Counterfeit Magic

Yes, back to Kelley Armstrong yet again.  I pre-ordered this book a number of months ago when it was announced and had more or less forgotten about it by the time it finally turned up in the mail.

Counterfeit Magic (Subterranean Press, 2010) is a novella-length paranormal mystery story published as a Subterranean Press standalone like last year’s Angelic.  The narrator is the witch Paige Winterbourne, wife to the sorcerous Cabal heir Lucas Cortez, who is living out his own version of The Godfather by trying to change the evil, Mafia-like Cabal from the inside without being corrupted by it.  The resulting tension and the hostility of the Cabal toward Paige are stressing their marriage. 

That’s the ongoing series background.

The mystery story concerns a secret supernatural fight club which has seen several mysterious deaths.  One of those deaths is of the non-supernatural Jared Cookson, whose sexy half-demon sister Ava hires Lucas and Paige to investigate and simultaneously makes a blatant play for Lucas. 

Lucas and Paige’s ward, the powerful witch/sorcerer/half-demon crossbreed Savannah Levine (the family backstory is too complex to recount), now twenty-one, plays a critical role in infiltrating the fight club, providing the opportunity for a girl-on-girl fight scene that plays both to and with sexist stereotypes.  Savannah also shows some moral ambiguity in her use of dark magic that Paige and Lucas are quietly pretending not to notice.  It’s clear that this story takes place a bit before this fall’s Waking the Witch, which has Savannah out on her first solo case.

The illustrations by Maurizio Manzieri suggest that he did not actually read the story (Ava doesn’t walk through doors like a ghost; she teleports), but he does a nice enough job with what I suspect are digital-photo-based-manipulated-composite (what IS the term for this sort of thing?) pictures of sexy women and handsome men posing attractively or doing things often not particularly relevant to the story.  The best of them is on page 100, with a sexy woman -- Ava?  Paige?  -- so drawing the eye that it’s easy to overlook the interesting details in the background.

I was privately amused by the race name "Tripudio" for the teleporting demons.  The immediate association with that word for me is Italian Renaissance dance, specifically Guglielmo Ebreo’s fifteenth-century De Pratica Seu Arte Tripudii (On the Practice or Art of Dancing).

Overall, Counterfeit Magic is pretty much a trifle for series fans, giving us an update on the Paige/Lucas marriage and relationship with the Cabal along with a mystery story that at first appears clunky but twists just enough to redeem it.  Ava’s aggressive flirtation with Lucas highlights the fractures in his and Paige’s relationship, which saves the Paige-Lucas part of the series from what was looking in recent books like an unconvincing happy ending.  It's a fine enough little story, but I recommend it for series fans only -- without that background it's not going to be terribly exciting.

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Comments

[Serge]

How does the girl-on-girl fight go? This reminds me of the episode of "Galactica" of a few years ago, where Starbuck challenges Adama's son (whom she loves) to a boxing match out of anger and her style is anything but 'girlie'.

(One of the most savage fights I've ever seen in a movie was in Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain". No nice choreography.)

[Susan de Guardiola]

There's a scornful reference to a previous girl-on-girl fight as being nothing but bitch-slapping, but the one we actually see involves some actual punches and then enough magic to settle the issue in a less hands-on way.

[Serge]

Slapping reminds me of a few years ago, when Turner Classic Movies's Star of the Month was Joan Crawford and they did a montage of all the movie scenes in which she slapped or got slapped. Very forceful slapping. As far as I know, it's never been posted on YouTube.

[Susan de Guardiola]

How...fetishistic of you to know this, Serge. :)

[Serge]

Heheheh... By the way, that's also the month where the network referred to Crawford as "...every heterosexual man's nightmare and every homosexual man's dream..."

[Neil W]

TCM: defining male sexuality with reference to classic movie stars since 1994!

Maybe I should tell Ted Turner I don't have dreams (or nightmares) about Joan Crawford. I wonder what that means? While researching this comment (none of the research can actually be seen until here->) I discovered that Faye Dunaway received a Razzie for worst actress for playing Joan Crawford in 1981.

[Serge]

I remember that movie, Neil.
Eek.

Speaking of TCM... A few years ago, their Star of the Month had been Doris Day so of course they did a "Que Sera Sera" montage sung in a grunge style, and they even threw in a bit of Martin Scorsese saying that when he was a kid, he wanted to become a priest.

[Serge]

By the way, Neil, I had no intention to offend you. It's just that, when I had mentionned this to a buddy who lives in San Francisco's Castro, he thought it was hilarious.

[Neil W]

Not offended. It's quite funny on the dace of it but also Turner Classic Movies... amuses me* with their hyperbole and that categorical statement. EVERY heterosexual man? EVERY homosexual man? Gosh.

* That's probably the emotion I was feeling through the haze of a slightly drunken marathon board game session last night when I wrote that

[Serge]

Well, I think they said 'every'. They may have actually said 'a'. I have a good memory for trivia, but it's not perfect. That being said, I think I'm coming down with something. Not how I want to end this exhausting year. How I want to end it is by enjoying the Skiffy Channel's traditional "Twilight Zone" marathon.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I think I have never seen a Joan Crawford movie, which should surprise no one.

Second furnace repair in two days. Let's hope this one fixes it for more than 24 hours.

[Serge]

The lack of a furnace in winter is an experience that adds some 'piquant' to the Season and brings some glow to the memories of my childhood. Not.

[Serge]

"There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn't used in high society... outside of a kennel."
- Joan Crawford in 1939's "The Women".

And HERE is Joan in slapping action.

[Neil W]

The combination of being every homosexual man's dream and every heterosexual man's nightmare and that trailer has caused me to add "Joan Crawford Movie Night" to my hairbrained schemes for 2011 list.

Someone needs to design a heating system more likely to break down in Summer than Winter, when you can take your time repairing it. Good luck.

[Serge]

Neil... Will 2011's Joan Crawford Movie Night include 1970's "Trog"?

A sympathetic anthropologist (Joan) uses drugs and surgery to try to communicate with a primitive troglodyte who is found living in a local cave.

[Marilee J. Layman]

I had two heat pump repairs a couple weeks ago. The first time, the repair guy said the wires had loosened from the breaker, and he showed me that after he'd been in the utility room for a while. I watched him tighten all the wires to the breakers. Then four days later, the heat pump turned off again. This time he said the problem was that there should be a better breaker for that heat pump.

I'm still thinking about this, but shouldn't he have put a better breaker in the first time, if there should be one there? And that company is the one who put the heat pump in, and if it should have the better breaker, why wasn't it put in when the heat pump was?

[Serge]

That sounds like a dishonest outfit, Marilee.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Yeah, and they're well-known for being a good company. I'm going to call this week and ask to talk to the owner. I did have a guy who only works nights and weekends, so I suppose it's possible that the owner doesn't know what happened.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Well, the guy who came out for repair #1 said he thought I had a bad gas valve along with a fried thermocoupler. But we replaced the thermocoupler and the heat went back on. We tested it repeatedly. So I was just as happy not to shell out another $250 for the gas valve. But I wasn't entirely shocked when it went off again and it turned out that yes, I really did need a new gas valve.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Everybody hates to pay more than they have to!

Thanks for the card. :)