Review: Beast Business by Ilona Andrews
A thrilling novella by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews, set in the spellbinding Hidden Legacy World.
Show as little as possible. Make them think that illusion is all you have. Your life depends on it.
Augustine Montgomery is an Illusion Prime, the highest rank of magic user. The people who have seen his real face can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The people who’ve witnessed the full extent of his power are dead. Illusion isn’t just his brand of magic. It’s become his lifestyle.
One day Diana Harrison walks into the office of Augustine’s premier PI corporation. Diana is also a Prime, a mage who bonds with animals through her magic and prefers their company to humans. Something precious has been stolen from House Harrison. Something Diana must recover at all costs before it perishes.
Augustine is cold, rational, and calculating. He doesn’t get emotionally involved, but something about Diana disturbs the careful balance of Augustine’s inner world. She asks for his help, and he can’t refuse.
Neither Augustine nor Diana are who they appear to be. Both would die to keep their secrets. But the enemy they face is unimaginably powerful, and saving the life at risk will demand the ultimate price, one neither ever expected to pay – complete honesty.
Review:
Dear Ilona Andrews,
In the world of your Hidden Legacy Series there are several secondary characters I would have loved to learn more about and Augustine Montgomery was probably number one on that imaginary list of mine so when I read on your blog that his novella was coming out soon of course I kept checking.
Readers overall I quite enjoyed it, however please beware that this novella at least felt very short. The book overall had 204 pages, however on my kindle the story stops I think on page 152 and then several short stories are reprinted (with the proper note from the authors) from their blog. It is mentioned on the blog that this was a short project. I am just letting you know exactly how short it was. I read it in about two hours.
I also want to stress that in my opinion it will be a bad idea to read this one as a stand alone. I mean, you will still understand the fun adventure and very likely a beginning of the love story between these two characters, but you will not know all the backstory. On the other hand, maybe you will not be annoyed by some of the continuity changes as I was, because I have read previous books and remember it.
One example for me (and for those readers who read the previous books only) SPOILER
Spoiler: Show
Of course, of course this only makes Augustine look better as a potentially romantic lead, so it did not make this specific story look any worse in my eyes, but for the fact that it was not a stand alone.
The blurb gives a great set up for the story. Diana Harrison asks help from Augustine and he decides to provide it – a short, but fun adventure with great chemistry takes place. Arabella Baylor guest stars and does an awesome job in those episodes.
One other thing that I thought was very well done was the explanation of why House Baylor could not do the investigation of this theft for Diana. Augustine points out that it would have made sense for Diana to ask House Baylor, but the explanation just worked for me.
I say this as a reader who did not always buy those explanations before. For example in one of the Hidden Legacy Books, when Catalina takes the mantle of Head of the House from Nevada and at some point everyone Nevada loved is in danger, but she and Rogan were I think in the jungle or something and could not help for that reason. I get that they needed to let Catalina have her moment, but I rolled my eyes, as if Nevada would not have dropped everything she was doing and rushed to help. In this story the explanation for non- involvement worked much better for me.
Besides great chemistry I really liked that we learned more about Diana’s and Augustine’s powers, it was a lot of fun. Now, Augustine also showed us that he can do a lot more than we previously thought he could, but in one of the previous Hidden Legacy Novels we already had a hint at some of his *other* abilities, so I do not think that the character was retconned and more revelations about Diana just felt like very natural extensions of what we already knew about animal mages and what they could do.
It was very good overall, just short and for that reason I very much appreciated that there was no certain happy ending to their love story, because it was just beginning. It was open I guess. B+
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Kitties! What a lovely cover. I wish I could start here but I think you’re right that there’s so much backstory I would miss.
@Jayne: Yeah, I would not advise starting here, but kitties from another dimension do rock :).
I’m looking forward to this one!
@Jayne: But what a great excuse to read the Hidden Legacy series! It’s not that long at this point (just six books and one other novella, if I recall correctly).
@Kaetrin: Hope ot works. @Janine: Absolutely ;-).
I read your review with my eyes partly closed, since I plan to read the book and am trying to avoid spoilers. Does anyone know if the ebook will be coming to libraries?
@Janine: I hope so. Also I get it that you would want to avoid spoilers, but there are none in my review, besides referring to something in the main books that I know that you are well familiar with already ( thats what under a tag :)). It is short, so I tried to be as vague as possible beyond what’s in the blurb.
@Sirius: Thanks, I appreciate that.
It’s too bad about the retconning you mention under the spoiler tag. I have to admit that while I recall the original motive behind what was done, I have already forgotten what the later explanation / excuse was, just that there was a different one. So now we have an event that was retconned not once, but twice. Three different versions. It could almost be Rashomon. :-/
My top choice of a Hidden Legacy side character I would like a story for (i’m not counting Arabella as a side character, else she would be my top choice) is Cornelius. I have always had some difficulty with visualizing Augustine; I think he’s supposed to be Rogan’s age but his name is so old fashioned that I picture him as an older man, perhaps in his later fifties. That messes with my perception of him as a character.
The cover is also a bit jarring because he looks like a college student. Of course, he can change his appearance at will, but iI still bounce off of this picture. Otherwise the art is quite nice, though very different from earlier Ilona Andrews covers, and IMO more romance-y. I wonder why the change.
@Janine: Yes definitely explanations for the event under tags changed previously as well :). I would love to read more about Cornelius, absolutely, but I was happy that they gave us Augustine as well :)