Counterfeit Magic

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

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 at Sub Press's website).

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.

“Superhero Fight Club” is one of those stock storyline that always sounds like a good idea, but rarely if ever lives up to the promise of it. So I was kind of relieved when Armstrong introduced it, but then quickly moved away from it, using a series of suspicious deaths at the fight club as an excuse to look at the family dynamics of the Winterbourne/Cortez family. I'm a big fan of Paige and Lucas, so that was right up my alley, but I can't see this being of interest to someone who's not already sold on the characters.