhabitants of a nearby town turns out to threaten all she holds dear. The massive final battle involves a humorously ludicrous secret weapon, but also pulls in all the heavy hitters Kate knows, with some savvy, sneaky twists in their deployment – even Roland takes a hand. It makes a reasonably satisfactory conclusion to a series I hate to see end, though the epilogue certainly leaves room for a spin-off.
Seanan McGuire, Night and Silence (DAW 978-0-7564-1476-4, $26.00, 352pp, hc) September 2018. Cover by Chris McGrath.
October Daye’s life just gets more complicated. This twelfth volume in the series finds Toby and her friends picking up the pieces after her mother kidnapped Toby’s fiancé Tybalt and her fetch’s lover in order to force Toby to find her long-missing sister. Tybalt, traumatized by the experience, takes off, leaving Toby uncertain if they still have a future together. Then word comes that Toby’s human daughter Gillian has been kidnapped. Gillian (and her father) never forgave Toby for disappearing during most of her childhood, and Toby has stayed away as much as possible, but now the ex and his wife blame Toby. Of course Toby investigates, finding clear, but confusing, signs of faerie involvement. False trails, traps, deadly opponents, and fascinating discoveries keep things exciting, and then a huge revelation, something out of an old ballad (and faerie history), transforms Toby’s life yet again – and just for fun, we get a novella at the end that retells much of the story from a new point-of-view. An impressive installment in an always entertaining series, but probably not a good place for new readers to jump in.
Carolyn F. Cushman, Senior Editor, has worked for Locus since 1985, the longest of any of the current staff, and handles our in-house books database, writes our New and Notable section, and does the monthly Books Received column. She is a graduate of Western Washington University with a degree in English. She published a fantasy novel, Witch and Wombat, in 1994.
This review and more like it in the October 2018 issue of Locus.
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