Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, #2)

by Ilona Andrews

[EBookObsessed]

I still have the same love/hate with this series. I am enjoying getting to know Kate, Curran, and the secondary characters. I just found delving in depth into all the celtic legends to be too much of a distraction to enjoy the story.
Every seven years, the magic that floods the earth has flares, similar to solar flares. Each flare grows in strength until a final explosion and it settles down once again. While the magic flares, all magic users are scrambling to grab as much power as possible and do as much damage and gain as much control as they can before the flares end.

Kate has been hired by the Pack to reclaim stolen maps. The Pack could do it themselves, but they don’t want the embarrassment of anyone finding out that someone was able to successfully steal from the Pack. While searching, Kate stumbles upon an orphan from a prior story, Red, and his friend, Julie. Julie’s witch mother has gone missing. Kate is getting the lowdown on what happened to the mother’s coven, when the maps suddenly find Kate. Or should we say that Bran, a mysterious, handsome man finds Kate and Julie and he just happens to have stolen the pack’s property. Bran can disappear into thin air and he also has the ability to heal almost instantly making it hard for Kate to do any damage. Kate reclaims the maps and returns them to the pack only to have them stolen again by Bran.

Kate also can’t allow a young girl to wander the streets alone, so she takes Julie home until they can find out what happened to Julie’s mother and the rest of her coven. It seems the coven was trying to summon the celtic goddess, Morrigan in hopes of receiving riches and power, but Morrigan is known more for backfiring your wish for her own entertainment.

Since the witches were using Morrigan’s cauldron of rebirth or also known as the gateway to the otherworld, this also brings into the picture Morrigan’s enemies, the Fomoire. They too want to use the cauldron to bring forth the damned to run rampant in Atlanta. They also have no qualms about sacrificing a defenseless little girl to get what they need out of Kate.

THOUGHTS:
I am once again torn between my love/hate on this series. I am really starting to like Kate, and even Curren and young Derek are growing on me. What was making me crazy is the fact that Kate has a mental library of myths and legends and I do not. This story involved celtic gods and legends including Morrigan, her enemy Morfran, a gaggle of reeves, which are undead mermaids who float around on land, are hard to kill and use their hair like a monkey uses his tail. The reeves are controlled like the vampires but in this case, they are controlled by Bolgar the Shephard, a sea-demon, who hides under a monk’s robe but you can see his tentacles peeking out.

Kate is trying to find Julie’s mother. Trying to figure out why Red is trying trying to use Julie. She’s fighting off reeves who are also trying to get to Julie. Trying to not get killed by Bolgar the Shephard, by Bran and even by Curran, who she constantly pisses off. The pack sends her on a quest. The witches send her on quest. Everyone is throwing around magic. After catching us up with all the obscure celtic legends and myths being used in this story, and jumping back and forth between the Order, the Pack, the Witches, the Honeycomb, etc., etc., I was giving the whole ending a blah, blah, blah, let’s get on with it hand-motion.

As I stated in my review of Magic Bites, I don’t know if listening to this series on audiobook is having an affect on my enjoyment and I don’t mean that there is any problem with the narrator. I just feel that maybe there is too much going on to keep up without reading the pages when that is all I am doing, focusing on the book in front of me, rather than the 100 other things I do while listening to an audiobook. Although I did listen to this as I traveled on vacation as the passenger. I wasn’t listening while driving so I had nothing else to focus on but the story to distract me from the long road trip.

In this case I think it was more the flood of new characters and the constant change of focus of what Kate needed to do first. I was just overwhelmed with the craziness of the story.

Main story point: Kate, Curran, Derek, the Mercs, the Order, Andrea, Julie, etc., the magic flows. I like all that.

History lessons on obscure celtic legends. NO! You’re making my head hurt keeping up. Give me one or two, not a flood. Throwing in a history of witches and hierarchy…enough. This is taking away from the enjoyment of reading.

I will be reading Book #3, as soon as I can squeeze it in, and I will let you know if that has any effect on my enjoyment of this series. A review of the story premise on Book 3 looks more promising.

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