Winter’s Gifts, by Ben Aaronovich. Subterranean Press, 2023

I was delighted to find the library had the latest (I think- at least until November) installment in Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, because I love this fictional world and the fictional detectiv that inhabit it. I was a little disappointed to find that these rivers were not actually in London (this one is in northern Wisconsin), which means a different narrator from the main series.  This time we get a woman (FBI Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds). She knows significantly less magic than main narrator Peter Grant, but is a cut above the one in the book set in Germany.

The FBI’s ‘Mulder’ called in an event, which really should have been paid more attention to. No one knew what to do about it… so it made the rounds until someone *did* know that the FBI does indeed have an x-files sort of division. Sadly, it’s only a couple of people, and one is retired and missing. So it falls to Reynolds to head to Wisconsin in mid-winter, to face she knows not what. First off she’s facing a tornado (and this is not tornado territory) that tore apart buildings with surprising accuracy. It keeps snowing and the roads are closed, the tornado keeps appearing and going after people with surgical precision, and it looks like an event from more than a hundred years ago is at the heart of this problem.

I did enjoy this book. Not as much as the ones set in England, but more than the Germany one. Kimberly is an interesting and lively narrator, not slow at all in figuring things out; great fun to read. With a mix of Native American lore, early American history, and magical things going on, it’s a good mix. It could have stood to be longer; the ending comes in bang! And that’s it, in a rather hectic way. Four stars.

Magic Lessons, by Alice Hoffman. Simon and Schuster, 2021

 

The pre-prequel to “Practical Magic”, this book takes us to the 1600s and the life of Maria Owens. Abandoned at birth, she is found and raised by the local witch in rural England. She proves to have great talent for magic, as well as being taught to read and write. When her adoptive mother is killed by a witch hunter, Maria finds her birth mother- also a witch. When her father makes a surprise reappearance, the three of them flee the area. They tell Maria she cannot stay with them, and she finds herself on the way to the New World, although not in the way that she thinks is happening. Maria ends up having a lot of adventures on her way to Salem, and they don’t end when she finds her way there. She ends up pronouncing a curse, that will keep any Owens from finding love for long- and also learns that love is, in the end, all that really matters.

While not quite as good as “Practical Magic” (nothing is), it’s a book I liked much better than I liked the middle book, “Rules of Magic”. It is a stay-up-all-night-reading-it book. Five stars.