Customer Reviews

Magic to the Bone (Allie Beckstrom, Book 1)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you like Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books, then you probably have too much taste for this worthless schlock.

Self-described tough girl private detective Allie faints every third page, believes every man wants to bed her and/or kill her, and thinks in spectacularly purple prose like this:

"Oh, sweet loves, I wanted him. All of him.... I gasped hungrily. Fire followed his thumb as he stroked down the curve of my hip bone.... He kissed me again, and the pleasure, the want, the sweet hot need for him radiated through me."

So, is it well written? It's not bad--it's just not good. She doesn't mix up her narratorial styles, her tenses agree from sentence to sentence, he grammar is consistent, she used a spell checker. However, her skill with characters and plot are not up to snuff.

It is incredibly hard to suspend disbelief when the narrator tells you how independent, tough, competent, experienced, and savvy the protagonist is--yet her every action shows us she is not.

Independent? She throws herself on everyone's mercy over and over again. Tough? She faints twice in the first 50 pages or so. She went to Harvard for an advanced degree, and somehow graduated without much of an education. Her profession is magic, her father practically invented magic, her advanced degree from Harvard is in magic, yet everyone around her knows more about it than her. She is constantly surprised as her bodyguard, the head mistress of a street orphanage, and pretty much everyone else she runs into does things with magic that they "cannot do". So--competent, experienced, and savvy she is not, although we are told, assured, instructed, that she is. Over and over.

Plot? Kinda forced. One of those unpremeditated plots where the protagonist kinda stumbles around from one place to another, and then back to the first place again.

Save your time and money.

MAGIC TO THE BONE is set in an alternate America in which magic "came out" to the world rather like vampires did in Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books. Soon after people become users and consumers of magic, much like they use and consume alcohol. And just like a night of hard drinking, any use of magic leaves the user with a monster hangover. This "hangover" manifests itself in a variety of unsavory ways from intense bruising all over the body to a flu that will lay you low for a week. Allie Beckstrom is a Hound--a person with the ability to follow a cast spell back to the caster. Unlike other Hounds, though, Allie is able to house a small amount of magic within her own body. But this increased ability exacts a higher price. After working a particularly potent bit of magic, Allie frequently loses random portions of her memory. Estranged from her power-hungry father, she lives in a hole, barely scraping enough money together to feed herself with anything resembling regularity. When a small boy is almost killed by a spell that leads back to dear old Dad, Allie immediately goes on the offensive to bring her father to justice. She runs into trouble in the form of Zayvion Jones--a stalker/bodyguard who used to work for her father and seems intent on shadowing Allie's every move.

The whole layout of this story held a lot of promise and I willingly immersed myself in Allie's seamy world, eager to see how she handled her manipulative, possibly murderous father as well as the darkly enigmatic Zay. Allie herself is world-weary in a way that mirrors her world, a place ironically sapped of wonder and goodness by the largely unregulated abuse of "magic." I loved the little book she carries around, recording memories against the day they're stripped from her after overstepping herself magically. In fact, each and every character piqued my interest, from Allie's unusual stepmother to her salt of the earth best friend. However, I found that interest flagging fairly soon as the execution did not quite match up to the idea. Zay's and Allie's relationship seemed rather quickly formed. He felt too good to be true while she seemed to fall into a sort of stereotypical urban fantasy composite heroine. I started to lose my sense for what made her unique and felt that they were both smarter than their actions painted them. The tension between them resolved too abruptly for my taste. Throughout the story, a well-conceived idea here or a particularly cool plot development there managed to revive my flagging attention, but the follow-through lacked the level of tightness and cohesion that is a defining characteristic of my favorite urban fantasy series's.

_Magic to the Bone_ is a breath of fresh air in the urban fantasy genre, in much the same way that Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series is a breath of fresh air. Instead of the same tired werewolf/vampire soap opera that so many novels perpetuate, _Magic to the Bone_ is more concerned with the ramifications of adding magic to modern society and exploring the realistic consequences. Magic, in Devon Monk's universe, has been recently discovered, and along with it, the price of its use. Every time someone uses magic, there is a backlash of sorts: the caster might suffer a days-long migraine, lose memories, or gain a scar. Of course, the next thing humanity researched was how to Offload a spell's cost onto someone else. (There's a chilling offhand line about how one of the legal, sanctioned methods of doing this is to redirect the backlash to the inmates of a penitentiary.)

The story begins as our heroine, Allie Beckstrom, discovers a child near death from an illegal Offload, and senses her father's magical "signature" in the spell that is affecting the boy. Allie is the black-sheep scion of a great business/magic empire, and confronting her father about the spell means speaking to him for the first time in seven years. It goes badly, and when Daddy turns up dead, Allie is the prime suspect.

What follows is an exciting and often poignant story that follows Allie as she attempts to stay alive, deal with a suddenly complicated love life, and solve a mystery. Along the way, she learns far more about magic and its uses than what is taught in the official magic schools. We meet several delightful secondary characters that I'm looking forward to seeing again, and unlike many other urban fantasy writers, Monk doesn't set up Allie as the only worthwhile female character in the book. She allows Allie a wonderful best friend and a fascinating woman who might become another good friend someday.

It was perhaps a bit too easy to figure out whodunit, though I must admit I didn't figure out *why*, though it should have occurred to me. I do wonder why it took Allie so long to figure out that if one magical signature could be forged, so could another magical signature that was left at another crime scene, but that's a small quibble.

I have mixed emotions about the romantic plot. On the one hand, I'm not sure whether I believe that Allie would open up to Zayvion as quickly as she does, but on the other hand, the circumstances are weird enough and harrowing enough that it might just work. I have to admit that I groaned a little when Monk introduced a plot device that both draws the couple closer and gives both of them a "power-up," but it's not Monk's fault that I'm a little weary of the "magical sexual synergy" type of plot. And for what it's worth, it's done well. I thought the sex scenes were perfect, in that they focused more on the flow of energy between Allie and Zayvion, and less on the tab A-slot B stuff.

I also have to applaud Monk for not forgetting about a small "Chekhov's gun" that she introduced early in the story. Allie, knowing she's prone to memory loss due to magic, carries a notebook with her to keep track of important things. I kept noticing throughout the book that she wasn't writing in it, and thought Monk had just forgotten to incorporate the notebook into the story. I should have had more faith! Allie's absentmindedness has consequences later.

_Magic to the Bone_ isn't completely perfect, but Devon Monk shows the potential to be a standout writer in the subgenre. Most importantly, I could not put this book down; I read it in two nights, with only work and sleep coming between me and the pages. Well done.

If you find the two phrases in my title annoying, you shouldn't read this book. The author uses them a lot throughout this novel.

When I started reading this novel I really liked it. The world-building, particularly the idea about magic being discovered and harvested, was interesting. I liked that there were consequences to using magic. The story was pretty fast-paced for the first half of the novel and it mostly kept my interest. One thing that kept bugging me were Allie's feelings towards Zayvion (a stupid character name that can be found on almost every page of this novel). It felt like I was reading a diary of an extremely horny teenage girl. "I know he was hired by my father to stalk me, but he's like so hot, I want him now!" or something to that effect was said each time Zayvion even looked at our main character...which happened a lot. It got old really quick. And then at the halfway mark somewhere, they sleep together. Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way, I thought. After that happens the author kind of puts the main story on the back burner (though there wasn't much of a story there to begin with) while we focus on the love birds bickering and flirting with each other. And then we come upon a ten page sex scene that not only bored me out of my skull, but should be used as an example under "anti-climatic" in the dictionary. That was around page 280 something. I stopped reading right then and there and skimmed through the last seventy pages or so to see if anything interesting was gonna happen. No such luck.

As a character, Allie came off as self-aware but stupid ("I know I shouldn't do this but I'll do it anyway because I want to!" is a common theme with her). She's also kind of needy and not independent at all. The only thing she could do by herself is get a cab to get help from somebody else, and even then she wasn't able to pay for it without Zayvion's or her best friend's help. Yeah, that's the kind of character I want to spend 350 pages with. In fact, none of the characters were all that interesting. I liked Nola and Mama well enough, but Zayvion (a character that gets the most screen time besides Allie) was kind of flat and boring. He's really hot and secretive. That's basically all we know about him.

This book gets an extra star because of the interesting world-building and that it's mostly fast-paced. It loses the other ones because the magic Allie uses is kind of dull and the juvenile romance over-shadows most of the story. Here's a quote from the book that sums up my feelings perfectly regarding this romance (and this book):

"This had to be the lamest relationship I'd ever been in."

**** SPOILERS****



I'll admit that I almost didn't buy this book. I've been a big fan of the urban fantasy genre for awhile, but lately my interest has begun to wane just a bit. However, I'm glad I took a chance on Magic to the Bone as I found it to be a compelling and thoughtful read.

Our protagonist, Allie, is a typically strong female urban fantasy character. She has chosen to make it on her own without the help of her rich and morally ambiguous father. Instead, she barely scrapes by, taking the odd job to track down illegal uses of magic to their source. On one such job, she finds a child on the brink of death from a magic unloading. What's worse is that the magic bears her father's signature. She confronts him and demands restitution but he convincingly denies all involvement. Soon thereafter, Allie discovers that her father has been killed. Multiple experts point the finger at her and confirm that it was Allie's magical signature that killed him. Thus begins Allie's investigation to find the real killer while keeping one step ahead of the police and various bad guys.

The world that Devon Monk created is one brimming with magic, a magic that requires a balance of sorts. In other words, magic requires some form of payment for its use. Whether it's physical pain or memory loss, its use has serious consequences. This was perhaps my favorite aspect of this book. Right from the beginning, I found myself drawn into Allie's plight as the magic she uses takes both a physical and mental toll. Magic had taken so much from her that she's forced to carry around a journal to write down life's events and job lessons in the likely event that she loses more and more of her memories. And that fact is that she frequently does lose her memories- both big and small, significant and insignificant. College, birthdays, friends and acquaintances- she has no control over which memories go away forever. The only thing she can control is her decision to wield magic. And unfortunately, her job- meager though it may be- requires such use.

Early in the book, we also meet Zayvion. We quickly find out that Allie is drawn to him but does not entirely trust him. Unfortunately, I didn't feel very connected to him until the very end. I also had trouble with Allie's relationship with him. This may be because both he and Allie are very private people. The two of them are so emotionally guarded that I had trouble feeling attached to or believing in their romance which at times felt a little awkward and forced. And although I also found the book to be a little slow, oddly enough despite the constant action or mobility of the characters, I'm glad I stuck with it. In particular, I enjoyed the ending as it pertained to these two characters and the set up for the next book.

Like many urban fantasy and traditional fantasy protagonists, Allie has an unrealized potential that awakens as the book unfolds. And while I usually become annoyed at the idea that characters are suddenly given vast amounts powers, I was satisfied with Monk's decision due in part to the fact that we see that even those who wield immense power must still pay the consequences. Overall, an enjoyable first book in a new urban fantasy series. I look forward to the next one.

Let me say, at the get-go, that this review has nothing to do with the whether or not the plot of "Magic To The Bone" is inane nor if the characters are well-developed. Rather, I'd like to harp a little bit about the gross genre misrepresentation this book represents. Amazon categorizes this book as: #78 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Magic & Wizard. The tags for this book are: Urban Fantasy, Urban Supernatural, Magic, and yes, Paranormal Romance. I have learned, however, that that romance tag gets applied to a lot of things, so I next look to the product description:

"Using magic means it uses you back, and every spell exacts a price from its user. But some people get out of it by Offloading the cost of magic onto an innocent. Then it's Allison Beckstrom's job to identify the spell-caster. Allie would rather live a hand-to-mouth existence than accept the family fortune--and the strings that come with it. But when she finds a boy dying from a magical Offload that has her father's signature all over it, Allie is thrown back into his world of black magic. And the forces she calls on in her quest for the truth will make her capable of things that some will do anything to control..."

Hmmm. No mention of romance there... sounds pretty good. What does Publisher's Weekly have to say?

"Starred Review. In this clever and compulsively readable debut, set in a magical analog of Portland, Ore., Allie Beckstrom is a Hound, able to trace a spell back to its caster. When a young boy is injured by a spell, Allie tracks it back to her estranged father, Daniel, a ruthless businessman who protests his innocence. Then someone magically disguised as Allie kills Daniel. Allie and sexy corporate operative Zayvion race against time to find the answers. Magic is common in this alternate universe, but using it always incurs a physical or mental cost, rendering it a commodity to be bought and sold, used and abused. Allie's internal and external struggles are brilliantly and tightly written, creating a multifaceted character who will surprise, amuse, amaze and absorb readers. (Nov.)"

Well, they slipped the word "sexy" in there, but overall the bias seems to be urban fantasy. And the cover seems to be more kick-ass heroine than strumpet with boy-toy. And I live really close to Portland. Fine... I'll bite.

Eh hem. People at Amazon and Roc. When books contain phrases like: "He bent and gently licked my right nipple, and I luxuriated in the nerve-hot sensation." and "I arched against him and rode the pulsing waves of hot, silken pleasure..." perhaps you ought to consider calling a shovel a shovel and market your product as the romance novel it is.

Maybe "Magic To The Bone" is a great romance novel, BUT THAT"S NOT WHAT I THOUGHT I WAS BUYING. More and more, the line between romance and fantasy seems to be getting blurred, and unless publishers figure out that it is not in their best interest to have a confused and angry customer base, the more avid readers like myself are going to wait to pick up books on the cheap.

One last observation. My experience has been that these fantasy-wanna-be's are novels written by women (yes, Devon Monk is a woman) with female protagonists. Not to say that a woman can't write a fantasy novel with a female lead that doesn't have a heathy dose of "Tingles of pleasure poured out from where he touched me. I closed my eyes, and all I felt were his fingers brushing the curve of my breast, his lips on my skin, and his body, hard and hot, pressed against me.", but there sure seems to be a lot of that out there today.

I really love urban fantasy, so I was enthusiastic when I ran across this book quite by chance in the bookstore. Great premise for a storyline; the modern world uses magic on a daily basis and practicing magic exacts a toll on the user. If the user is talented enough, the "price" of using magic can be passed to someone else. Allie can trace magic to its source and potentially find bad guys who transfer the price of their magic use to innocent victims. Thus, she is known as a "Hound". Which would make for fascinating reading if this book wasn't a dog.

The author seems to be short a thesaurus for crafting alternative descriptions for the smell of magic and the slums of the city; even her redundancy is incredibly redundant. It is my policy to always finish every book I start, but in short, I found that I didn't care about the characters and I completely lost interest in the plot. I was ashamed that I put it down, but after reading a spoiler for the ending, I made the right decision not to waste any more precious reading time. I suggest a far superior series such as "The Hollows" by Kim Harrison as a great example of urban fantasy. I just couldn't get into this one.

I liked so much about this book! Good writing, interesting characters, well written romantic elements and an fascinating take on magic that I really found unique. Usually, I'm a sucker for this particular combination of elements; however, there is a plot device the author uses at the end which really put me off and spoiled the entire book for me.

--SPOILER ALERT--

The price of magic is that our main character Allie loses some of her memory. And, at the end of the story, she uses so much magic that she doesn't recall ANY of the events in the book we just read! Thus the romance that has been built up (and which I the reader was invested in!) is over, Allie's personal growth and discoveries about her past, her partial reconciliation with her father and everything else that happened is MEANINGLESS, and the whole book feels like I wasted my time. as a reader it felt like a cheap authorial trick, just like JR being shot "was all a dream." Bleh.

But, up until that point, I really, really liked the book and would have given it a five star review. And I am undecided if I want to read the sequels despite having like so much about the first book.

We're all used to the Urban Fantasy Female Character (UFFC) by now. A spunky, sexy loner that has an angsty past and some magical ability to put the everlovin' hurt on the bad guys. Good UFFCs have a little extra, something that makes you think of them as a real person and care about their story. Not so much with Allie Beckstrom. I have to say I really loved the author's premise on how magic works and her representation of a modern city that has come to terms with using magic. However, her main characters were barely worth writing about.

Allie is the daughter of a Trump-esque man who has cornered the market on how magic is dispensed. He's made a fortune through underhanded business dealings, manipulating everyone around him, and basically just being a ruthless bleep. She's broken with her father, and lives almost penniless in a dump on the wrong side of town. She goes on about how her father has betrayed her and her mother has left her for Europe, etc etc. She hasn't spoken to her father in 7 years, and the only reason she talks to him now is to accuse him of a horrific magical crime. Ok, I think our UFFC has some trust issues, right? Well, you'd think so anyway.

Next thing you know she's trying to have sex in a car with the guy her father hired to tail her (she knows this, and never really got mad about it!). Did I mention there is an almost-dead guy in the back seat, and she's just dragged herself through sewage and is running for her life? I don't care how cute he is and how sparkly his eyes get, I can't stomach it. It would have been ten million times better if our street-smart UFFC actually showed some of those smarts and didn't melt into a spineless puddle of girly goo every time Zayvion looked sideways at her.

Magic to the Bone gets 2 stars for world building, but the main characters are so abysmally stupid I'm not going to bother with the rest of the series.

Ok, there are lots of reviews that do a very good job with a very detailed summary, so I will just give a brief one here. The book is set in a time where magic is the norm and is used almost like electricity or any other modern convenience - it can be used to make storefronts look clean and new, to make someone look young, to make their shoes look more expensive, etc. Allie is a hound, which is someone who basically backtracks magic or the painful payment (called Offload) for using that magic to the original user. Oh yeah, and when she uses magic sometimes she looses her memory. She traces a very bad Offload to her father, who is an extremely powerful businessman and magician. Things go downhill from there very quickly, as Allie doesn't have a good relationship with her father. She is also being followed by a mysterious man named Zayvion.

Ok, so the premise sounds pretty good to me. Unfortunately the execution wasn't quite up to par. To begin with, my HUGE problem with this book is it is one of those where everyone (especially and particularly Zayvion) keep secrets from everyone else. Secrets that could have saved time and lots of injuries. It is just really annoying - my huge pet peeve. Also, I didn't like how quick Allie and Zayvion ended up sleeping together - no build up, nothing but sex. Unlike some of the other reviewers I didn't mind that Allie lost part of her memories due to using magic. However, I felt at one point it was a HUGE cop-out and completely and totally disappointed me. It pretty much ruined the story for me. (Anyone who reads the book will know the part when they get there, but I don't want to spoil the story for anyone). Also, the writing style just wasn't quite there - it was acceptable but not good. It didn't draw you in and make you finish reading the book to see what happened, it was more keep reading on the hope that something better is on the next page. Also, the bad guy - stupid... Saw that one coming...

That being said, I liked some of the secondary characters. I liked Mama some of the time, and at least she was complex. I liked Nola, and Violet also has possibilities. The book and plot has possibilities... I guess for me it depends on where the series goes if this book was worth reading or not.

So, I guess to sum this all up, if you like urban fantasy this is ok. You might give it a try. I am going to read the second book. I will try to remember to update this after I read the second book. If that one is good it will make this one worth it for background, however if the second book is the same as this one or worse, I would say don't waste your time. There are other good books out there. In urban fantasy, fantasy, and that general genre, (sorry everyone, no offense if I mix genre's up - I suck as classifying and differentiating them) I personally recommend Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, Jeaniene Frost, Karen Chance, etc just to name a few.

Happy reading!

**addition after reading 2nd book - it isn't better than this one and I wouldn't recommend either - sorry everyone, was hoping the second would make this series