Many of the characters we have seen before, although there are a couple of interesting new ones. It went quickly enough that it felt novella-length. At a certain point, there’s just so much momentum that it ends up being a continuous action scene. For me, that was roughly after we reached the end of the serial installments. Once the plot starts taking off, it is absorbing. As they wrote on their blog, “ We meant for it to be a small bright spot in what is a dark time, and we hope it will do its job and lift your spirits, if only for a little while.” So, kudos and thank you. The long version is that I’m grateful to the Andrews for trying to pull it together during a pandemic and a national political disaster enough to give fans a book. The long version? (Let’s be honest–there’s always a long version, right?). I can’t wait to read the next one.Read January 2021 Recommended for fans Kate Daniels ★ ★ ★ I was so excited to return to the world of Kate Daniels and this book didn’t disappoint! Aurelia is exciting and fearless, badass and smart. We’re certainly plopped right into Aurelia’s ongoing battle with them, and don’t quite understand the history of Moloch or why he wants to kill Kate or obtain Aurelia (just that he does and Aurelia will protect her adoptive mother at all costs).

It was a little hard to follow along with the high priests of Moloch (that seemed sort of like wraiths on fire with limitless power over fire) and where they had come from. Aurelia is saucy like Kate, and has access to blood magic like Kate, but also has innate sensate abilities (that I had forgotten about) that allows her to see the different colored threads of magic from regular humans, shifters, mages and the divine. Waves of magic and tech overlap, rendering half the tools useless most of the time this happens at inopportune times for our heroine. And our main characters have new powers and new identities, that make me super excited to continue to read this series and see how they’ll resolve who they were with who they’ve become. We’re re-introduced to the same characters we know and love, but they’ve changed. It’s really cool to see that Kate’s personal family history has evolved and taken on a role of it’s own within this new half-magic, half-tech world of ruined Atlanta.

It’s still the rich, vivid world we encountered in the Kate Daniels series, but it’s continued to evolve and grow, especially the world and politics and history of New Shinar. This book immediately draws you into the world and fills you in on who people are (instead of relying on your memory from the last Kate Daniels book you read awhile ago.) - which I appreciated because it made it easy to follow along.

Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews