Much Ado About Magic is the fifth book of a series about Katie Chandler, a woman who is immune to magic but works for a company that specializes in serving the magical users and creatures of the world (all unknown to the general populace of course). Katie's ability gives her the unique privilege of dealing with some of the most dangerous magic around, and now that a magical crime wave has hit New York, it's her job to get to the bottom of it. Much Ado About Magic By Shanna Swendson NLA Digital Liaison Platform LLC September 17, 2012 I should start by saying that while this is the fifth book in a series, I haven't read any of the other four novels. And while the book does a somewhat decent job of standing alone, there are a number of call backs to earlier events that someone who hasn't read the previous novels may find confusing and annoying. Moving on, the story takes the view of magic and spells as just another commodity that can be manufactured and sold. There are two competing companies: Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. (or MSI) and Spellworks. These two companies are constantly at each others throats and there is no shortage of corporate espionage, back room deals, and false advertising. Unfortunately that's about all there is. This entire premise of the story could be shifted to involve two regular companies competing against each other using mundane means and very little would change. The entire setup seems determined to take the magic out of magic. In fact, magic is apparently so commonplace to the characters that the author doesn't bother to describe it half the time. The result is that when there is magic, it's rather bland and boring. As for the story itself, it has absolutely no buildup. The novel almost seems to follow a loosely connected series of short stories that have their own self-contained problems and resolutions that are bought up and resolved before moving on to the next. If the characters say they are going to do something, they will immediately do it. Any mystery is immediately solved. A character's first guess is always correct, and there are literally no surprises. In fact every character seems to have some kind of magical foresight about the story itself. In the end, the book as a whole was rather boring and dull, and I honestly can't imagine what the four former books could have been like to have reached this point in the story. My advice: Skip the series altogether and look for something with a little more meat on its bones.