{"id":5417,"date":"2018-07-17T15:06:41","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T15:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=5417"},"modified":"2020-09-27T06:59:19","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T06:59:19","slug":"iron-and-magic-the-ripper-affair-the-chemist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/iron-and-magic-the-ripper-affair-the-chemist\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron and Magic, The Ripper Affair, &#038; The Chemist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Iron-Magic-Covenant-Book-ebook\/dp\/B07CZ39YYV\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Iron and Magic<\/a> is the first of a new trilogy set within Ilona Andrews&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ilona_Andrews#Kate_Daniels\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Kate Daniels<\/a> universe. It always seemed strange that Hugh disappeared from the series so indirectly so it makes a certain degree of sense that he&#8217;d be spun off into a sidestory (taking place between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/magic-binds-assorted-short-stories-the-turn\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Magic Binds<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/magic-triumphs-the-brightest-fell-night-and-silence\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Magic Triumphs<\/a>), but while I like the expanded world-building I can&#8217;t say that his personality overhaul into a more relatable protagonist is sold well at all. The romance is also an issue (it feels very much like a re-hash of Curran\/Kate) and the story probably would have been better without it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ripper-Affair-Bannon-Clare-Book-ebook\/dp\/B00H25FCMW\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The conclusion<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lilith_Saintcrow\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Lilith Saintcrow<\/a>&#8216;s <em>Bannon and Clare<\/em> series does the reader a bit of a favor by picking up after an indeterminable time skip; whether you read it immediately following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/the-red-plague-affair-bleeding-out-wages-future-tales-of-a-hired-gun\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the second<\/a> or years after you&#8217;ll be just as lost getting a handle on the new situation. Overall it holds up well however and so long as you liked the earlier books in the series there&#8217;s no reason not to pick this up one up as well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephenie_Meyer\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Stephenie&#8217;s Meyer<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Chemist-Stephenie-Meyer-ebook\/dp\/B01I9FFDI6\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The Chemist<\/a>, sadly, does not hold up in any respect. It&#8217;s a major step backward from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Host_(novel)\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The Host<\/a>, with some severe believably and structural issues which unfortunately remind me of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/sideswiped-the-drafter-once-broken-faith\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The Drafter<\/a>. On the plus side at least the epilogue is amusing and it&#8217;s nice that she didn&#8217;t go for the cheap love triangle angle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iron and Magic is the first of a new trilogy set within Ilona Andrews&#8217; Kate Daniels universe. It always seemed strange that Hugh disappeared from the series so indirectly so it makes a certain degree of sense that he&#8217;d be spun off into a sidestory (taking place between Magic Binds and Magic Triumphs), but while I like the expanded world-building I can&#8217;t say that his personality overhaul into a more relatable protagonist is sold well at all. The romance is also an issue (it feels very much like a re-hash of Curran\/Kate) and the story probably would have been better without it. The conclusion to Lilith Saintcrow&#8216;s Bannon and Clare series does the reader a bit of a favor by picking up after an indeterminable time skip; whether you read it immediately following the second or years after you&#8217;ll be just as lost getting a handle on the new situation. Overall it holds up well however and so long as you liked the earlier books in the series there&#8217;s no reason not to pick this up one up as well. Stephenie&#8217;s Meyer&#8216;s The Chemist, sadly, does not hold up in any respect. It&#8217;s a major step backward from The Host, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[58,20,398,86,60,29,64,55,397,30],"class_list":["post-5417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-related","tag-bannon-and-clare","tag-ilona-andrews","tag-iron-covenant","tag-kate-daniels","tag-lilith-saintcrow","tag-paranormal-romance","tag-romance","tag-steampunk","tag-stephenie-meyer","tag-urban-fantasy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}