Death Magic (Early Review)
Death Magic by Eileen Wilks
World of the Lupi #8
Lily is managing the conflict between her duty as an officer of the law and the need for secrecy pretty well . . . until the rabidly anti-magic senator who chairs that committee is murdered. The line between right and wrong, always so clear to her, becomes hopelessly blurred as events catapult them all towards disaster, and prophecies of a cataclysmic end to the country she loves and serves--and to the entire race of lupi--seem well on their way to being fulfilled.
Lily has been able to walk the fine line between her duty as a cop and to her lupi obligations pretty well for the most part. Until now. After a zealot senator is murdered, and her boss becomes the prime suspect, she's no longer able to see things as black and white. Her eyes are opened up to all the many shades of gray, and all the trouble that comes from that. No longer can she easily choose right from wrong as everything she has ever known is now in question. She has some hard decisions ahead that she must make quickly as much more than she realizes relies on her decision, as the fate of the world is truly in the balance.
Death Magic didn't quite live up to the previous installments. Don't get me wrong, it was still quite enjoyable, but not to the extent the past few books have been. Things really seemed to drag, especially in the middle, to the point where I kept getting easily distracted by other things rather than being completely engrossed. To be honest I'm not really sure why Death Magic couldn't hold my attention. Perhaps it was because, while the danger was there it was only in an abstract sense. There was talk of a prediction of a cataclysmic event in the near future that would crumble the government and end in militant control. So while everyone was scrambling to prevent this from happening, there never was a clear sense of what they had to do to prevent it. This just didn't make the danger feel real enough, so I just wasn't able to become fully vested in their endeavors this time around.
In the past the books in this series have been every bit as much about romance between the different couples as it was the overall plot and series arc. However, in Death Magic there was hardly any focus on romance at, which I really missed. Yes, Lily and Rule were front and center this time around, but the attention really wasn't on them as a couple, but more on everything else. Perhaps it isn't even the romance per se that I was missing, but the emotion that comes with it. Rule and Lily are both characters that keep themselves very closed off, except with each other. So by not having them really interacting a lot in private, we missed out on a good deal of emotion, which could be another reason I felt so detached this time around. That being said, there was one emotion that came across plain and clear from Rule, anger. For a good portion of this book I had thought he would spontaneously combust, but at least he was able to learn something from that anger in the end, making for some very good character growth.
While I cannot say that Death Magic was my favorite installment of the series, I'm still glad I read it. Several pressing issues from previous books have been dealt with, as well as countless more developments for the future. The war is only going to get uglier from here with losses on both sides. Here's hoping it will be the other side that gets hit worst in the end. I'll be looking forward to the next book to see where things are heading.
(Received a copy from the publisher)
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