To say that Hugh starts out at rock bottom hardly does justice to his current existence- determinedly lost in alcoholic stupor, desperately trying to keep the emptiness of his severed bond with Roland at bay, his whole reason for being destroyed, everything gone. So below is my review, which I put together with absolutely no impartiality whatsoever.

In case you hadn’t guessed it by now, I am one of the many Hugh Fangirls and this book delivers everything we could have wanted and more. Yes, he’s slaughtered thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe, and was directly or indirectly responsible for some main character deaths, kidnappings, torture, maiming, and more, but… he’s just so goddamn hot. Of course, there was the not so insignificant problem of a main character who was a serious player for Team Evil, but what must have become increasingly clear to Ilona and Gordon is that a good deal of their readership did not give two shits about any of that. Until recently, I thought it really was some kind of mean jest, a tantalising dream, a piece of wishful thinking. First introduced during Magic Strikes and responsible for all kinds of bad things in the Kate Daniels series, he was sidelined (by spoilery events I won’t recount here) until Ilona Andrews jokingly put out the idea of his story on her blog and everyone lost their damn minds. Hugh d’Ambray, Roland’s former Warlord and all round murder boy. The first in a new trilogy, set after Magic Binds, book 9 in the Kate Daniels series, Iron and Magic is wonderfully, brilliantly, finally….

Iron and magic book 2 release date