MAGIC IN THE BLOOD, Devon Monk — Review
MAGIC IN THE BLOOD is the second book of the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk. I bought the paperback some time ago, but in honor of book three coming out November 3rd (next week!), I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to re-read the series. I've already reviewed book one, MAGIC TO THE BONE.
The first thing I noticed when I got this book was how different Allie looks on the cover in comparison to MAGIC TO THE BONE. She's still clearly recognizable--same hair, same tattoos, even the same clothing style, but this Allie looks emaciated and a little fae. Her eyes are almost too big for her face, and she's clutching a bloody knife. I don't say any of this as a critique of the artist, Larry Rostant, but rather in many ways as a compliment. Allie is in a different place in her life in this book--and MAGIC TO THE BONE took a lot out of her, emotionally and physically. It makes sense that she'd look a little tired and lost.
I'm going to skip giving a summary of the book, since you can find one anywhere and it's not a brand new book, and just talk about the stuff I liked and didn't like about it.
In the last review, I mentioned how much I love the consequences that Allie has to go through, such as potentially losing her memory, massive bruising, etc. for using her magic. She has ways of coping--recording things that happen to her, directing backlashes so that she can prepare for the pain to come--but in MAGIC TO THE BONE, we never really saw her write much down in her book, so it's great to see that come back to bite her in MAGIC IN THE BLOOD, where she has no memory of her Happily Ever After, which also changes my perspective on how easy it seemed to attain; now, in book two, we see that there are still difficult things left for Allie to face.
This isn't the only weakness that Allie has, either. There are a lot of things about her that make her seem human, instead of the kind of bad-ass, butt-kicking machine that some protagonists are. For instance, her claustrophobia is portrayed realistically as something that she has, that chokes her up, but it doesn't incapacitate her (even when the stakes are low, instead of the claustrophobia being something she "overcomes" in a moment of need, which I thought was a nice touch). She's living hand to mouth (despite coming from a relatively rich background, but her inheritance is tied up in legal matters and she's never been a big fan of her father, so she's been doing without for years anyway), takes the bus, and her cell phone is busted. The minor problems life throws in front of her are believable, but they add up to set the tone of the book really well.
Many of the things I liked about MAGIC TO THE BONE are present here, as well, including the presence of strong secondary female characters. I really liked Violet, Allie's scarily competent young step-mother, and Allie's relationship with Payne, one of the cops she goes to when she comes across illegal activity during her Hounding jobs. Payne is a tough cop who never smiles, but Allie doesn't hold it against her, and the two women get along in their own way. They'll never be best friends, but they're capable of having a professional relationship with mutual liking on both sides, which is such a pleasant change from what I see in the rest of the genre.
Speaking of friends, it's nice that Allie has people who care about her, and it's sometimes heartbreaking that there are people she's friends with, where she doesn't remember that friendship. On the other hand, it makes for an interesting dichotomy because on the one hand, we have the semi-traditional loner protagonist, but on the other, it's not because she's snarky or has trust issues or doesn't like people, but because of her memory problems... and people still care for her anyway. Sometimes as a reader it's frustrating that Allie forgets things we know (I personally am not a huge fan of knowing things that my first-person narrator doesn't, like whodunnit or that so-and-so is perfect for her and please get it over with already), but we know that it's just as frustrating for Allie, which draws you into her story even more.
However, what I really didn't like about it was the way that we felt like we were going over the same ground again and again. In the last book, Allie started from not knowing Zay to dating him. In this book, Allie starts from pretty much not knowing Zay to dating him. The trouble with the losing-her-memory concept is that it makes the books a little repetitive. This isn't to say that Monk actually repeats herself in terms of the plots or even the relationships--Zay and Allie go through things very differently this time around--but conceptually, I'm a bit bothered by the way Allie's memory loss makes us go back over familiar ground.
Also, something I didn't mention before but probably should have, is how good Monk's prose is on a purely pleasure-of-reading analysis. I love that she remembers to include more than just sight and hearing inasfar as senses go--we get to smell cinnamon buns along with Allie, feel the creepy ghostly hands of her father, etc. I will say that a few cliches sneak in, but I suspect I've just been made oversensitive by critique groups.
That said, I should probably address the plot. I'm going to try to do so without giving spoilers, but it'll probably come out vague. I mostly liked the plot, with the ghosts and the dead dad and the Authority (Men in Black types who do behind the scenes stuff with magic) and the Pack (a new organization of Allie's fellow Hounds). I thought that the two main threads, the kidnapped girls and the ghosts, came together nicely in the end. I did think that the story was missing the kind of edge-of-your-seat suspense that a truly great, once-in-a-lifetime book would have had, but I liked this enough to give it full marks, and am certainly looking forward to when Allie finds out more about the Authority, and to how she deals with being the new "leader" of the Pack.
5/5: Monk is definitely settling in to what promises to be a great series, and I loved this book.
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