We're now on month 4 of the challenge and I am really enjoying it! Month 4 is of course Industrial Magic, the second of the books that Paige narrates.
Blurb
http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/industrial-magic/
Think your in-laws are scary? Try meeting Paige Winterbourne’s potential father-in-law: CEO of the Cortez Cabal, a multinational corporation…and the supernatural equivalent of the Mafia. Lucas Cortez has devoted his life to ruining the Cabals, though that doesn’t stop his father from expecting him to take over the family business someday. Benicio’s favorite ploy is to appeal to Lucas’s quixotic ideals by asking him to investigate Cabal cases of injustice.
After years of failure, Benicio finally has the perfect case: a teenage witch attacked and left for dead. Refusing will be difficult enough for Lucas…near impossible for his new witch girlfriend. Paige and Lucas soon discover that the young witch wasn’t the first Cabal teenager attacked.
When the infighting among the Cabals threatens to let the killer continue his spree, Paige and Lucas decide it’s up to them to stop him. The chase takes them on a cross-country hunt through the supernatural world, where allies can be found in the strangest places, including a celebrity necromancer, a wise-cracking Celtic deity, a pissed-off ghost, a half-mad clairvoyant, and a group of vampires who’d really rather be in an Anne Rice novel.
My Review
I loved re-reading this book! So much happens and so many characters are introduced and re-introduced! We have the return of the pack (or at least 3 members) briefly, a brief cameo from Kristoff, get to meet Eve (though she is dead as we know from Stolen), we get to meet Lucas' brothers (who I can't stand!), his father (who I do like for all his faults) and Benecio's (Lucas' father) bodyguards who will cameo in later books considering the fact that Troy and Griffin are never far from Benecio. We also got reintroduced to Cassandra, a better introduction to Aaron and we got introduced to Jaime Vegas, celebrity necromancer!
We learnt more about the world of the Cabals that Lucas grew up in and now tries to avoid. I loved getting the deeper look into Cabal life and how the cabals interact. I also loved seeing Paige and Lucas' relationship growing though a couple of times I did wonder if Paige needed an eyetest as she was missing so much of how Lucas felt about her! When he would try and broach subjects about maybe making their relationship more permanent and working together, she would misread it and put him off what he was going to say, kinda making him think that maybe he was reading more into their relationship then she was! He did finally get her to see that he wanted a future with her though (no he did not propose! Little too soon for that!).
We really got to see how much these two loved each other and how perfectly suited they were for each other. We also got an insight into Lucas' family relationships and you really do feel for Lucas when you see how horrible his brothers are towards him and how complicated his relationship with his father is!
I loved the banter between Jaime and Cassandra as well, mostly along the lines of 'you are dead' 'I'm not dead!' lol, Jaime took great delight in arguing Cassandra's 'life' with her! Through them we also learned a little more about other supernaturals through the discussions with Cassandra and Jaime, in particular them talking about or displaying their capabilities and professional ethics/points of view.
On another note we also learned of Savannah's half-brothers and have had the possiblities of them playing a bigger part in Savannah's life open up. At least on Sean's part as he did display a genuine interest in learning more about Savannah and making contact with her as in his own words it wasn't right that she was being ignored by the family. Sean seems to me to be a lot like Lucas in some ways as he sees the flaws in the Cabal's and doesn't agree with how they conduct themselves as he did have a mini-rant at one stage about how he was disgusted at how the cabals were in-fighting instead of doing anything really useful to help each other and stop the murders! We only got a very brief interaction with him but it felt like there was more under the surface and prehaps he had discussed it with Lucas before as Lucas tried to calm him and tell him not to make any hasty decisions while upset and not thinking clearly.
That's one of the things I love about Kelley's writing, if you read between the lines there is always something more there that is not being said outright but may resurface in a future book and be expanded on!
We also learnt a little bit more about the afterlife in the book as it was debated in terms of whether Vampires have an afterlife or not. I really enjoyed this book in the series with all that happened in it and all that was introduced! I really do love Paige and Lucas, next to Elena and Clay they are my favourite couple in the Otherworld series and it's great to see how much Paige has grown since we first seen her Stolen.
No comments:
Post a Comment