Counterfeit Magic: Get a feel for Armstrong’s world

Counterfeit Magic by Kelley Armstrong

This year Subterranean Press has published several novellas written by authors who’ve been on my radar but not necessarily at the top of my To Be Read stack. These little books are a perfect introduction to such writers because they’re easy to read in a few hours and I can get the “feel” or “flavor” of the authors and their worlds without spending a lot of time engaged in a longer novel, one that may not even be the end of the story.

Kelley Armstrong’s Counterfeit Magic is a perfect example. This 140ish page story takes place in Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld setting and features some of the characters from that world. Though I haven’t read anything by Armstrong before, I had no trouble jumping right in and immediately connecting with the same characters that Armstrong fans already love: Paige, Lucas, Savannah, and Adam.

The quick plot ostensibly involves a murder mystery at a supernatural fight club where Paige and Savannah infiltrate by setting up Savannah as a fighter. Those scenes were fun and the novella offers some sexy full-page black and white illustrations, some which portray Savannah in the boxing ring (see a few of them here).

But the real plot goes deeper and affects the characters more personally. Some of the “bad guy’s” reasoning seemed a bit illogical, and the tension wrapped up a bit too quickly, but I didn’t really mind this in a novella. More importantly, even though these characters were new for me (and the story was short), Kelley Armstrong succeeded in making me care about their lives. I liked them from the start and am interested enough in their past and future histories to pick up a few more Women of the Otherworld novels.

Women of the Otherworld — (Began in 2001) Publisher: An addictive, deeply enjoyable thrill ride on the frontier of the feral and feminine… a debut novel of astonishing imaginative power from the future queen of suspense. Elena Michaels slips out of bed, careful not to wake her boyfriend. He hates it when she disappears in the middle of the night, and can’t understand why any normal woman would crave the small hours of the morning, the dark unsafe downtown streets. But Elena’s skin is tingling, the pent-up energy feels like it’s about to blow her muscles apart — she can’t put it off any longer. She loves to run at the edge of the city, but she doesn’t have time to get there. She has to slink into an alley, take off her clothes and hide them carefully, and make the Change. Elena’s trying hard to be normal. She hates her strength, and her wildness, and her hunger for food, for sex, for running in the night, for the chase and the kill. She wants a husband, children… even a mother-in-law. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. And then the inevitable happens. The Pack needs her. The Pack she loves and hates is under siege from a bunch of disreputable and ruthless mutts who are threatening to expose them all, breaking all the rules that have kept them safe. The loyalty of her nature calls her home, and into the fight, which tests just who Elena is: the wild woman or the wistful would-be human.