Previous SFF Author: Karen Marie Moning
Devon Monk has one husband, two sons, and a dog named Mojo. Surrounded by numerous colorful family members, she lives in Oregon. She has sold more than fifty short stories to fantasy, science fiction, horror, humor, and young-adult magazines and anthologies. She has been published in five countries and included in a year’s best fantasy collection. Learn more at Devon Monk’s website.
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Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk
Magic to the Bone is a breath of fresh air in the urban fantasy genre, in much the same way that Ilona Andrews‘ Kate Daniels series is a breath of fresh air. Instead of the same tired werewolf/vampire soap opera that so many novels perpetuate, Magic to the Bone is more concerned with the ramifications of adding magic to modern society and exploring the realistic consequences. Magic, in Devon Monk’s universe, has been recently discovered,
Magic in the Blood by Devon Monk
I complain sometimes about urban fantasy heroines who keep racking up more and more improbable powers over the course of a series, eventually becoming such spectacular demigoddesses that it would take a small army to give them so much as a black eye.
That’s one problem Allie Beckstrom doesn’t have. I’m beginning to think Allie needs more powers to deal with everything Devon Monk is throwing at her. Monk is great — maybe a little too great — at describing the agony of trekking all over Portland in the rain with a blinding migraine,
Magic in the Shadows by Devon Monk
“All I had wanted was a frickin’ cup of coffee. Couldn’t a girl go downtown without having to deal with undead mutated murderers on the way?”
When that girl is Allie Beckstrom… no. As Magic in the Shadows begins, Allie is hoping for a nice, normal date with her boyfriend Zayvion. Unfortunately, her father’s ghost has taken up residence in her head, and then there’s that grisly crime scene she and Zayvion find on the way to the restaurant…
Magic at the Gate by Devon Monk
I haven’t read Magic on the Storm, the fourth book in the Allie Beckstrom series, but I gather it ended on a massive cliffhanger. The opening of book five, Magic at the Gate, finds Allie in the land of the dead. She has ventured into death to find the soul of her boyfriend, Zayvion, who is in a coma after the events of the previous book.
I normally love to read about underworld journeys,
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,
Magic on the Line by Devon Monk
I’ve got to hand it to Devon Monk: she scares the daylights out of me, in a really good way. Earlier this year she sent chills down my spine with the blood-and-steam magic of Dead Iron. The latest ALLIE BECKSTROM installment, Magic on the Line, is just as chilling, for at least three reasons:
One, something has gone terribly wrong with magic. Allie gets sick every time she tries to cast spells;
Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk
At the end of Magic on the Line, Allie Beckstrom killed the head of Portland’s Authority — who was ignoring a magical plague in the city for his own ends — and now she is a fugitive, along with her lover Zayvion and a handful of her closest friends who have now broken with the Authority as well. In Magic Without Mercy, Allie and her small band investigate the poisoning of Portland’s four magical wells and try to find a way to cleanse magic before the problem can go worldwide.
Devon Monk, the author of Dead Iron, is also the author of the Allie Beckstrom urban fantasy series, but you’d never know it if her name wasn’t on the cover. Monk pulls off the impressive feat of creating a wholly distinct voice for her new Age of Steam series.
Here, Monk paints a vivid picture of a gritty, grimy Old West. Like the Beckstrom books, this is set in Oregon, but it’s a very different Oregon. The writing invokes all of the senses,
Tin Swift is the second book in Devon Monk’s AGE OF STEAM series. The first, Dead Iron, introduced the characters we follow in this book: Cedar Hunt, honorable bounty hunter and werewolf; Wil Hunt, Cedar’s wolf brother; Mae Lindson, a widowed witch; Rose Small, a young orphaned woman with a magical ability to work metal; and the enigmatic Madder brothers. The three brothers have pressed Hunt into service on their quest to find and bind a magical artifact from another realm,
Right now it’s about eighty-five degrees at my house, and there is a mockingbird singing somewhere outside, but the trek through the blizzard that opens Cold Copper, the third book in Devon Monk’s Age of Steam series, is so compelling that I feel like I’m walking through the snow with Cedar Hunt.
This series continues to thrill with the third installment.
Cedar Hunt is a bounty hunter. He was cursed by a Pawnee god;
This is the first Devon Monk book I’ve ever read. After some digging, I discovered that the main characters in the BROKEN MAGIC series, Shame and Terric, were introduced as backburner characters in another book/series that Monk wrote, the Allie Beckstrom series. Never fear, you obviously don’t have to have read those other books to enjoy Hell Bent. I didn’t have a clue who the author or her characters were, and I still had a lot of fun.
Stone Cold is the second book in a spinoff series by Monk (from her ALLIE BECKSTROM series/world). I have to admit, the first book in this BROKEN MAGIC series, Hell Bent, actually hooked me so hard it made me give the ALLIE BECKSTROM books a try, which I also enjoyed so much I am having a hard time making myself finish the series (which is the best compliment this bookworm can ever give any series).
Today we’re featuring Chapter 6 of Devon Monk’s story Hang Fire, which is an internet-only steampunk short story set in late 1800’s America. It takes place between Devon Monk’s AGE OF STEAM books Dead Iron and Tin Swift (which will be released on July 3). Hang Fire is broken into 20 “chapters” and posted, one chapter at a time, on 20 blogs. Start at chapter 1 at Candace’s Book Blog and follow the “read the next chapter”
Previous SFF Author: Karen Marie Moning
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