The Kate Daniels Series

This review is a complete rewriting and consolidation of my individual reviews for the 10 main entries of the Kate Daniel series. The series was overall fairly forgettable as shown by the score, as such some omissions are likely as my older reviews were usually shorter and less in-depth. In retrospective, I am also surprised that I finished this series at all, going through my old rating sheet, the highest score I gave was a measly 7.5/10 with several entries going down to 5/10 and 6/10 being the most common value. Purely focusing on the ratings this is a mostly dull reading experience that way overstays its welcome. However, I used to love urban fantasy adventures with a dash of romance and having at the time just finished up with the available books in the London Steampunk and the Hidden Legacy series, Kate Daniels fit that exact niche and with 10 books, it was going to fill it for a while. Add in some lenience I gave the author because of how much I enjoyed Hidden Legacy and this justifies why I stuck with Kate Daniels through thick and thin.

Kate Daniels is the eponymous strong female protagonist who is meant to be cool and edgy but unfortunately mostly comes off as a sarcastic “not like the other girls” type of character which was a tired trope when I read it 3 years ago. The series introduces the usual checklist of elements that most urban fantasy utilise: a world in which technology and magic coexist, humanoid fantasy creatures who are mostly attractive men, and a grander conspiracy to bring some adventure into the mix.

The first entry almost entirely focuses on the conspiracy and world set up as the romantic aspect is essentially absent aside from the introduction of the obvious future love interest, Curran, the were-lion, king of the beasts, muscular man, oh god how strong he is. The world-building is sadly still on the weaker side, the premise here is that magic and technology both exist but only in alternating turns, when magic is active, technology doesn’t work and vice versa which is a good concept, but the author doesn’t stick to it. Instead, using Clarke’s third law “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”, the author establishes that some technology can work when magic is active if the technology. There is no definitive list of what technology is advanced enough to pass as magic, in fact, only one technology is consistently mentioned in this context which are telephones. It is unfortunately absurd and distracting that this exception exists, telephones working whilst things like computers and solar panels do not is an odd thing to think about as I would argue that the average person would not have a solid understanding of how a processor in a computer functions.

To add insult to injury, character introductions are also rushed which makes keeping track of everyone’s role in the later plot points difficult. This also makes certain events fall flat as the emotional involvement with a lot of characters simply isn’t there. The series will show mild improvements to most aspects over books 2 and 3 as the main storyline picks up and Kate and Curran are getting pushed into the right positions to have their romance begin but they are entirely forgettable and in my case have already been forgotten.

Book 4 starts with finally having Curran and Kate’s relationship in full motion, and my interest was thus not just kept by my overarching storyline interest anymore. The story also takes a darker more fitting tone and things were looking generally a lot more positive, this is where my ratings started going from 5 to 6/10. Unfortunately the ending is resolved through some strong plot armour to secure a happy ending, stripping away the more grounded feel I thought the author was trying to set up. This is also the point where Kate’s sarcasm and witty remarks start having some negative impact on the story’s tone. In some way she follows the Marvel formula of always having a quick joke to bring out because Disney can’t have anything be too serious.

Following this, whilst some plot events showed promise by continuing the idea of a grimmer but more real world and Kate’s and Curran’s relationship was a satisfying one to follow with very believable interactions both positive and negative ones, it all stayed marred by the overall poor writing style, Kate’s unlikeable personality and the repeated use of Deus Ex Machina events to keep Curran and Kate alive.

The true lack of impact this series had on me becomes very visible here as I have essentially no memory of books 5 through 10 and my older reviews only point out how terribly forgettable these books are. The “final boss” character is finally introduced in book 7 but instead of pushing forward with this confrontation, the author made the odd decision of making book 7 and filler entry with no relationship to the main storyline whilst book 9’s pacing is slowed down and drawn out to make sure it doesn’t just end after 50 pages. If one were to hope at this point that the authors were just saving all their good ideas for a dense and satisfying last entry, one would be disappointed. Instead they introduce a new villain who is so threatening that the main villain that had been hinted at for 6 books, introduced in the 7 and whom I was waiting on to make his move throughout books 7 and 8 is pushed aside whilst the series wraps up with the defeat of this new villain.

The ending is profoundly disappointing but just like I do with TV shows lasting longer than 5 seasons, I do not want to judge a 10-book series by its ending as I would not expect it to be good anyway due to a loss of focus over such long stretches of time. That being said, the Kate Daniels has not left me with a positive impression even when ignoring its ending. Part of my opinion might be explained by the burnout I experienced by reading this series in just 3 months, but the authors also clearly did not have enough ideas for the overarching story and the series would have only benefited from cutting out a few chapters and books to tell a tighter story.

Although my revisit of Hidden Legacy also had not lived up to my memories, my old reviews already point out how comparatively Kate Daniels is a strictly worse series. However, with it also being the older series, the author’s lack of experience gave the series wobbly legs that couldn’t possibly be built upon for as long as they did. Overall, while Kate Daniels was not an unpleasant series to read without any significant lows, it also never managed to ever captivate me.