Mr. Justice Captainsblog took no part in the consideration or decision of this sequel....

[captainsblog]

Which means I get to give it a proper, and utterly thumbs-up, REVIEW!

(Full disclosure: I did take on the editing of the first of Kate Danley's books in the Maggie MacKay series-



- yeah, that one-

I had nothing whatsoever to do with the next latest and greatest of 'em.)



K, that's not entirely true. I do get an acknowledgement for helping support her awesomely worthy effort, last November, to do a weekend worth of writing on this project as part of a fundraising NaNoCal project called

The Night of Writing Dangerously.   Two hundred and fifty authors descended upon the Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco dressed in our 1940s best.   Armed only with our laptops (and typewriters. Some took the noir theme very seriously), we engaged in an evening of literary abandon, typing to our heart’s content for six hours.

Much of the resulting book came out of that effort, but I got to see the results of it the same way you would- and should. Get thee to an Amazonery for four bucks, (or ask me nicely and I can "loan" my copy to you for free), or knock down a tree to the same effect for less than an A-Ham and have it whenever your super-saver-shipper shows.

And why should you?

* You will laugh. Kate is, at heart, a comic- grounded in Groundlings and with senses of timing and turn-of-phrase that will just amaze.

* You will love her 'verse. It's essentially the same one she developed for the original book- which I was hesitant to edit when I first saw the V-word, Twihards having scared the living garlic out of my appreciation for the genre, but there's none of that world in Maggie's in either the original or this. She, rather, is just an ordinary gal who can walk worlds and stake vamps without the slightest hint of sparkly, with a dysfunctional but loving family that you will relate to; a limited but awesome cast of non-human characters carried over from MFH plus a novel spin on genies that Jonathan Stroud and Kat Richardson would be pleased to go out for bottled beverages with; and a story which reaches back to its predecessor enough to be a sequel while still not requiring you to read the earlier work to "get" most of what's going on (something said Kat could take a lesson from).

* You will appreciate the turns taken. The original established a second plane, dimension, whatevs, that Maggie can travel to and from, far more easily than most but not without worries about reliable transportation and the occasional interdimensional uckfup. MGYG maintains and expands on that, adding detail about how some can do it even better than she does, and introducing a third and darker dimension, respecting the rules of traditional I Dream of Geniedom while, still, turning them on their ear to work her magic in the thrilling finale-for-now.

* Worst of all, you will not miss my contributions one little bit.  Okay, a teeny tiny here and there: "busses" are kisses, not modes of transport; there might be a missed opportunity for foreshadowing or explaining on about three pages; and, especially towards the end, the typographer got a little sloppy.  I cared not a whit, and neither should you.

Why are you reading this last paragraph? GO! 

Comments

[katedanley.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for all the kind words, Ray! You're wonderful! YAY! So glad you liked it!