attackfish

The subtitles I’m giving the book reviews in this trilogy are becoming more and more fanciful. There is no blood magic in this book, and the subtitle has nothing to do with anything except that there is magic, and organized crime.

Cassel has been forced to pick a side and he’s picked the FBI. With his brother Barron, he is trying to leave the criminal life behind for good and finish high school before becoming an agent himself and using his powers for as legal a purpose as he can put them to. But Lila is furious with him, and her father eager to bring him back into the fold, and his is mother neck deep in trouble with the Zacharov crime family for a theft she committed long ago. And with the FBI reminding him more and more of a crime family itself, Cassel doesn’t know whether it’s possible, or even worth it to work for instead of against the law.

( Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. )

These are not gorgeous books as some of the cover blurbs would suggest. They are painful, stark, brutal books that rip the false beauty and idealism away from their subject matter. When I had finished reading them, I was wrung out and exhausted. I can’t recommend them strongly enough, but I also can’t warn you away strongly enough.

Holly Black can be found online at her website, blackholly.com, or on livejournal, as