Magic on the Line (Allie Beckstrom Series #7)

This is a terrific entry in a great series

In Portland, Hound Allie Beckstrom adheres to the strict rules of the overseeing of magic Authority while risking her life and soul in support of the practitioners (see Magic at the Gate and Magic at the Hunt). Allie and her cohorts find the corpse of rookie Hound Ant Bell. When Davy Silvers takes a closer look at the body, Ant bites him before dying again. Davy is dying from the bite.

Other dead Hounds have arisen to kill peers and the innocent as a plague epidemic devastates the city. Allie informs the new Authority chief Bartholomew Wray that she believes magic is being deployed by a serial killer. Bartholomew rejects her theory while warning her to strictly adhere to the rules. While Bartholomew fiddles with a power game by isolating Allie from her friends and lover Zayvion Jones, she believes she will have to break the rules of the Authority making them fugitives in order to end the magical plague.

This is a terrific entry as for every action (the Life Well battle) there is a reaction (Bartholomew seemingly the righteous by the book bureaucrat), which leaves Allie, Zay and others trying to do what they believe is right to end a magical borne disease at a great personal cost. Filled with action and strong characterizations, readers will appreciate Devon Monk's latest urban fantasy as the heroine must choose between ignoring the truth and crossing the outlaw line.

Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

this was great

I had a great time with this series. There are a lot of characters that I enjoy, and she seems to find trouble wherever she goes. Can't wait till the next one.

Disapointed

I really don't like cliff hangers. And this one is definately that. And it isn't the only one of D. Monk's Beckstrom books that does that. I know that to continue a series there is some things that have to continue on to the next book, but not (I don't think)major things.

Highly Reccommend

I love the Allie Beckstrom series. A must for paranormal readers!

Monk's latest leaves me wanting more

The seventh in the Allie Beckstrom series, Magic on the Line seems like a transitional novel, part of a longer volume marking the change in leadership of the Authority from the old guard to the young turks, perhaps. After the battle with Leander and Isabelle and their minions at the Life Well, Allie's convalescence is cut short by her interview with Bartholomew Wray, the outsider who has been placed in charge of the Authority after the crisis. Wray and his cronies rub Allie the wrong way from the beginning, seeming to be more interested in a political coverup than actually getting to the bottom of the problem and protecting the public from the evildoers.



At the end of Wray's "investigation", his hand-picked team is primarily put in charge in Portland, and the former leaders are Closed (have their magical memories and abilities wiped), including Shamus' mother, Maeve, plus most of the magic users from Seattle who had come to help out the Portland Authority during the recent magic storm and resulting crises. Zayvion, of course, was forced to Close them, and he goes into a guilt-ridden funk for a time, which Allie has to work through with him.

The Veiled are now infected with a magical plague, and when one is able to escape from the wells where they have been confined, they infect the living with the disease, causing a horrible death among magic users, and merely flu-like symptoms among normals. Allie's friend and fellow Hound, Davy Silvers is bitten and infected by one, and a great deal of the time in this story is spent dealing with his illness, while trying to understand how it is spreading and how it may be stopped.

Allie is still possessed by her dad's ghost, but they seem to have worked their way to an uneasy yet handy alliance - he always seems to come up with some magical tidbit or contact she needs when the going gets rough. Allie, herself, becomes violently ill whenever she works any significant magic, though for some reason she really doesn't do a lot of investigation into why that might be. Stone, the gargoyle, also seems to be stricken with an odd malady, but Allie isn't all that curious about that situation, either. I think Monk was just overwhelmed with all the necessary plot elements to move the story in the direction it's going, and didn't have enough room in the paperback format to deal with all of it in Magic on the Line. The way the book winds things up makes it obvious that resolution on these and other issues will take some time.

Allie and her friends must rebel against the authority of the new Authority in order to save the city from the plague and malicious magic. We've seen this coming for a while now, as the old ways of doing business were getting a bit raveled around the edges. For the preternatural branch of the police to deal with some of the new threats, they're going to need to know more about magic than they've been allowed, and for Allie's Hounds to help her avoid getting killed, she's going to have to clue them in on reality, plus she's going to have to stop keeping secrets from her best friend, Nola, or lose that relationship. Change is in the wind.

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