Book Review: Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

I am really into this series now. I bought all but one of the books at one of the Borders store that is going out of business. The first book is very thin and I was only half there. The second book got better. It was the third book where they go into the Midnight Games that things finally start to get a move on. The one with her aunt also is kind of epic in many ways.

This one made me cry. I won't tell you why but I spent a good deal of the book in tears over a few characters. And then right at the end some one dies that is just heart breaking. By this book I am finally starting to care about some of the characters.

The whole magic and tech thing takes some getting used to, I desperately want some one to have a cell phone at some point to speed things up. Also I am really beginning to like hyenas because of these books. The witches in this one made me crazy happy. I love that the head witch and the head druid who always fight are married, and their kids are divided among the two fractions. It was epic awesome when they started fighting about silly stuff in the middle of the important negotiations.

I am actually really starting to like this series, not as much as the Mercy Thompson books but close. These are a little rougher. I kind of get annoyed sometimes when there are fight scenes because they often make no sense. The books also took their dear sweet time explaining things. Anyway I highly recommend.

Book Review: Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

The over all premise of this books took a while to come forward and in those first couple of chapters I was confused beyond words. That is normally the trouble with books where the protagonist starts off in the middle of something complicated.

Basically in the 1990s the dead rose of from the earth for a week and attacked the living. After it was over all the previous religions fell and a new religion based on magic and banishing the dead rose to power and took over the government. The main character is Chess Putnam is a witch that works for the Church of Truth. She is also a drug addict. The book opens with her drug dealer telling her there is the possibility that the new business venture he is trying is being haunted by evil ghost, so in order to pay off her debt she needs to get rid of the ghosts.

The mystery is actually very interesting the problem is the main character keeps getting high at important parts. I mean really there was some really interesting parts and I wanted to know but we had to take breaks for the character to get high. It made me want to snap my fingers at her and "hey, hey, hey, pay attention we have murder happening."

Also the entire book takes place in the slums of some city so everyone speaks in horribly broken English except for the main character, which made we want to punch all of them. Even the one guy I kind of liked, whose name was Terrible I kid you not, couldn't manage any kind of proper grammar even when they pointed out that he could read.

I am sorta on the fence with this book and perhaps the series. I really liked Terrible but Chess makes me kind of crazy.