Revolution: A Cold War Magic Novel - Book 2 takes place towards the end of 1958, and revolution is brewing in Cuba. Where Breach took the head of the U.S. government's magical department's research division, Karen O'Neil, to Berlin to investigate the crumbling magical barrier that separated East and West Germany, this book puts her at the heart of the Cuban Revolution as she investigates an American company who seems to be exploiting the lax laws in Cuba to its advantage.
It has been a few years since the events in Berlin, the same events that forced Karen to lose her locus, and as far as everyone knows, without a locus, a magician can't perform any magic. What no one knows is that Karen's experience in Europe left her changed and connected to magic in a new way. She no longer needs rituals, runes and magic words to cast spells, she can harness magic with her will. Unfortunately, she also realizes that magic isn't the benevolent force everyone thinks it is. She has killed with her new ability and the forces stirring inside her seemed to like it and want more. So, she has convinced everyone that she cannot perform magic anymore, and while she still heads up the research division of the Office of Magical Research and Deployment (ORMD), she leaves the actual spellwork to her employees for fear of losing control of the forces she has tapped into.
That control will be tested in this book, though. Karen gets contacted by a former colleague who left the ORMD to work in the private sector at a company renowned for making enchanted items for magicians to use. The note she gets is vague and hints at dirty dealings at Magus Innovations, but the device he smuggles out and sends to her is even stranger; a small cube that is roiling with magical energy. Karen convinces her boss to let her go to Miami where Magus is scheduled to have a demonstration for potential investors. With the help of an assigned partner, Agent Pierce, she hopes to contact her former co-worker and learn more about what is going on in the company's Havana research facility.
From the moment she steps off the plane in Miami, Karen finds herself in tough situations at a pretty constant rate. While she knows she can unleash her hidden power, she fears the loss of control, but that same power might be the only way to actually uncover exactly what is going on, and if necessary, stop the company from continuing its work. Her time in Cuba will have her confronting mob bosses, revolutionaries, Russian spies and even Hollywood starlets, and each will play a necessary role in the events that unfold around Karen as the Cuban government gets overthrown during the last hours of 1958.
Goodwater has built up a great world that parallels our own very closely. With the exception of the Berlin Wall falling years before it does in our history, the Cold War is playing out very similarly to our own, showing that people are people even if they have access to magic, though a lot of that could be explained by the limited nature of magic's ability in the Cold War Magic series. Who knows how the world could change if Karen's ability to tap into the raw power of magic were to become more widespread? Given the events of Revolution, we might see some hints of that in future additions to this series.
