Magic Bites

"“Ilona Andrews” is a husband and wife team. I love all of their series. They all have battle couples in them, but I single out the Kate Daniels series because it is the longest-running and most fighty series. It’s urban fantasy , but it isn’t secret magic, where everyone has to keep the magic hidden. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Atlanta, which is where I live now. These books are set in a contemporary world, but one where magic suddenly came back into this world of technology after thousands of years of being dormant. There was a cataclysmic event, and society crumbled and then recovered. Technology still exists, but it alternates with magic, in waves. One will work and the other won’t. That’s a fun complication. People have learned to live with the mess that this causes. A car may have two engines: a gas engine and a magic engine, or some people ride horses instead because they don’t want to have to deal with it. Compared to our world, it’s more dangerous because you have shapeshifters, vampires controlled by necromancers, mages, witches, and monsters. The monsters range from low-key nuisances to the extremely nasty, people-eating kind. At the start of the series, Kate is a mercenary. She’s a low-level grunt who does violent jobs for money, working as a bodyguard, rescuer, monster exterminator—whatever she gets paid to do. She’s constantly broke because this is uneven income, so she’s always hustling. Relatable! In the first book, Kate’s former guardian is murdered, and she sets out to solve that mystery. This brings her into contact with the Order of Merciful Aid, for whom he had worked. She ends up crossing paths with the Beast Lord, Curran, who’s in charge of all the shapeshifters in Atlanta. There are hundreds of them. The first time they meet, in a dark alley, Kate sasses him by saying, “Here, kitty-kitty.” He turns out to be an enormous werelion. She thinks he’s an overbearing jerk with an inflated ego; he thinks she’s all mouth and no brains, that she is only a sword arm with nothing between her ears. Their romance is a slow burn that builds over the course of the series. Their respective histories and secrets are revealed gradually as they fall in love with each other. As battle couples go, they complement each other well. Kate has strong magic, encyclopedic knowledge of mythology and monsters, and endless weapon skills. She can fight with anything: a knife, a spoon, a broken bottle. She is a weapon incarnate. In D&D terms, Curran is a tank. He can bench press a car, wrestle like a pro, and he turns into a giant lion. What are you going to do against that? The interesting thing about them as a couple is that they each are extremely powerful from jump, but Kate is hiding her potential, for plot reasons that are explored over the course of the series. Curran, politically speaking, is way out of her league. He is the head of this entire pack of shapeshifters, which makes having genuine relationships difficult for him, if not impossible. Because of the power dynamics, he’s not on a level with anyone. In the first book, they both go on dates with other people in the same place. Kate’s is with a plastic surgeon who is very invested in appearances and views her as arm candy. She hates it, and she’s bored the whole time. Curran is on a date with a shapeshifter who can’t look him in the eye because she’s so scared of him. At that point, neither Kate nor Curran can be their authentic selves. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But when they’re back to back in a fight, they can let loose. They can be their true selves without having to worry about what other people think. She won’t let him boss her around or intimidate her. And because of that, he gets to stop being the boss around her and can just be a man with feelings and needs. They can have a relationship based on this mutual disregard for their respective levels of power. It’s a very interesting dynamic. One of the intrinsic elements of a battle couple is that they have to meet as equals on some level. When you have characters for whom that equality is lacking, they have to get to that place before they can have a relationship. They have to accept and understand each other and believe in each other. If you’re in battle together and you’re back to back with somebody, you have to trust that they’re going to protect you as you protect them. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement that is built on trust."