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Friday, May 25, 2007

Just Finished Reading: Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong


All Paige Winterbourne wants is an easy life – where she can run her web authoring business, bring up her young ward and enjoy life with her new love. Unfortunately things are never that easy for a witch and her half-demon lover. When it comes to her attention that a supernatural killer is targeting the children of the powerful Cabals she knows that she must act to save their lives. Things prove to be far from simple however as Cabal politics and a restless violent spirit combine to almost literally raise hell.

This was the second outing for Paige Winterbourne and Armstrong’s fourth book in the series Women of the Otherworld. Unfortunately it’s far from her best. The book is way too long at just over 500 pages and needed a much tighter plot. The characterisation was fairly good though far too ‘fluffy’ after reading Alan Furst a week or so previously. Armstrong’s magical world lives alongside this one but hardly interacts with what we would call ‘the real world’. This is generally OK for a fantasy novel but I think this book in particular was too detached from reality. Interesting in parts, particularly a short excursion into the Afterlife, it consistently failed to engage anything but a light involvement of my time and mental energy. Rather disappointing after her earlier works Bitten, Stolen and Dime Store Magic. One for die-hard Armstrong fans only I think.

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