Deal With The Devil by Kit Rocha

A couple of weeks ago, I had the BEST news from NetGalley--approval for an ARC for a book that I was CRAVING.

In 6 B.C-19*, I wrote my first review of a Kit Rocha story.  You can read it here.  It's fair to say I'm a straight-up Kit Rocha Fan Girl.  So you can imagine my response when I found out that I'd been approved for an ARC of the first book of the new Kit Rocha series, Deal With The Devil, in exchange for a review.

It was VERY dignified. *cough* Very.

Deal With The Devil is a Mercenary Librarians novel, and it's set in the same post-apocalyptic timeline that the O'Kane books are set, but the location is different.  So far, there are no character connections, but everyone is dealing with the same "how do we live now that everything is broken" situation.  (There was a nice Easter egg mention of the whisky from Sector Four from their last series, though.)

The Mercenary Librarians are actually quite more benevolent than their name sounds.  They're not hoarding knowledge and texts (remind me to review Rachel Caine's Great Library series soon, would ya?), but they do need to support themselves and help a few neighbors while they're at it.  So when the leader, Nina, gets an offer to go after a rogue Library of Congress bunker, she gathers up her team and heads out with The Silver Devils--a team of elite soldiers formally employed by the local tech giant--despite the possibility that this offer is too good to be true. She wants to save all the knowledge that's been lost and find a way to make is accessible to the people around her.

Garrett, the leader of the Silver Devils, doesn't have quite that altruistic of a goal in mind.  He's actually setting a trap for Nina; he's desperate to trade Nina for another woman who can stop the Silver Devils from dying. Their former tech giant employer has been augmenting its soldiers for years, and once the Silver Devils left the company they were cut off from the upgrades and necessary maintenance to keep their hearts and brains functioning correctly.

So the two teams set off toward the rogue bunker, and have some adventures, and get to know each other better.  And Garrett is in a bind.  He likes Nina, and, oh, man, does he want Nina, but he's about to betray Nina.  So there's interpersonal tension to go along with the post-apocalyptic danger, and there's just a lot of really compelling stuff going on.

Which I liked and will probably love on the re-read.

Why didn't I love it the first time through?

Because I HATE hate hate hate books where the inevitable betrayal is baked into the plot.  While I was all *Kermit arms* about getting the ARC, I also speed read the whole thing like this: 

I mean, I trust Kit Rocha to make everything work out in the end, but Garrett was taking TOO LONG to tell Nina what was going on.  And then there was this TWIST that I did not see coming, and, oh, yeah, Garrett was screwed.  It was also pretty unclear how it was going to all work out in the end.

Because, as I said, there was a lot of really compelling stuff going on.

So, if you want to know how it works out for Nina and Garrett, and you're more comfortable with sturm und drang than I am, you should definitely read Deal With The Devil.  Even if you're wimp like I am, you should read it.  It's good, and finishing it just made me greedy for the next one.

*Six year before COVID-19, or 2014.

Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews (mild spoilers)

Thanks to Ace (a Penguin Group Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint) and my Twitter addiction, this happened on Monday:

Just in case you were about to underestimate how happy this made me,
please use the size of this picture to as an indication of my joy.
Now, increase that amount by an exponent of 10 and crank up the volume.

My sisters love me (or they were afraid of my excessive use of exclamation points), and they agreed that the ARC (advance reading copy) could come to my house.  It arrived on Friday.  So this was a BFD for couple of reasons.  As I texted, this is one my favorite series, but an ARC also meant I wouldn't need to wait until release day (July 29) to read the book.  

Suffice to say there was much fangirl-ing* in my house this week.

And, yet, this Kate Daniels fangirl has somehow never reviewed a Kate book for you before.  

A book set in Kate's world? Yes.  

A novella in anthology that is also in Kate's world? Yes.  

But an actual, honest-to-goodness Kate book? No. That just incomprehensible.
(And that word does mean what I think it means.)

This is our ARC.
You are not allowed to judge it by its cover.

Warning: mild spoilers found below.


Magic Breaks is the seventh book in this series; the authors are contracted for three more.  (I am unlikely to think that 10 is enough.)  The book opens with series summary by one of the supporting characters, so you could dive right in and read this book without being lost**.  Briefly, what that summary explains is that Kate lives in Atlanta at a time when magic pulses and technology works inconsistently.  Kate, due to her parentage, IS magic. She's also, due to her upbringing, quite the ass-kicker.  Her fiance, Curran, is the Beast Lord, the alpha's alpha of the Atlanta Pack of shapeshifters.  There are witches, trolls, and vampires*** in this world, and Kate works hard to protect her loved ones, the defenseless, and a few mostly righteous people willing to pay for her services****.

The story begins when the uneasy truce between the people who navigate the vampires and the shapeshifters is broken by the discovery that a shapeshifter killed a master navigator. Kate has to figure out how to prevent an almost inevitable war between the two sides--a war seemingly kick-started by Hugh d'Ambray, a wingnut with a twisted preoccupation with Kate.  Hugh is so preoccupied with Kate that when she manages to foil his master plan (curses!), he uses betrayal within the Pack to get Kate (literally) where he wants her.

So, war averted, but personal jeopardy ensured. (That's kinda Kate's MO.)

The copy  pre-ordered will look like this
when it arrives on Tuesday.

Hugh is a sociopathic wingnut, so he underestimates both the devotion and capabilities of Kate's friends and family, and that underestimation eventually leads to his embarrassment before his boss, Kate's father.  

Oh, I need to tell you somethings about Kate's dad.

He's . . . not nice. Nor is he weak.
He wants to "claim" Atlanta as his own, and he just might have a history of killing off his offspring.

So the part of this series and this story that has been leading up to a confrontation between Kate and her father? 

Err, tense and likely deadly.

So what have a described so far?  An urban fantasy about an ass-kicking, sword-slinging heroine; her devoted, psychotic (in a good way?) supernatural friends; and her messed-up family tree.  A heroine forced (through circumstances and her own conscience) into facing a powerful wizard who will try to control or kill her.

Sound like fun?  It's AWESOME.  It's so good, I'm going to read it again before release day. 

Now, excuse me, while my Precious and I go spend more time together.

One last look at our Precious for you.

*In my case, fangirl-ing involves dancing around the house with no concern for dignity, copious amounts of texts and social media messages--again, with no concern for dignity--and, of course, squee-ing. ZOMG!! We won an ARC.

**But for the love of my book OCD, start at the beginning.  There's a difference between not being lost and really appreciating what's going on.***These vampires are little like remotely controlled zombies.  On their own, they're mindless predators, but "navigators" can manipulate them like string-less marionettes. 


***These vampires are little like remotely controlled zombies.  On their own, they're mindless predators, but "navigators" can manipulate them like string-less marionettes.

****For more insight into Kate's world, go here.  It's a new site, so I can't tell you much about it.