This is a book I bought when it came out but I’ve been saving it for a reading drought (Am I the only one who does this?). I finally indulged last week, secure in the fact that after I read this, Andrews’ newest book, Gunmetal Magic, is available for my Ilona Andrews fix.

This is part of a series of UF/paranormal romances, each book with its own couple set in a world where a magical world overlaps our mundane one:
Book 1: On the Edge (my review: )
Book 2: Bayou Moon (my review: )

Fate’s Edge

Ilona Andrews

The Premise: Audrey Callahan is an Edger trying to go straight. She’s just been hired full time at an investigation agency, she owns a little house in the Edge, and she’s far away from her disappointing con artist family. Audrey is fed up with her parents enabling her brother by using her magical knack with locks to pay the costs of his drug addiction and continually choosing his safety over hers. When he father tracks her down to do a job with big bucks and big risk, this time to pay for a fancy rehab facility, Audrey gives him an ultimatum: either stop bringing Audrey into his schemes, or she helps him steal what he wants and he never contacts her again. As always, her brother’s welfare is chosen over Audrey, but stealing the item isn’t the end of it. She’s soon dealing with the consequences of her bargain when Kaldar Mar shows up. He’s a member of the Adrianglian Mirror, and tracking down the stolen item is his latest assignment. A trickster and thief himself, Kaldar is surprised by how well he works with Audrey. He wouldn’t mind taking things further, but Audrey has had her fill of con artists and rebuffs him at every turn.

My Thoughts: Kaldar was first introduced in the second Edge series book, Bayou Moon, as the fast talking, quick acting cousin of its heroine, Cerise Mar. The family lawyer and matchmaker, Kaldar is a family leader Cerise. He struck me as the type of rakish character that was a shoo-in for his own book, and here we are. Back in Bayou Moon his smarts in the courtroom and his skill with a blade (a Mar family trait), were the traits I remember him for, but in Fate’s Edge, it’s his tricking and thieving that come to the forefront.

At the core of Fate’s Edge is getting back the stolen item, but there are a lot of elements that make it more than your typical quest story. There’s the burgeoning romance between Kaldar and Audrey, trouble in the form of teenaged stowaways George and Jack, elements of horror and action with the Mirror on their tail, and a big keeping scoop of hustling to get the stolen object back.

I am a fan of caper stories, so all the conning and elegant manipulation was fun, and there was plenty of it in Fate’s Edge. It also proved to be a way of showing Audrey and Kaldar’s compatibility – each easily adapting to the other’s lead and balancing out any weaknesses. Brothers George and Jack are included in the cons and they had just as interesting a chemistry (if not more so). If you’ve read the first book in this series (On the Edge), you’ll already know George and Jack as the younger brothers of its heroine, Rose – and a couple of my favorite characters (one is a necromancer, the other a shapeshifter). I was delighted that these two got quite a bit of page time. Their struggles and individual reactions with being seen as ‘Edge rats’ in the Weird were creatively folded into the story. Likewise, there were other cameos from previous characters that didn’t feel gratuitous.  We got a chance to see previous couples past their HEA, but also to get an update on old enemies.

As you can tell, there was a lot in this book that was not about Kaldar and Audrey. On one had I loved the non-romantic additions to the plot, but on the other hand, this left less room for romance. Fate’s Edge was the book in the series where the spotlight wasn’t just on the hero and heroine, and this meant the romantic plot felt shorter than in the other Edge books. There was less space to show a slow build up in interest in each other, and it felt like this book relied more heavily on some Romance short-cuts like the hero’s appreciation for the heroine’s butt to show the growing attraction. For the most part, the courtship really happened in what dialogue the two had (a lot of banter – mostly Kaldar making overtures which Audrey smoothly rebuffed) and in their partnership. This was mostly a straightforward woman-falls-for-the-Bad-Boy-despite-herself romance, and I think if there were more space, I’d have liked Audrey’s issues with con men to be deeper delved into. This is not to say the romance wasn’t sweet, just that it was I don’t think I quite got all the emotional impact I wanted because there were other things in the plot vying for focus.

Overall: Fate’s Edge delivers an entertaining story with devious scams, kick-ass fights, and further development of characters and long running plots, but while I felt like the romance was solid, it felt like it was less of a focus of the plot as it was in the previous Edge books. This was an installment where the plot was far more than a vehicle to propel a romance forward. Thus the romance was not quite of the same caliber as the previous books (at least in my mind), but this was balanced out by the elements that took focus from the romance: the extended cameos from George and Jack (first introduced in On the Edge), the thrill of the con, and peeks into what could come next.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Chachic’s Book Nook – positive
The Book Pushers – A
Lurv a la Mode – 3 scoops (out of 5)
Read. Breathe. Relax – “I was disappointed”
Fantasy and SciFi – “Fun, but contrived”
Tynga’s Reviews – “Fate’s Edge just might be my favourite book in the series so far.”

Bayou Moon

Ilona Andrews

Bayou Moon is the sequel to Andrew’s first Edge book, On The Edge, which I reviewed here: . This series is set in a place that straddles two worlds – there’s the Broken, where magic is non-existent, and there’s the Weird, where pure-blood families rule and magic is a part of life. These places exist in the same place but on different planes, and in the space between them is the Edge, where outlaws and the out-of-luck flourish.

I was lucky enough to be sent a advanced finished copy of the book.

The Premise: While this is the second of a series, the focus in this book is on a different couple than On the Edge. William was a secondary character in the first book, but this time it’s his turn to be the hero. William is a wolf changeling with a past as a soldier in the Weird, and a big chip on his shoulder. He’s been just passing time in the Broken, when agents of the Adrianglian Secret Service arrive and ask him to hunt down an old nemesis and to retrieve what he’s been searching for in the Mire.  Spider is an agent of the Dukedom of Louisiana’s Hand, and was once was responsible for the deaths of a group of young changelings. William came close to killing him but failed. Spider has been reported to be in the Mire, looking for an edge in the secret war between the two Weird nations of Adrianglia and Louisiana.  In his quest to find Spider, William runs into Cerise, a girl whose path seems to be the same as his. She too has an interest in Spider, because her parents have just been kidnapped by his agents, igniting a long burning clan war between her family, the Mars, and their rivals, the Sheeriles.

Read an excerpt of Bayou Moon here

My Thoughts: If you are familiar with Andrews urban fantasy series which focuses on a heroine in post-apocalyptic Atlanta, this series shares some of the strengths of that one, namely excellent world building, heroes and heroines who are interesting mentors to lost youth, and plenty of characters with kick-ass skills. However, the Edge series has more of a focus on a romantic relationship than the urban fantasy Kate Daniels series. Each book has a hero and heroine who eventually get together, but I still find this series different from your typical paranormal romance because the world building and the plots are so unusual. It almost seems to be a urban fantasy romance series (the writers call it a “rustic fantasy”). It defies categorization, but I think people who like romance and/or urban fantasy will like it.

The first thing that I noticed about Bayou Moon was it’s size. It’s immediately obvious that this paperback is thicker than it’s predecessor, and clocking at 462 pages, it looks to be longer than any other Ilona Andrews book out so far. Don’t worry. This is a good thing. I think that this is one of the few books of this length where I wasn’t paying attention to what page I was on and I was actually happy that there was more to read. Even with this length I had polished off the book in a couple of days. Not only that, the length meant that there is plenty of room for not only a romance but for the complexities of the Edge culture, Cerise’s large and interesting family, and for revealing plenty of monstrous enemies.

I think before I talk about the characters, I have to talk about the Mire, the swamplands of the Edge. The people of the Edge are hard. They are known for family unity and for long held grudges that span generations. I loved the Wild West meets Mob Family mentality that the Edgers had. It breeds some very unusual (and perhaps a little crazy) people. But then, take that and add a swamp full of dangerous creatures (sharks, water snakes), and places impassable except by boat. Its not for the fainthearted. It stands to reason that this gritty, wild place in the Edge is where William would find the woman for him.

Being a changeling makes civilized human behavior a difficult language that William has had to learn, and while he yearns to find a woman that accepts him, he’s been disappointed in that area many times. He may have amazing physical strength and skill, but emotionally I think of William as the more vulnerable Edge hero. Cerise is quick to appreciate William’s positive attributes, but she feels that crossing paths with someone she’s interested in has happened at the worst possible time. Cerise is a heroine I’m familiar with in Andrews’ books – smart, strong, and capable, but she also carries very big responsibilities. She’s in charge of her family’s finances, and when her her parents are kidnapped, she is the one to step forward and take on the leadership of the Mars and deal with both finding her parents and with the opportunistic Sheeriles.She has too many people relying on her to be selfish and indulge in a romantic interlude. There is a slow build in their relationship due to caution on both sides, but there is a strong romance plot in this story, compared to the Kate Daniels series, where it is less overt. It passes my personal standards with plenty of emotional buildup to go along with the physical side of the romance, and sex that did not feel gratuitous (hooray!).

The plot in this book was such that there was plenty of room for many secondary characters.  There are the bad guys (the Hand), the good guys (Cerise’s family) and the in-between.  It’s a mark of excellent writing that every one of the characters where distinguishable and not cliched (I particularly liked with the conflicted feelings of what-could-have-been between Cerise and the Sheeriles’ oldest son). Cerise’s family was huge, but only a fraction of those are highlighted on the page so I was never confused or overwhelmed.  I don’t think I can go over them or this review would double in size, but my favorites would be Cerise’s younger sister, Lark, who thinks she is a monster and sleeps outside, and her cousin Kaldar, the family matchmaker and general irrepressible rogue. The large family meant for some impressive battle scenes against the Sheeriles and against the Hand. Of the Hand, we catch less glimpses of, since the focus is mainly on William’s nemesis, Spider, but in many ways the Hand agents are less human after undergoing a process which changed their bodies and fractured some of their minds. They reminded me of the anime Ninja Scroll where the bad guys, the Devils of Kimon, have inhuman enhancements (link to youtube. Warning: icky anime death) which make them terrifying killers. There were some pretty nasty monstrosities in the bunch, but Spider, who is sane, is the creepiest for it. He’s an excellent villian, and we get some hints about his back story too.

Overall: The Edge series straddles genres to create a world that’s unlike any other, and I found Bayou Moon a rare book that entertains so well, I was lost to everything else. All I wanted was to be where I was, enjoying myself while being pulled along to a satisfying conclusion. What a pleasant ride that was.

Bayou Moon is longer than it’s predecessor, but that room only makes it better, because there’s space for a more complex plot, more back story, more world and character building. If you liked the first book, you’ll love this. If you haven’t, I recommend it if you like paranormal romance or like urban fantasy and are open to romance or vice versa. This book has cameos from previous characters, but I think it can be read as a standalone and out of order.

According to the Ilona Andrews website, there are two books contracted for the Edge series, but I’m crossing my figures that there will be more. There are a couple of men in Cerise’s family who I’d love to be in the next book (Kaldar, anyone?)

Bayou Moon comes out September 28th.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews::
Angieville – ” Bayou Moon struck me as a stronger, darker, meatier installment in the series”
Fantasy and SciFi Lovin’ News and Reviews – 4 out of 5 stars
Dreams and Speculation – 6 out of 10
Scooper Speaks – “Bayou Moon is a keeper in my opinion”