Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1)

by Ilona Andrews

[EBookObsessed]

As always, the world building and the characters are phenomenal. I picked up White Hot and Wildfire as soon as I finished with Book 1. I may be late to this party, but I am very happy that because I waited, I have more stories to binge on.

While it must be hard to beat their own world-building from the Kate Daniels series, Ilona Andrews does give it a try in the Hidden Legacy series.

This world is the same as ours except that in 1863, scientists created the Osiris serum which gave people magical powers, which was mostly used by the already rich and powerful. After realizing the flaw in giving God-like powers to people who already have too much power, they stopped manufacturing the serum, but those who already had taken the serum were passing on those powers to their children and their children’s children. Those with the most magic are called Primes and the families with many Primes are called Houses. Wars between the Houses are common.

The magical abilities varies as talents usually do and it is interesting to see what keeps popping up. Not every magic user is a Prime, and this story is told by Navada Baylor, a Private Investigator (part of an investigative family) who is a human lie detector. Her magic buzzes when someone tries to lie to her. She has a strong connection to her family and a strong moral compass.

In Burn for Me, the Baylor Investigative Services, or more particularly, Navada is brought in by MII, her parent company, to apprehend a Prime known as Adam Pierce. Adam thinks of himself as a rebel but he is more of a spoiled bully from the powerful House Pierce. The only problem that this spoiled bully can control fire and he is wanted by the police for burning a security guard to death during a bank robbery. Navada doesn’t want anything to do with this suicide mission she is being sent on, since it is way above her pay grade but she is told that MII will take her company’s business and holdings (specifically where they live) if she does not. She knows that MII expects her to fail, and is planning on using her as a scapegoat to House Pierce when she fails.

Navada also knows the only way she can bring Adam in and hope to survive is by trying to convince him to turn himself over to his house, which would be so much better then waiting for the angry police officers to find him and shoot first. The only thing that would screw up her plan would be if House Rogan were to become involved since Adam’s accomplice was the nephew of Connor “Mad” Rogan. But lucky for Navada, Mad Rogan doesn’t seem to want anything to do with his family, so she might just be able to pull this off.

That is until she is kidnapped by Mad Rogan, tied up in his basement while he tries to use magic and force her to give him information on Adam Pierce. Rogan can’t break Navada, so he forces his way into her investigation.

Sparks fly between Navada and Rogan but I love the fact that even though Rogan is an extremely deadly magic user, trained by the military, Navada continually stands up to him. She also has to stand up to herself, as she is quite effected by the sexual tension between them, but holds strong knowing that even if Rogan isn’t truly psychotic and dangerous as she knows he is, Navada will always come out on the losing end since she doesn’t have the magical strength or financial power to be an equal to Rogan. There would never be a long term future for them so it would eventually end in heartache for her.

There is no slow in an Ilona Andrew novel. There is either character building, world building or full out action going on in every scene.

While there isn’t an official cliffhanger, there is a continuing conspiracy thread which continues with the next two stories as well as the continuing sexual tension between Rogan and Navada.

As soon as I saw that Rogan and Navada were the main characters of all three stories, I quickly picked up the other books in the series and began my binge. The only issue I have is that Renee Raudman is the same narrator for the Kate Daniels series. Renee does a good job but it took some brain power to remember that I was in a whole other story.

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