Firestorm by Taylor Anderson

Firestorm (2011) is the sixth book in Taylor Anderson’s DESTROYERMEN series about the WWII navy warship USS Walker that was hurled into an alternate Earth during an electrical storm. (If you didn’t know that, you should probably stop here and go back to read the first book, Into the Storm, and the subsequent volumes before continuing on.)

In Firestorm, our heroes are spread out across the world trying to stop evil in its several guises. There are the Grik — the lizard-like horde that eats people — who seem like the most natural enemy. But then there are the “bad Japs” who also came through the storm and who were enemies back when everyone was on the “real” Earth. And there’s also the Dominion, a society of humans who adhere to a warped version of Christianity and who enslave women. The Dest... Read More

Magic on the Hunt by Devon Monk

Magic on the Hunt begins with a cute domestic scene; Allie and Zayvion play rock-paper-scissors in bed. The loser has to get out of the nice warm bed and make breakfast for the other. It’s such a sweet moment, and the two characters are so constantly in crisis mode that we don’t get nearly enough of these.

Unsurprisingly, the idyll doesn’t last very long, and it’s business as usual for the embattled magic users of Portland. And by business as usual, I mean “mortal peril.”

Devon Monk moves the series forward by leaps and bounds in this installment. The amount of development in the overarching plot is fantastic. First we learn more about something that was hinted in Magic at the Gate: Allie’s memory losses aren’t just side effects of magic use, but something more deliberate and sinister. Then, ... Read More