cover image Magic Spark

Magic Spark

Sara Dobie Bauer, Em Shotwell, and Wendy Sparrow. Pen and Kink, $4.99 e-book (215p) ISBN 978-1-988233-28-4

This collection brings together the initial installments of three magic-themed romance serials, with two additional volumes planned, but the stories fail to hold the reader’s interest for that long. Sparrow (the Taming the Pack series) layers an unpleasantly stalkerish vibe onto a meet-cute in “When Demigods Court Death”: a demigod of fertility moves in next door to the demigod of death, planning to inform her of her identity and force her into a relationship that will balance both of their powers. Shotwell (Blackbird Summer) contributes “These Roots Run Deep,” the most complete of the stories, but the petulant heroine, bent on making her sisters help use their grandmother’s spell book to force her straying boyfriend to stay forever, is so clearly in the wrong that her distastefulness trumps the piece’s scant humor. Bauer (Bite Somebody Else) builds her setting more carefully and deeply for “Destiny’s Dark Light,” the only truly serialized story, and her protagonist and family are more relatable 21st-century witches. The story blends the beginnings of a war against dark magic, in which the protagonist is prophesied to be a key player, with the personal story of discovering that the person fated to be her true love is already in love with someone else. Readers may not feel great drive to seek out the forthcoming volumes and find out how these stories continue. (Jan.)