Magic Bleeds (2010)
Written by: Ilona Andrews
Series: Kate Daniels #4
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 349 (Paperback)
Publisher: Ace
Why I Chose This: My 2019 Resolution Project for Speculative Chic is to read the books in the Kate Daniels series and finish up with a first read of the final book. I first read Magic Bleeds in 2010.
The Premise:
Kate Daniels works for the Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid, officially as a liaison with the mercenary guild. Unofficially, she cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wants to handle—especially if they involve Atlanta’s shapeshifting community.
When she’s called in to investigate a fight at the Steel Horse, a bar midway between the territories of the shapeshifters and the necromancers, Kate quickly discovers there’s a new player in town. One who’s been around for thousands of years—and rode to war at the side of Kate’s father.
This foe may be too much even for Kate and Curran, the Lord of the Beasts, to handle. Because this time, Kate will be taking on family…
Spoiler free for this installment.
Many fantasy series consist of a trilogy, with a solid beginning, middle, and end. But Magic Bleeds is book number 4 of the Kate Daniels series, and we’re settling in for the long haul. Many facts come to light in this installment, relationships continue to develop, and every story element becomes more elaborate.
We begin with another day in Kate and Beast Lord’s Curran’s relationship, in which Curran messes up big time, Kate pitches a fairly reasonable fit, and things are not looking good on the romance front. Instead, Kate throws herself into her work, where she uncovers signs of a new Big Bad on the streets of Atlanta.
In the meantime, she acquires yet another member of her tiny family. Grendel the attack poodle amuses me greatly, and he serves as a metaphor for the stability and ridiculousness that Kate fears in her life.
But she’d can’t escape the fact that she has a family of sorts now, and she finally reveals her entire history to her best friend Andrea. All cards are on the table, and they are rather big ones. Having this reveal so deep into the series works for me, because at this point, Kate is growing as a character and can no longer fly under the radar as she once did. Readers have grown to care about her, and we’re as invested in her life as she is in surviving it.
So, Kate must navigate a new world where her past has come calling while at the same time negotiating relationship terms with a literal “alpha-hole,” to borrow a romance trope. On the plus side, we get lots of intricate details of how the werecreature Pack functions. Since political machinations is one of my favorite aspects of world-building, this is like catnip to me (pardon the pun). On the other hand… Curran is a hard-headed jerk. He has the baggage to justify it, but I definitely have a different view of how a relationship between two mature people should work in my thirties than I did when I was in my twenties.
For Magic Bleeds, it’s appropriate that the mythology the Andrews mine for their villain is epic history. They put their own twist on the gods of Babylon and tie it all into the current state of the fantasy world they’ve built. As usual, this book includes lots of brutal one-on-one combat, with no attempt to soften the realities of the injuries and gore that accompany it. But this book also culminates in an epic battle that involves multiple factions, much more formalized than the one at the end of Magic Burns. Even though our heroes survive, it is not unscathed, and I’m ready to dive immediately into the next book.
In conclusion: This author is fantastic at both the combat and action-oriented scenes and the quiet moments that are necessary in between. Between Kate, Andrea, and other supporting characters and a phenomenal villain, this book passes the Bechdel test and even takes home some extra credit. Now, if only Kate and Curran’s relationship wasn’t stuck in the dark ages.
Featured image via Ilona Andrews
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