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Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong
01/10/2004 . Source: Jennifer Howell 
pub: Orbit/Times Warner. 528 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-84149-340-6). Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK.
check out websites: www.OrbitBooks.co.uk and www.kelleyarmstrong.com
href="http://www.OrbitBooks.co.uk"> Orbit/Times Warner
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong's books are getting to be a twice-yearly treat at the moment. Nice to see an author who keeps the pace up and doubly nice to see one that doesn't let the quality slip at all. Not a sausage.
Last time we saw new-age witch Paige, she'd just been kicked out as leader of the American Coven and things were not going too well. She'd lost her home, her pride had taken a severe bashing and all this was after the tabloid press hounded her for being a witch.
On the plus side, she had fallen for a do-gooding, drop dead gorgeous sorcerer-lawyer in Lucas Cortez. Sadly, even someone as perfect as Lucas has baggage - apart from the fact that he's a sorcerer. His father is the head of the all-powerful Cortez Cabal, one of the supernatural organisations that make the Mafia look like a children's tea party. While Lucas has as little to do with daddy as possible (not really being up for the whole absolute power and corruption deal), when a murderer starts targeting the children of Cabal employees, Paige is reluctantly involved at the prospect of helping another young witch.
With Cabals, though, it's never as simple as just helping out. As Paige is dragged higher in the supernatural social scene than she ever imagined, everything else comes out of the woodwork on the way up: celebrity necromancers, petulant druid gods and the most pretentious vampires this side of an Anne Rice book (which is where they wish they were). All this and trying to avoid the psychopathic killer stalking just about every other person she knows...
It was always going to take a while for fans of the first two books in the series, werewolf thrillers 'Bitten' and 'Stolen', to get over the fact that Armstrong wasn't just a one-trick pony. She had a whole other world of characters to introduce and, while a certain female werewolf looms large again in 'Industrial Magic', this is still very much concerned with our second lead character in Paige. Following the maxim of two books per character before moving on, this is the last we'll have of Paige narrating for a while. Never let it be said that Armstrong doesn't cram absolutely everything she can think of into 'Industrial Magic'. The narrative world seems to be expanding all the time and we get to see a whole lot more this time around.
What we get is dark, snappy and consistently entertaining, as Armstrong never loses the balance between Paige's sardonic narration, the wonderfully absurd supporting characters and the nicely girlie touches that add a little lightness to the murder and mayhem. The plot hinges on the character relationships much of the time, be it romantic or familial. As per usual, there's a fair amount of blood and gore in the mix, not to mention a fair dose of emotional trauma. There seems to be a trend developing for making previously unlikeable characters more sympathetic as time goes on, so that the situation is always more mutable than at first glance. Cassandra, the sociopathic Prada-clad vampire from 'Stolen' turns up again, more complicated than ever but a lovely counterpoint when Paige pays a visit to the group of Anne Rice-wannabe vampires in New Orleans.
The feel of the world of 'Industrial Magic' is vastly different again to any of the previous books, all expensive sharp edges and Miami sunshine crossed with the glitz of necromancer Jaime Vegas' stage show or a swampy Cabal graveyard deep in the Everglades. With the Cabal's resources at the characters' disposal, the canvas has opened up from the fairly static locations in previous books and the designer fashions get way more expensive than Paige could ever afford on her website-designer salary.
More than anything, Armstrong knows how to keep the reader constantly engaged with 'Industrial Magic'. There's never anything that could be described as a dull moment or filler and for nearly 600 pages, that's quite an achievement. The series, in general, is developing into something more interesting and less predictable with every instalment. Although Elena was still probably the strongest narrator thus far, she features heavily in this book and anyone suffering werewolf withdrawal symptoms should find the prequel novellas on Kelley Armstrong's website an effective antidote. Against all my predictions, next time around it looks like we're with black-magic-practising witch Eve, who also happens to be dead. Like I said: never, ever a dull moment.
Jennifer Howell 
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