Magic Tides
Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years #1
By Ilona Andrews
ISBN13: 9798372470163
Author’s website: Ilona-andrews.com
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar.
Review
Magic Tides begins seven years after the events of Magic Triumphs. Kate Daniels and her husband, Curran Lennart, with their son Conlan have moved to Wilmington in North Carolina to live a quiet retirement life. Curran fell in love with a fort next to the beach, Fore Kure, they bought it and have been renovating it. The main reason for the move was to give Conlan a normal life, something that he wouldn’t have living in Atlanta, where everyone knew his father was the previous Beast Lord and his mother the Sword of Atlanta.
A low profile is the goal. But Curran loves tall buildings with towers and Kate loves him. Also, Conlan arrives at the house with new friend Jason, the nephew of the contractor who is renovating the Fort, and casually tells Kate that his brother was kidnapped and if they have sandwiches.
Given that Kate wants to have the Fort finished and cannot ignore the subtle manipulation from his son, she talks to Jason’s father and learns that he has been kidnapped by the Red Horn gang. Given that Darin is a teenager, the probability that he is still in the city is high and Kate offers to retrieve him.
After letting Curran know where she is going, Kate sets off with Darin’s father to the Red Horn house, but with Kate, nothing is just simple, and the kidnapping of a teenager might be something more sinister.
I love the Kate Daniels series and I was so happy when the authors Ilona Andrews mentioned the upcoming release of Magic Tides. We are back in the world where magic and technology battle over control of the world. While this story is shorter than the other books in the Kate Daniels series, it’s still packed with magic, mysteries, and blood.
In this new series,Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years, the narrative structure is a bit different with the point of view being split between Kate and Curran, while we read the majority of the story from Kate’s side, Curran has chapters that show us what he is doing and preparing for the outcome of Kate’s actions.
While Kate and Curran decide to move to Wilmington to raise Conlan in a peaceful location, other individuals have different ideas. A shapeshifter scout team from the Keep has already been living in that place as the FARM, a training facility for the necromancers of The People is located nearby. I liked that as Kate tries to find the missing child and other kidnapped people, she meets these of these groups again and tries to keep her identity secret, but the shapeshifters recognize her straight away.
In Magic Tides, we also meet new individuals who seem to have a future as part of Kate’s gang. One of them is Rimush, who with his family went to sleep with Roland many eons ago, and now is a free agent looking for a new queen to serve. We will see more of him and his family in the future.
“Fight against it, rage against it, it doesn’t matter. You cannot stop people from following you, no more than you can turn down people who come to you for help. Everything you have done exemplifies the standard to which a queen should aspire, for you are the servant of your people. You help them selflessly without restraint.”
Another glimpse that we get is a chat with Hugh, as Kate asks for information. The years have passed since the events of Iron and Magic, and we get to know what Hugh and Elaria are doing.
At the end of the day, most evil comes down to money or power. In this case, both of them, the kidnapper has made promises to old gods that are angry at him and twisted their gifts with consequences.
If you are a fan of the Kate Daniels series and author Ilona Andrews, then, I recommend Magic Tides. I love returning to this world full of magic and creatures in the dark.
