Small Magics

By: Ilona Andrews

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Michael Glenn

Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

An irresistible compilation of five previously published stories by the NYT bestselling author of the Kate Daniels series; including Kate’s very first meeting with Saiman, some related adventures, two unforgettable “outside” excursions, and additional material from both Curran and Jim’s point of view.

A QUESTIONABLE CLIENT

In this ‘intro’ to the Kate Daniels world, we meet the extremely ‘shifty’ Saiman for the very first time, when Kate takes on the task of serving as his bodyguard to protect him from some very determined—and dangerous—Russian wizards.

RETRIBUTION CLAUSE

Saiman’s cousin, Adam—a frost giant and also an insurance adjuster—and his enigmatic partner, Siroun, set out on an impossible mission to enforce a client’s Retribution Clause; that is, to kill the person who killed her. But is their target even guilty? Magic and mayhem and a little personal chemistry will reveal the truth!

OF SWINE AND ROSES

A young adult story about a girl, a pig, some magic, and the worst date ever.

Chad Thurman is a thug, who carries brass knuckles in both pockets and lays magic traps for intruders into "his" neighborhood. The last thing Alena Kornov wants to do is to go on a date with him. But when her family pressures her, she can't say no. Now the ice-cream is absent, the pig is running for its life, and we won't even mention the dead guy...

GRACE OF SMALL MAGICS

Grace has always known she wasn’t like everyone else and that her family has magic abilities. After flying to meet the head of Clan Dreoch in order to fulfill her families’ “duties” as servants, Grace finds herself in the middle of a mage clan war…

MAGIC TESTS

A short story in the Kate Daniels universe. Kate recruits her teenage ward, Julie, to search out a missing student whose location spell has her hidden somewhere on campus…

CURRAN POV

Everybody has a point of view…especially Curran Lennart, Beast Lord of the Free People of Atlanta—and Kate Daniel’s mate. Here’s what Curran was thinking while Kate was kicking butt and taking names from Magic Bites to Magic Bleeds.

©2015 Ilona Andrews (P)2023 NYLA

Fun to have a few gaps filled in

Excellent as always. Only problem is getting to the end and wanting more! Love the voices too.

Wonderful.

Such amazing world creation full of characters I could never have conceived. So much fun reading these stories that are small bits of this wild world. These stories all come from the Kate Daniels world by Ilona Andrews. Urban fantasy at its best. No lie.
Hillary Huber and Michael Glenn do their usual outstanding narrations.

Long live Kate and Curran!

This audio took me back to some of the best moments in this series. It made me nostalgic and it looks like I’ll be relistening to the whole series again.

A trip down memory lane....

4.5 Stars

A really nice collection of short stories/novellas that gave me the opportunity to jump back into a world that I have loved so dearly in the past. Not all were from the Kate and Curran world, but many of them were.

I already reviewed most of them individually so this review was to just give an overall mention on the book as a whole.

Just a quick word of warning. Some of these are not new. They have been in other anthologies, possibly on their website or maybe in an email newsletter. This is mentioned though on the description, but just reiterating it again just in case.

Honestly though, I fell in love with Kate and Curran so many years ago and have been a fan for a very long time. There was a bit of nostalgia just going back and reading these because I am not a person who rereads books (well, I have done it on occasion, but it is very, very rare). I live by the philosophy that there are too many books with much too little time....but I digress....

I will say this - any time the Ilona Andrews duo wants to put out more short stories, I will continue to click the buy button. For me, it is a no brainer....

Fantastic potpourri of stories!

I read Small Magics loooong time ago, but this audio edition, with the POV bonuses is simply fantastic! Cannot praise enough both narrators -Hilary and Michael- they really bring our favourite characters to life!

Many redundant shorts + POVs only for series fans

“You’d pull on death’s whiskers if you could reach them.”
The first half of this book is five novellas, each around an hour long, that could serve as nice samplers for those uninitiated to the Kate Daniels series. My favorite shorts were the two complete standalones
(Of Swine And Roses and Grace Of Small Magics), which take place in the Kate Daniels universe, but don’t actually connect to the series regulars.

**As the summary notes, these five shorts have appeared elsewhere, such as in the Dark and Stormy Nights or Hex Appeal anthologies (Retribution Clause even appears in the graphic audio of book 1’s Magic Bites in addition to in Hex Appeal). The biggest difference with the shorts here is that these are with the new narrators. Also, as I found the stories of the other authors merely okay, I would recommend getting this collection of shorts solely by Ilona Andrews over those multi-author anthologies.

The second half of this collection is 10 shorts from Curran’s or Jim’s POV, laid out in the Table of Contents with a nice roadmap for where they fall in the Kate Daniels series. I really appreciated that, because to truly enjoy them I needed the reminder of where the characters are positioned, who’s on whose side at the time of the short, etc. In order to avoid spoilers (or being lost without the backstories), I would not recommend listening to these POV stories until after you’ve listened to the books that they go with.

**Because these POV shorts are best heard as add-ons to the series, I only recommend getting this for the POV half if you’re buying the traditional full length books (with Rene Raudman’s narration). If you plan on buying the graphic audio versions with the sound effects and extended cast of narrators, know that these POVs are included a few at a time in each of those full length books.

2024 update: For that matter, it’s looking like, in addition to the POVs, the novellas could also all end up in the graphic audio books: book 5 just came out and it contains the Magic Tests novella.