Review: Magic Shifts

MAGIC SHIFTS
Kate Daniels #8
Ilona Andrews
Urban Fantasy
342 pages
Ace
Available Now
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
After breaking from life with the Pack, mercenary Kate Daniels and her mate—former Beast Lord Curran Lennart—are adjusting to a very different pace. While they’re thrilled to escape all the infighting, Curran misses the constant challenges of leading the shapeshifters.

So when the Pack offers him its stake in the Mercenary Guild, Curran seizes the opportunity—too bad the Guild wants nothing to do with him and Kate. Luckily, as a veteran merc, Kate can take over any of the Guild’s unfinished jobs in order to bring in money and build their reputation. But what Kate and Curran don’t realize is that the odd jobs they’ve been working are all connected.

An ancient enemy has arisen, and Kate and Curran are the only ones who can stop it—before it takes their city apart piece by piece…

MY THOUGHTS
The Kate Daniels series is one that manages to remain fresh and engaging despite rapidly approaching the double digits in number, teaching us new things about the endlessly imaginative world and its inhabitants with each installment. Magic Shifts is the latest outstanding addition to a phenomenal series, giving us a new and impressive villain to test Kate and Curran while at the same time deepening the relationship between the two of them as well as their relationships with those around them.

Kate is a woman who, without fail, brings a smile to our faces every time we pick up a book in this series, her quick wit and laid-back approach to creatures and situations that would have most people curled in the fetal position just a few of the things that make us want to reach out and hug her for being a more unconventional variety of badass. She has a healthy understanding of her own capabilities without constantly patting herself on the back, making her occasional boastful taunts to whomever she's facing down come across as genuine rather than self-congratulatory.

Her relationship with Curran is as much a highlight in this newest installment as it has been from the beginning, the two of them reaching a place where they have complete trust and faith in the other, and just when we begin to think an established romance might not hold our interest the way the building of it did in previous books, Ilona Andrews delivers the emotional equivalent of a smack upside the head for ever doubting them. The romantic punch to the gut is short-lived but no less poignant for its brevity, reminding us just how beautiful a couple Kate and Curran are and how much we want to see the two of them get to a place where their days are no longer full of life and death struggles.

Overall, Magic Shifts is as engaging and entertaining as we've come to expect from the writing team of Ilona Andrews, telling a complete story so that we're left utterly satisfied as we turn the last page while keeping the larger plot involving Roland alive and well so future installments have innumerable legs to stand on.

Rating: 4.5/5
 

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This book was  sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.