Audiobook Review – Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Atlanta would be a nice place to live, if it weren’t for magic… One moment magic dominates, and cars stall and guns fail. The next, technology takes over and the defensive spells no longer protect your house from monsters. Here skyscrapers topple under onslaught of magic; werebears and werehyenas prowl through the ruined streets; and the Masters of the Dead, necromancers driven by their thirst of knowledge and wealth, pilot blood-crazed vampires with their minds. In this world lives Kate Daniels. Kate likes her sword a little too much and has a hard time controlling her mouth. The magic in her blood makes her a target, and she spent most of her life hiding in plain sight. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, she must choose to do nothing and remain safe or to pursue his preternatural killer. Hiding is easy, but the right choice is rarely easy…

I feel a little guilty giving any book by the writing team of Ilona Andrews anything less than a full 5 stars.  This series does start out as a solid 4 star territory for me though.  The rating is based on the story and not the narration.  I loved this book the first time I read it and I liked it just as much the second time.  

This book is the first in the Kate Daniels series and there is a lot of world building which slows things down just a bit.  The characters that I have grown to love first appear in this book and it was a lot of fun to go back and see how they started.  I actually forgot quite a bit of the overall story so I found everything just as exciting as I did the first time.  Every once in a while my fading memory works in my favor.

The narration of the story was okay.  I have listened to the first two books in this series and I liked the narrator better on this first book than I did the second but that is basically just because of character voices that were not present in this book.  I don’t like the narrator’s voice for Curran.  He sounds too growly in opinion.  Yes, I know that he is a lion but that is my take on it anyway.  I thought that the narrator did okay with everything else in this book and I could deal with the Curran voice because I know that I am probably really hard to please with that one.

This book has one of my favorite scenes in any book and I know that I will read this series many more times during my lifetime.  I love every scene with Curran and Kate and really any scene with Curran period because I love Curran.  My only real complaint about this book would be that I would have liked more Curran.  Ilona Andrews knows what they are doing and every time Curran graces the page it feels special.  

If you have not read this series, what is stopping you?  Seriously, this book should be on everyone’s must read list especially if you are a fan of Urban Fiction.    I would probably recommend that this book is best if you read it instead of listen to it.  I can’t wait to get my hands on more Kate Daniels!