If You Aren’t Reading Ilona Andrews, You Should Be.

I read this MONTHS ago and now I’m going to try to write a review, but there are two important things:

1. If you have read Emerald Blaze, please join me in a squee for how excellent this was. I am so looking forward to the next book, even though it has been delayed because it’s hard to be creative when the world is falling apart.
2. If you have not read Emerald Blaze, I assume you haven’t read the Hidden Legacies series and I must ask, whhhhyyyyyyyyy not?

If you aren’t reading the Hidden Legacy series this is not where you want to start. I will say though, Emerald Blaze is a great reason to start reading the series. Ilona Andrews writes consistently good urban fantasy with interesting and strong characters. It feels cliché now to say they write badass women, but they do. Badass, interesting women who live in complicated worlds and do their best to be ethical within their world.

Catalina Baylor is the second of the Baylor sisters and currently my favorite. Throughout Nevada’s books, she was the shier, sweeter younger sister. We learned in Sapphire Flames that she had the strength of will to wrest control of House Baylor away from Nevada when she saw being head of two houses was taking a physical toll on her older sister. Since then she has led her house through it’s first years, continued to lead the family detective agency, become a deputy warden of the State of Texas (if she tells you she’ll have to kill you), wrangled a relationship with her traitorous psychopath of a grandmother, fallen in love, and suffered a broken heart.

The man she fell in love with was Alessandro Segredo, an assassin.

Alessandro had people to kill, and I had a House to run and MII cases to take over. Leon was right. I had been depressed for months, but I wasn’t mourning Alessandro abandoning me. I was mourning the old me. For the new me to emerge, the old me had to disappear, and killing her bit by bit hurt.

Alessandro was a catalyst for change. Eventually I’d scrounge up some gratitude for the lesson.

So, naturally, Alessandro is back. While the former lovers work their way back to each other they have a mystery to solve, enemies to defeat, pieces of an even larger puzzle to put together, a world to save, and fun sexy banter to engage in.

Having been a reader for decades and a reader of Ilona Andrews for a very long time, I know Catalina is going to get her heart broken again, but not by Alessandro. It might be in the next book, It might be during Arabella’s much anticipated series. It will happen though and my heart aches for this young woman who exists only in fiction. And that’s why you should read anything and everything Ilona Andrews writes. They are master story tellers who create extraordinary worlds and populate them with complex, interesting characters.

I maintain that the last realistic aspect of this alternate universe Houston is the traffic. I’ve spent a lot of time in Houston traffic and frankly I’d rather fight a magic mechanical construct. At least I’d die quickly.