Magic Strikes, Book 3 in the Kate Daniels series starts out feeling like the daily grind, but things soon pick up. There's a shifter murder that Jim's trying to keep under wraps from The Beast Lord. Then there's Derek. Through him Kate stumbles upon an illegal underground preternatural gladiator fighting ring, the Midnight Games; there is no doubt a connection. Derek's trying to help a friend, but these games are forbidden in the shifter community. Of course, Kate steps up to try to help. I'm sure you can imagine that things don't quite go as planned or else we'd have no book. Through these games we meet some new formidable adversaries with an HQ that reminds of Howl's Moving Castle gone Baller.

I won't spoil it but something gut-wrenching happens to a character that I grew attached to over the books. Everything was going along swimmingly and then at about a third in, you get hit like a mac truck. I read the part on the train going into work and it seriously put a damper on my morning. I guess that's a sign of good story-telling.

This series has a consistent level of high quality. It's really hard for me to say if one book is better than the other. There's always an interesting case for Kate, the characters are consistently dynamic, and while some plot points are status quo, Andrews isn't afraid to take risks with her characters, so it doesn't make you feel too comfortable either.

It's really hard to truly categorize this urban fantasy. Some series are obviously dark, some are obviously more light. It's got pretty much all of the elements you can find, along with countless one-liners. My kindle's got so many bookmarks for this series I would practically read the books all the way through again if I clicked on them one by one, haha.

As a whole, I feel this series is really heavy on shifters and their customs, maybe even more than magic itself at times. The shifter content is what stands out to me most anyway. Lycan mythology usually isn't my thing, so while it is interesting here, that may be why I'm not *quite* as attached. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate good storytelling. It's a thoroughly entertaining ride and you'll be hard pressed to find many series of such high caliber.

Where was I? Categorize, categorize...I'll just throw it in the category of AWESOME and call it a day.