Product Description

Working as a Hound - tracing illegal spells back

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18293 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
isn't about to quit. The police's magic --enforcement division asks her to consult on a

missing persons case - but what seems to be a --straightforward job turns out to be anything but,

as Allie finds herself drawn into the underworld --of criminals, ghosts and blood magic.

About the Author
to their casters - has taken its toll on Allison

Customer Reviews

Magic can make you forget yourself
Imagine living in a world where magic was a utility, extracted from the natural world and piped throughout your city, and usable by anyone with the right training - to light their home, cook their dinner, improve their appearance, or steal someone's knowledge, twist someone's mind, or even kill an enemy - as long as they can pay the price - a headache, a cold, a fever, or a life. This is the world of Allie Beckstrom, the feisty heroine of Devon Monk's follow up to last year's Magic to the Bone, Magic in the Blood.

Allie is a Hound, a person with the magical gift to literally scent the traces left by a person using magic, and track them to back to the user, which makes her a much in demand for hunting down rogue magic users, and also someone who suffers more than usual from the effects of her own magic use. Since the events of Magic to the Bone, she has also become a living reservoir of magic, something which is supposed to be impossible, and bears the signs of it in elaborate, tattoo-like marks upon her body. Unfortunately, she finds herself unable to remember much about how, or why, this happened, as the price exacted upon her by magic for a major use of it at the end of the last book was the loss of a large part of her recent memory - including of falling in love with a mysterious stranger, Zayvion Jones.

It is at this point that Magic in the Blood begins, with Allie being asked to undertake a new Hounding job for the police, investigating magical involvement in the disappearance of a number of young women, despite such jobs often having fatal results for the Hound. At the same time, a drug and blood-magic lord, whom she had believed to be safely serving a thirty year sentence, is back on the street and out for revenge, and her recently deceased father, a magical magnate with many secrets, begins to make ghostly appearances, and instructing her to `Seek.'

Monk's vision of magic use and its costs makes for an interesting addition to the urban fantasy genre, and Allie, headstrong, opinionated and heedless of her own well-being, makes for an attractive protagonist. The loss of her memory of the events of the last book places the reader in the unusual position of knowing more about her world and the events surrounding her than she does, and seeing how much she discovers, or recovers, is part of the attraction of the novel, as is Allie's confused exploration of her feelings for the mysterious - to her - Zayvion Jones. The writing and description is reasonably entertaining, and Monk keeps the plot moving rapidly and smoothly. She also leaves more than enough unanswered questions, about both Allie and Zayvion's relationship and larger events, to leave the reader eager for the next instalment, the forthcoming Magic in the Shadows (Allie Beckstrom) - a book I've already got on preorder.