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Fate's Edgeurban fantasy
third in a series (The Edge)
******
cover - I like the style, the general look of the covers in this series. It's great that they always feature the female character, a bit of the setting in the background, and then the scruffy handsome guy kind of blended into the whole cover. It's a good blend of art, story hints and character looks...however something is off with the female this time. I know she's supposed to be curvy - extremely curvy so I was kind of picturing a J-lo type of ass, and some curvy girls...but - well - it looks like her chest is concave with half a cantolope (an extremely ripe one at that) kind of just stuck on there; there's also quite a bit of room between the shoulders and her girls. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but Audrey is also supposed to be short. I know this is nitpicking - and characters rarely look exactly how they're supposed to look. But those of us with large chests and short statures know that when you have large breasts, stuck on a short body - there isn't going to be a whole lot of room there - nope, the breasts are going to be starting rather high and taking up quite a bit of area in our short little torsos....just sayin'. Wish the cover people would really match up these little details, because I'm the type of reader who loves to read, look at the cover....read some more....try to picture the characters and look again at the cover. It really helps when the guy is good looking (to my taste, of course! lol) and the female matches height, chi-chi size and damn it - when the character is supposed to be a bit plump - don't put in a model who has bones poking out. It looks awkward. ahhh - but the sword....wait a minute - it's Kaldar who is the amazing sword fighter in this novel...In Bayou Moon Cerise was the sword and flash user . I know it seems like I'm nitpicking - more like I'm trying to make a statement on covers - I love when the covers show what's going on and reflects the characters. And this one actually is a good cover - there's the trees and plants, the sword (though it really belongs to Kaldar) and the red hair - but the female model doesn't really match. Overall, the cover is pretty good though. It's just those chi-chis.....wow. Glad they're not mine. LOL
The book. Anyone who's read my reviews might get the idea that I love these books....well I do. The Ilona Andrews team has written many, many books by now. I haven't been able to read any of their e-books yet (I see that they're dipping into science fiction type of plots - distant planets, gadgets, etc) but I haven't been able to get a hold of one yet. Someday. (just found a link from their website to a free download for Questing Beast - a scifi e-book) However - with each on of their print novels, with each of their series, and every short story that I've been able to read has been a pure pleasure to read... and Fate's Edge was no exception. I enjoyed it a lot. I think the only thing that started to annoy me - (and it was mild annoyance-very mild) was something that a lot of authors really can't avoid. The frequent mentions or explanations of world building facts. I feel like there was one or two too many mentions of the difference between The Edge, The Weird and The Broken..I understand why - but I've read this series from the beginning so I ended up skimming past a few of these thankfully short explanations.
Other than that though - (and it's probably not fair of me to even mention it - many series authors end up doing this, after all) Loved the story.
**Minor Spoilers territory**:
There are bits with the characters of each of the previous books - Declan and Rose (from The Edge - #1) played small parts - but Rose's brothers both played a huge role in Fate's Edge. Cerise and William (my favorite of the couples - from Bayou Moon-#2) play a larger part than Declan and Rose. Fate's Edge features Kaldar who is Cerise's cousin and Audrey. Now Kaldar and family (Cerise included) were part of a large clan of Mars relatives who did whatever they could to survive life in the Edge. This included scams, and questionable behaviour. In Bayou Moon many family members were lost. Kaldar is carrying a dream of vengeance on his shoulders, waiting for the opportunity to annihilate certain members of The Hand - a particularly sadistic organization of the enemies of his country. Now Kaldar is a bit of a con man, and he enjoys himself. He can and does pick pockets without people even knowing they've had something taken from them, and then he usually puts it back. Just likes to stay in top form. Practices a lot.
Audrey, on the other hand comes from a family of scam artists and is trying to live a straight life, has even gotten a job in The Broken - that's the real world to you and me.
Then we come to Jack the shape shifting brother of Rose, and George - his necromance older brother. Something has happened to make Jack very nervous and they end up deciding to run away - because that's always a great solution to teens and tweens. Always SEEMS like a good idea, anyway.
Kaldar accepts a new assignment (he's been working for the Mirror - the counterpart to The Hand - kind of like the KGB vs. the CIA only with magic)....
Audrey is talked into one last scam/theft with her father and drug addicted brother - against her better judgement....
Jack and George have run/stowed away...
And they all meet up in a fiery explosion...not really. But they do end up all together working to get a certain something back from a certain someone for a certain other organization. However, it's not as simple as it could have been. The whole time they're working on finding the object they are being hunted by a particularly sadistic and murderous group of the hand. And during it all, Kaldar has thing about vengeance in the back of his mind...
Ahhh- the fireworks, the fights, the dialogue, the BOYS. It's all good. The teasing and ribbing that goes on between not only the brothers, but between the brothers and Kaldar, Kaldar and the brothers, Kaldar and Audrey, Gaston and the boys, the animals....it's good book with wonderfully twisted characters, and sadistic villains that you love to hate. There is a lot that goes on and by the end of the book I was already missing the novel. Made me want to re-read Bayou Moon, because THAT was a hell of a book also, with twisted and flawed yet fun characters and a kick ass group of fighters.
One day soon, I plan to re-read this series, it's that much fun to read. And just like in the Kate Daniels series, Ilona Andrews has a wonderful way with dialog and characters.
If you haven't yet bought Fate's Edge, get it as soon as you can, you're going to love it. I you haven't even tried the Edge series, wow - you've been missing out. If you haven't even read any of the Kate Daniels books - oh man. Hope you get a hold of one soon - and start reading it. Like I mentioned earlier - I love each of the books I've read by Ilona Andrews, and there's not that many authors where I enjoy every - single - book that they've written.
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