It's been about two months since my last update. I was very much on the fence in regards to continuing the Kate Daniels series. Not that what I had read (the first two books and the short story from Dark & Stormy Nights) were what I would call bad. But I was not overly impressed either and was thinking that I might move on to try something else. However, I did, in fact, continue and wound up being glad of it. I think that the third book, Magic Strikes, saw a lot of improvement in Ilona Andrews' writing on several levels. I believe that the plots became much tighter, the sentences more polished, the characters had more depth, etc. And so I continued on and found the same to be true of the next two books Magic Bleeds and Magic Slays. There was a scene omitted from the fourth book that I very much would have wanted to have seen, but fortunately it was released as a short story by the authors on their site. In the end, I am glad to have read the books and will buy the next in the series, when it is released later this year.
About the time that I finished the above (around 6 weeks ago) I got my hands on Skirmish: A Novel of the House War, the fourth book in that series by Michelle West. As I expected, I very much loved reading the book as a whole (which helps to explain how I've already read it three times despite it's being 608 pages). While I did not like every plot point, and indeed there were a couple where I truly had hoped that the author might go in a different direction, there was no question for me that there was much to love here in the writing and characterization. The path that the author takes between the epic, the personal, and the political is a unique one in which none of these elements ever seems incompatible with, or to crowd, any of the others. Moreover, the depth, truth and authenticity contained within these pages makes it a lock to land on my list of Top Releases for 2012. Perhaps not the author's best in my eyes, it is still, as one the characters might say, "A Work". Lastly, this is a book that might be especially recommended for those who are cat lovers (though I'll not spoil the reasons why).
Yay for early releases <3
