[3 Stars] Jumping back into a Kate Daniels book is like jumping into your warm bed after the sheets have been washed, dried, and changed. It's just so dang comforting. However, it was interesting coming back to a Kate book after been away from this series for so long. I have *thoughts.* The Kate Daniels series probably as a whole is a 5 star series. There is so much to love from the imaginative world-building, plot and story arcs that always hits, characters and villains you equally love (or at least come to respect), and a vision for how the story they are telling will end. Each individual book, however, is probably a 3 to 4 star read at best. The writing and dialogue are simple (sometimes to a fault), the relationship writing has taken books to get better (early books are kinda eh even though I understand WHY they had to be that way and later books are great where we actually get to see the main couple have a healthy relationship), and some could argue that the general arc for each book is more or less the same. Kate Daniels books are comfort food for my soul and are greater than the sum of their parts. So happy to be back in this world even though Magic Tides is truly just 3 stars at best.