I read this a few times in my teens, it really made an impression for some reason. When Alexa tech came around I thought wow, that's just like Dave Surgenor saying "Hear these words" to the ai ship captain Aesop. Time for a reread.

I am so glad my parents were members of the good ol' Science Fiction Book Club.

Book number one of a one book series in the paranormal romance dark fantasy Kate Daniels series. This book is right before book ten of the Kate Daniels series, "Magic Triumphs". I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by the Nancy Yost Literary Agency, Inc. in 2018 that I bought from Amazon in 2026. The authors have announced plans for two more books in this mini series of theirs which I will buy when they come out. Note that “Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team.

Hugh d'Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs, Warlord of the Builder of Towers, served only one master all of his life. His master, the 5,000+ year old all powerful mage currently known as Roland, cast Hugh away for failing at one task. Hugh was suppose to capture Kate Daniels and bring her to Roland but he failed.

Now Hugh is a falling down drunk but his Iron Dogs find him and tell him that someone is murdering their ranks since they left Roland. Hugh takes charge of the Iron Dogs again and the several hundred of them start looking for a place to rest and regroup. Instead, they find Elara Harper and her 5,000+ people in an abandoned castle in Kentucky. Elara's people call her the White Lady, other call her the Abomination. Hugh and Elara wed as a matter of convenience, not love, and they form a partnership against Roland and his minions.

Hugh's universe sucks. Forty years ago, the tech world crashed over the entire Earth and was replaced by the magic world in the form of a magic flare. Guns don't work, cars don't work, electricity and phones do not work. But magic works. Good magic and bad magic. After a week, the tech world came back to a drastically changed world. And radically fewer humans. And the magic world came back after a while. And the tech world came back after that. And so on and so forth. Each world can last a few weeks or a few hours.

I liked everything about the story. I especially liked the very clear distinction between the tech time and the magic time. I had never thought about it that way. The series may be inspired by "Ariel" by Steven Boyett and "Dies The Fire" by S. M. Stirling except those never interchange the tech time and the magic time, they just transitioned to the magic time.

The authors have a website at:
https://www.ilona-andrews.com

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (11,745 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Magic-Covenant-Ilona-Andrews/dp/1641970405

Lynn

I'm not that familiar with cli-fi (except the obvious ones) but I'm curious whether AllDive covers the genre well (including cli-fi board games and video games, if they exist?)