Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

This is the fifth of Andrews' Kate Daniels books, and book 5 is when I'm used to even the good fantasy series to start heading south. Thankfully, that is not the case with these books. I suspect a large part of it is that, unlike other books in the urban fantasy genre (well, this isn't technically urban fantasy, as it's a semi-post-apocalyptic Atlanta, but it has all the right trappings) Kate's life hasn't turned into having half a dozen romantic interests running around, making knowing remarks and fighting over her, with her non-romantic personal story popping up between those scenes, and instead remains squarely focused on Kate herself, with only one romantic interest. The books also remember that if you have to have a bossy alpha male used to giving orders as a romantic interest, the best way to do that is to have the heroine be more alpha than he is and unphased by his pushiness, not to mention is the more powerful of the two. (Probably the best example of Kate and Curran's relationship is a scene in this book where Curran tries to give Kate an order and she taps him on the nose, goes "bad cat," and proceeds to do whatever she wants and he basically sighs and goes about his business.)

( spoilers )

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For better or for worse, I've made a tumblr to follow the people who are hanging out more over there now.  No idea how much I'll actually use it for anything but reading, but for now there's Brigitte Lin propositioning Gong Li in a 90s Hong Kong movie to start with.