More Reading
A Den of Thieves continues the Ancient Blades trilogy started a little while back. And having read it, I'll get part three, due to come out soon. It's good enough for that. That said, I have two main gripes about the book. First, there's some character development that I don't like (in the sense that I feel there were better directions to go without compromising continuity). Second, the author has a habit of using in-character dialogue to explain this. In itself, that isn't bad, but there are several passages that made me feel a particular character was being exceedingly dense by prompting for more details that struck me as unnecessary or already apparent.
Magic Bleeds and Magic Slays continue the "Kate Daniels" urban fantasy series, and it's really only grown on me. It shares several traits with the Dresden Files that, to me, set it above most of the genre. Most notably, the cast of characters seems to evolve based on notable events in the books rather than remain static or change in ways that feel out of place (I'm looking at you, Anita Blake books). That evolution is necessary to keep a series interesting beyond a book or three. And so far, this series is doing well in my estimation. It does, however, feel it's written more toward a female audience then the Dresden Files with a little more focus on relationships than action (not that they don't both cross over in that).
So in Magic Bleeds, Kate faces some family history, though it isn't the big showdown things seem to be steering toward. It shakes up the status quo for a couple main characters. Magic Slays gets into some of the rebuilding after that, and a more general threat. There's a passage in there, too, that struck me as particularly poignant (tiny spoilers):
... "Humans tend to segregate the world: enemies on one side, friends on the other. Friends are people we know. Enemies are the Other. You can do just about anything to the Other. It doesn't matter if this Other is actually guilty of any crimes, because it's a matter of emotion, not logic. you see, angry people aren't interested in justice. They just want an excuse to vent their rage. ... And once you become the Other, you're no longer a person. You're just an idea, an abstraction of everything that's wrong with their world. Give them the slightest excuse, and they will tear you down. And the easiest way for them to target you as this Other is to find something that's different about you. Color of your skin. The way you speak. The place you're from. Magic. It comes and goes in cycles, Kate. Each new generation picks their own Other. For the Keepers, it's people with magic. And for us, well, it's the Keepers. We will murder them all. no matter if some of them are confused, or easily led, or feebleminded. Or if they have families. They will die. It makes me despair sometimes."
Magic Bleeds and Magic Slays continue the "Kate Daniels" urban fantasy series, and it's really only grown on me. It shares several traits with the Dresden Files that, to me, set it above most of the genre. Most notably, the cast of characters seems to evolve based on notable events in the books rather than remain static or change in ways that feel out of place (I'm looking at you, Anita Blake books). That evolution is necessary to keep a series interesting beyond a book or three. And so far, this series is doing well in my estimation. It does, however, feel it's written more toward a female audience then the Dresden Files with a little more focus on relationships than action (not that they don't both cross over in that).
So in Magic Bleeds, Kate faces some family history, though it isn't the big showdown things seem to be steering toward. It shakes up the status quo for a couple main characters. Magic Slays gets into some of the rebuilding after that, and a more general threat. There's a passage in there, too, that struck me as particularly poignant (tiny spoilers):
... "Humans tend to segregate the world: enemies on one side, friends on the other. Friends are people we know. Enemies are the Other. You can do just about anything to the Other. It doesn't matter if this Other is actually guilty of any crimes, because it's a matter of emotion, not logic. you see, angry people aren't interested in justice. They just want an excuse to vent their rage. ... And once you become the Other, you're no longer a person. You're just an idea, an abstraction of everything that's wrong with their world. Give them the slightest excuse, and they will tear you down. And the easiest way for them to target you as this Other is to find something that's different about you. Color of your skin. The way you speak. The place you're from. Magic. It comes and goes in cycles, Kate. Each new generation picks their own Other. For the Keepers, it's people with magic. And for us, well, it's the Keepers. We will murder them all. no matter if some of them are confused, or easily led, or feebleminded. Or if they have families. They will die. It makes me despair sometimes."
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