Long, but well worth the reading! ( )

Spellbound takes the straightforward noir/spy/magic [b:Hard Magic|8643407|Hard Magic (Grimnoir Chronicles, #1)|Larry Correia|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327951330s/8643407.jpg|13514467] and makes it bigger.

This is America. The government doesn’t own the people. The people own the government.

On one hand, you have the government cracking down on Actives in a 30s X-Men analogue with more G-Men and conspiracies floating about. On the other, Sullivan gets a telephone call from the Chairman (yes, the dead one) telling him he has to save the world. On the other (I know), Faye's powers are not normal. And now we begin to know why.

All three stories are a crazy mess of action and firefights and magical mayhem. There are zombies and demons and giant death lasers and airships galore. It's an unholy kitchen sink of a story, but somehow it all works.

Among the best new characters is ex-Iron Guard Toru. He's working with the 'good guys' now, in particular Jake Sullivan. Their banter is a great part of the series:

“Are we ready yet? I feel my ancestors grow impatient.”

“Your ancestor murdered half of this crew’s ancestors.”

“I see.” Toru replied as he examined the blade. “Then their ancestors should have ducked.”

“You going to pick any more fights?”

“Only with the Enemy, and should we live through that . . . the two of us have one to finish.”

A worthy followup, if anything better than the first. I can't wait to see where Correia goes with [b:Warbound|16130317|Warbound (Grimnoir Chronicles, #3)|Larry Correia|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1359402972s/16130317.jpg|21955621].

Random quote, an example of what makes the series all the more fun to read:

He was not used to a beautiful woman staring at him that intently, but he had to remind himself that to Healers like Jane, everybody looked like see-through bags of skin filled with blood and guts. It was one downside to the most popular of all Powers, but Jane insisted that she was used to it.

“So how do I look?”

“Like a translucent blood sausage. So . . . relatively normal.”

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It's only getting better, although that's hard to believe after reading the first of the books. Don't have to worry about introducing characters, now we can focus on the action and the intrigue and the flowering pressure of action. I especially like the history, hidden or otherwise, of the magic itself. It has a natural wide scope and looming intensity that I feel in my bones. The read is fun and beautiful and also quite painful because I never wanted it to end.

Fortunately, I've got a third book to sink into now, which I will with great pleasure.
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The second book in this trilogy has our heroes fighting a shadowy government agency that wants to enslave the Actives like so much of the world has done. Of course they do this by using a very powerful active and some magic to boost his power in order to try and defeat the Grimnoir by framing them for an assassination attempt on the president. At the same time this is going on it turns out that Faye is different from other Travelers for a reason and it isn't a good one. This is a middle of series book and not all the plot lines are resolved in this book but there is a good ending and the reader is not left completely hanging. ( )

While there was no true romance, there is a romantic quality about the story as these characters work to fight being framed and fight off corrupt men who want to harness their powers. Very engaging.
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