_Magic Triumphs_, Ilona Andrews SPOILERS!

Seriously. Just go read the book a couple times, come back and we'll chat. It'll be fun!






SPOILERS!










SPOILERS!






SPOILERS!



This is the Armageddon you have been waiting for! Ragnorak! Or, as Curran puts it, it's all coming to a head.

For those who have not been reading the Kate Daniels series, don't start here. I cannot even imagine. No one would make sense! Who are all these people?!! Why is someone so abruptly moving from Pure Evil Committing of Atrocities to On Our Team? Wait, and the whole _team_ has committed atrocities? Who are you people? A pretty convincing pantheon, actually.

Things that happen, that are weirdly satisfying:

Curran and Erra (sort of ghost-aunt, lives in a dagger part of the time) have been Away From Home a bunch lately, hunting, which Curran is normally not a fan of. It turns out, Curran has known about Kate's cunning plan for dealing with her father Roland (not my husband) for some time now, and has cooked up a plan of his own to deal with it. If Kate Must Die to finally get rid of Dear Old Dad, then Curran will ... Resurrect her! I mean, of course he will! You can't have Hugh the Magical Healer do it. That's just creepy and wrong. No, it must be the hubster. Who is not a healer. So, clearly going the god route then. And Erra knows the magic / god route pretty well, because her whole family is super careful to avoid the loss of free will associated with becoming a god. BUT her whole family loves to edge play, so she has figured out how to help Curran acquire godlike powers (like resurrection without nasty side effects like rotting or otherwise being a zombie) without tipping over into being a god (and becoming a tool of his worshipers. Which, given they would be shapeshifting wolves, would have some very significant downsides). Basically, he goes out and eats god animals / animal deities. But not too many! Oh, wait, that last one was too many.

Meanwhile, the Big Bad living in a Pocket Universe in the first of the White Warlock / Hugh Gets Married and Lives in a Castle ancillary series turns out to be many things. He is a creepy evil Big Bad from Pictish times and earlier. His brother picked on Nimrod's family and wanted to marry Erra (I think -- I might have gotten a little confused) and was destroyed by them. But not before the brother's creepy army ate a bunch of the rest of the family. Now, Big Bad, Neig, wants to marry Kate. Because, *shrug*. (Points to big bad: he offers to keep the kid around and even the first husband. I don't really believe the offer, but it was interesting that he made it.) He will burn the world and they will make babies and he will eat enough of the humans in the world to be able to survive tech waves. Bone broth!

Nick makes a hilarious joke about D&D campaigns that was telegraphed from a really, really long ways out. Nevertheless, it is absolutely hilarious.

At various points in the book, Kate hands Conlan (the baby) to people to hold. Over time, it becomes clear that holding Conlan is really a lot less about Kate trusts you enough to hold her baby and much more about, wow, we knew Conlan would be dangerous when he grew up, but right now, he is seriously much scarier than Jack-Jack. OK, it's a tie. Well, I don't know. Jack-Jack can't do a blood claw.

At Armageddon, we get round two of the Whose Side Are You On Anyway?!? from Team Roland. The answer, of course, is that Team Roland in on Team Roland's side, and when someone defects, they are on team Self for as long as they last. There are obviously exceptions (notably, Ghastek, Rowena, Christopher and Hugh). But fewer than one might expect! Roland _does_ show up to help with Neig at Armageddon.

But once Neig is dealt with, Roland turns on Kate. Duh. That was inevitable. Conveniently, Neig's pocket universe and the way it works (courtesy Yu Fong and the hilarious Hobbit jokes) provides Kate with a way to put Dear Old Dad in Magic Jail. Possibly permanently.

Unforunately, because Erra tries to save Kate by diving into her and offering her her own personal magic, both are hit by the Resurrection wave from Curran. So now Erra is back. Yikes!

The book ends with Erra headed off to Kentucky with Julie.

Hugely enjoyable series wrap-up. Of course, who knows if this is really the finale. Roland could Macgyver his way out of Magic Jail. There are obviously going to be more Hugh / Elara book(s), now presumably with 100% more Rose of Tigris. I, personally, am holding out for a series of vignettes about Conlan's early years. Because, hilarious!

I'll probably reread this, possibly right away.

#35

Wow, that is _not_ looking good. Maybe if I do math it will look better.

ETA: Nope. (240/365) * 50 = just a hair under 33. So I was in trouble _before_ I read this month's book group, never mind the highly trope-y _Collision Course_ and this thing. *sigh* I am read up through day 255 and a half, which would be the middle of the day on September 12, _2 weeks from now_.

For those wondering about the math, I figured that this year I might finally be able to keep my book count at or under 50. Needless to say, I am not succeeding.

School Supplies

This year, my daughter will be going to a different elementary school than the one she went to K-3 in. This is not because we moved. This was not a change we initiated. The change occurred because the school she _was_ in only provided the program she was in through 3rd grade. After that, the theory was she would go to the school that my son was in so unsuccessfully for kindergarten, and which we hadn’t exactly been hearing great things about from other people whose children have the same or related diagnoses as my two children.

I asked for a second choice. I toured both choices. I was like, this isn’t even a question. Of course we’ll pick the one my son didn’t go to. Also, why were we never offered this as an option earlier? No answer.

It’s in a really new school building — several decades newer than the two choices I had been provided. What’s up with that — not offering the special needs kids the squeaky clean new building. With the special needs program which will fit her needs.

I went to the orientation yesterday. At the orientation, someone asked a question I’d been wondering about. Where are the school supplies lists? Teachers at my daughter’s other school in district, and the school that my son went to in kindergarten both sent detailed lists of what the kid had to bring for themselves, and then a detailed list of even more things to bring in “for the classroom”. I thought this was squirrelly — we live in a town that is quite well-off, in a state that is quite well-off — but shrugged. I don’t argue with really large bureaucracies if the argument is avoidable. I have enough unavoidable arguments to satisfy my basic urge to defy authority.

No supply lists. The school provides everything. What to bring in the backpack? Lunch and snack. Really? Really. OK, if you want, you can bring in tissue, wipes, hand sanitizer — we run out of those.

*crickets*

My town has 5 elementary schools, 6, actually. And full school choice — every kid has the option to be bused to any school. There is a bit of a lottery for when a school has more applicants — kids who were there last year I think get first pick at a school, then their younger siblings, then kids who can walk. But I’ve been tolerating a severely abbreviated list of choices due to my daughter’s special needs, and I’m just now discovering that there were apparently choices in this district that would have fit her, and put her in the nice new building where you don’t have to scrounge up supplies.

WTF?

ETA: One of the major issues for my son in kindergarten involved bathroom access. Being in an older school meant being in a school with a shared bathroom down the hall even for kindergartners. The newer buildings all have bathrooms connected to the kindergarten classrooms. This would have drastically improved many, many things about my son’s school experience in kindergarten. He would still have needed a different school placement. Probably. Altho hard to know for sure, because the other issue with his placement involved a probably simultaneously phoning-it-in speech therapist who was also inexperienced, at least with providing speech therapy for kids on the spectrum. And this was the school with the spectrum program.

I know people still go out of their way to pick Conant’s autism program. I can’t figure out why.