MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS, Devon Monk–Review
Today was release day for Book 3 of the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk. In preparation for this happy day, last Tuesday and the Tuesday before that I, I reviewed book one, MAGIC TO THE BONE, and book two, MAGIC IN THE BLOOD.
I'm not going to talk too much about the cover this time, except to note again with approval that the machete she's holding actually shows up in the story, yay artists (it's still Larry Rostant) whose covers actually address the subject material.
The idea of this book is that Allie has to deal with the soul of her dead father cohabitating her body and generally trying to tell her what to do. She also has to deal with the Authority, which her father was a member of, though he did his dead level best to keep her off their radar and vice versa. Her main goal is to learn to better use her magical abilities, except nothing really comes out of that and she doesn't learn to do too much that's new.
Book three starts almost immediately where book two left off, which isn't something I really like in a series, mostly because it doesn't allow for as much of a lead-in to this story, and because it requires a lot more info-dumping in the beginning to catch the reader up. Unfortunately, MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS kicked off with a lot of infodumping, and I didn't enjoy the set-up too much, although the opening scenes were rather good visually. The pacing was good in the beginning, and we never got cheated out of our payoff.
Unfortunately, as I read through the rest of the book, the pacing started to feel a little hectic. Though I really enjoyed book two and book one had quite a bit of promise, book three felt like a bit of a let down. It was still a solid book, with a solid premise and a lot of good things about it (for instance, there's a moment when Allie splits her lip and she and her boyfriend stop kissing because she hasn't been tested lately, and recently she's had a few sketchy things happen to her--like being injected with a needle and stabbed, and she came into contact with bleeding people while she had open wounds--which I think is a great thing to see happen in a novel) but it wasn't excellent.
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.
Noir and Urban Fantasy
Awhile back, I joined a fiction community at livejournal.com called Prose Challenge. The community's "blurb" is
This is a community for those of you that enjoy creative writing. Every one - two weeks a new challenge will be posted. As an example, we might give you a title, an opening sentence, a picture, or something completely different. It is then up to you to write a story of up to 5000 words that links to the prompt we gave you. You do not have to enter every single challenge, it's up to you which ones you feel like doing.
and while I can't come up with something for every challenge, I usually try. It's a good community, and the prompts help keep me inspired to write, and I enjoy the practice of having to actually finish pieces every week; endings are much harder to practice than beginnings, after all.
I bring this up because this week's (week 33!) challenge is to write a film noir piece that takes place in an unusual location. While I often describe myself as an urban fantasy reader primarily, the truth is that my absolute favorite niche of the sci-fi/fantasy genre is what I like to call "noir fantasy." The Dresden Files (beginning with STORM FRONT) by Jim Butcher are a good example of this, as are Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. books (beginning with SWEET SILVER BLUES), the Cal Leandros (NIGHTLIFE) books by Rob Thurman, The Vampire Files (BLOODLIST) by P.N. Elrod, and the Nightside (WELCOME TO THE NIGHTSIDE) books by Simon R. Green.
MAGIC TO THE BONE, Devon Monk – Review
MAGIC TO THE BONE is the first book of the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk. It is also Monk's debut novel, and has the rare distinction of having a cover that stays relatively true to the novel while still being visually alluring. The cover artist was Larry Rostant, and he did a great job. I bought the paperback some time ago, before the second book came out, but in honor of book three coming out November 3rd, I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to re-read the series.
Allie Beckstrom is a Hound, able to trace a spell back to its caster, and while she may be one of the best there is at what she does, that doesn't make her home any less crummy or her bank account any less meager. This despite the fact that her father is a rich, powerful businessman, because she left that world long ago. But when she comes across a little boy dying from an illegal magic Offload, which is a way of avoiding the price of magic, she's drawn back into that world--because the Offload bears her father's magical signature. And then her father turns up dead, and she's the lead suspect, which complicates things quite a bit.
My favorite element of this series is the price of magic that Monk has chosen to have her characters pay. The first line of the back-cover blurb was Everything has a cost. And every act of magic extracts a price from its user... and that drew me in immediately. I come from the school of thought that insists that magic shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail-free card for a character; it doesn't exist to make things easy or just for the shiny coolness factor.
I remember when I first came across Holly Lisle's eleven Rules for Better Fantasy. I won't say they changed my life, but they certainly changed the way I read fiction. If a particular kind of magic is a way out of trouble for a character, or doesn't come with consequences, chances are I'm never even going to get past the book's back cover.