Oh, what a wonderful monstery world

Magic Bites discussion, part 2 (see part 1 here)

Okay, well now I’ve finished MAGIC BITES, by Ilona Andrews. It was great, full of excellent tension, interesting characters and fabulously drawn monsters and villains. I’m not going to talk about the main monster, whose delicious scariness and yuckiness is built over many passages and pages, but even the minor monsters are great. Like, the vampires, who are more mindless creature than human in this world.

Here is the very ancient vampire our hero and her pals come upon and fight. This is a lot of description to stop the story for, but it never gets boring because it has action embedded into it, and the details are impressively vivid, with a kind of pop at the end.

The thing followed me on all fours. It was a vampire, but one so ancient that no trace of it having walked upright remained. The bones of its spine and hips had permanently shifted to adapt to quadruped locomotion.

The creature advanced, lean and wiry like a greyhound. An inch-high bone crest shielded its spine, formed by outgrowth of the vertebrae through the leather-thick skin. It paused, hugged the ground for a moment, and rose again, ruby-red eyes fixed on me.

Its face no longer bore any resemblance to a human, the skull jutted back in a bony hornlike curve to balance the horribly massive protruding jaws. The creature had no nose, not even a hint of a nose bridge. It opened its mouth, splitting its head in half. Rows of fangs gleamed against the blackness. It wouldn’t just puncture and rip. It would shred me.

Gulp. The fight is pretty good, too. I won’t say who wins.

A note on the romance.

I’d heard from many sources that this book is sort of light on the romance, and that’s true, and certainly nobody’s having sex here, though there is a smattering of nice relationship building - the kind you might find in the early Anita Blake. I’m guessing this will be one of those Urban Fantasy series where the relationship arc stretches long over books.

Fave character in a smart scene

Okay, my favorite character in this whole book is Nick the Crusader, who is slightly mad and also very wonderful, and not the love interest. Anyway there is this fabulous scene with him and heroine Kate at the end that is one of the best sorts of scenes, where one character gives another character advice that is full of insight. So crazy Nick gives her this advice:

“If I were on my own, packing some power, and for some reason not wanting to be found, I might lay low for a while, but I’d know that sooner or later I’d have to come out and play, because whoever’s looking for me would eventually find me. I’d start building some connections. The thing about a lone wolf? Once you corner it, it has no one to turn to.”

I love when characters provide perspective on each other like that. I find it very satisfying. Nice job, team Ilona! Magic Burns is out now, the next book, Midnight Games, will be out in 2009.

A tour of my favorite worldbuilding elements of Magic Bites so far

I'm about a third of the way into this book. It’s funny, I sort of wasn’t in the mood for an Urban Fantasy when I picked it up, but I am really enjoying it, particularly the awesome worldbuilding here.

MAGIC BITES by Ilona Andrews takes place in the somewhat near future, in an Atlanta ravaged by magical mayhem; there are ‘tech’ times where technology works, and there are these magic waves where magic dominates and things like cars don’t work, and the two forces seem to be struggling on a sort of invisible level. I could have that wrong, but it’s how it feels. The portrait of an out-of-whack society where people cope and survive is so well done.

This convincing and very comprehensive world also has a delightfully twisted sort of quality. I think maybe it’s partly the names. Example: this excerpt explaining the Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid:

The Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid offered just what its name suggested: merciful aid to anyone who asked. If you could pay, they would charge you; and if you couldn’t, they would kill shit on your behalf pro bono. Officially their mission statement was to protect humanity against all harm, by magic or by weapon. Trouble was, their definition of harm seemed rather flexible and sometimes merciful aid meant they lopped your head off.

Other favorite names so far:

“The People,” this scary necro-oriented group, “Part cult, part corporation, part scientific institution” that controls vampires. (Vampires are monstery in this world—Grey Goose and designer duds not included!) What kind of fucked up name is the People for an organization like that? I love it every time I read it.

His Majesty Curran, the Chosen Lord of the Free Beasts. That’s the name for the head of the shapeshifter society here. I like the Free Beasts. You can almost imagine a kind of anarchic world where shapeshifters would sit around deciding on official names, and these would catch on with them. Chosen Lord. Free Beasts. These names feel wistfully aspirational.

Favorite architectural points so far:

The Unnamed Square, five city blocks reduced to rubble by various villains. “Even now, six years later, the city council refused to rename the empty space…reasoning that as long as it had no name, nobody could summon anything there.”

Champion Heights, a luxury high rise that seems to be semi-cloaked by magic. “Pale haze clung to its walls and balconies, blurring the crisp, man-made edges, as a web of wards worked tirelessly to convince the very magic which fed it that the high-rise was nothing but a large rock.” The effect: sections of it look like “portions of a steep granite cliff.”

Sort of humorous, yet vivid and dramatic.
Update: see part 2 of my Magic Bites discussion here.