Stolen Magic by May Dawney

Stolen Magic by May Dawney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I keep going back and forth on how to dive into this review . . . haven’t thought of a way, so I’ll just dive in and hope not to babble too much.

The series: genres/categories/etc:
The first book in this series involves romance with elements of fantasy weaved into the story-line. I mean, it starts with a woman exploding due to magic, so yes, obviously, elements of fantasy. As a whole, the series is modern day earth with a hidden layer of magic users and those who fight them (in a – let’s kill them all for using magic way). If I recall correctly, the first book is the one that dives deepest into the underlying layer of how magic works on Earth, and the like, while so, I still call it more of a romance with fantasy threads. A FF Romance (one or more of the characters are bisexual, so not a lesbian romance). Second story is a fantasy story with a flirtation thread – between a 17 year old and a 33 year old. Flirtation instead of romance. Third story, this one here, moves even further away from romance, it is a fantasy story that includes a woman as the lead character who uses a man to release her desire to use magic. It is unclear if either of the people involve like the sex in and of itself, and there are hints neither actually do. But hey, we’ve gone from lesbian romance, to vaguely in-appropriate flirtation between two females, to MF sex (I wouldn’t call it heterosexual sex as I’m not sure either actually are; the woman, definitely, has feelings for women, though for reasons that are not explained but could be guessed at, she doesn’t ‘use’ (and yes, she uses people) a woman to release her need to use sex, but a man).

The storyline:
All three of the stories that have so far been released to the public take place at the same time. Well, the stories overlap, but some of them have sections that begin and/or end before or after the other stories.

It is an interesting concept, and not an original one (George R.R. Martin, for one, did this in his Game of Thrones series). And what is this ‘it’, and/or ‘concept’? Follow more than one point of view and story that takes place at the same time as the other stories, but told in more than one ‘work’. That was vaguely confusing, no? Well, in the case of Martin’s series, he followed certain characters operating in Westeros in one book, and then in another book he followed character(s) operating outside Westeros. There was mention that he planned to not split the work into two different books, but that he just kept writing and writing and . . . well it worked better as more than one work. So he teased out the separate POV threads and released them in separate books. Like here in the Veil Chronicles, the time line doesn’t line up 100% exactly, but the events told correspond to the events told in the other work involving the other POV characters.

So, instead of one work of roughly 800 pages (give or take 200 pages), or one work heavily edited down to the ‘more normal’ lesbian fiction release of 264 pages, we have 4 separately published works that correspond somewhere around the same number of words/pages as the one work. There are 4 works, I believe, that will make up this series. Two of the four have page numbers, the third, this specific work here (‘Stolen Magic’) doesn’t have a specific page count/word count; and the fourth hasn’t been published. None of them have actually made it to 200 pages, and Stolen Magic most likely isn’t up to 200 pages either. I’ve no real way of knowing how long the last work will be, but so far this series is roughly 514 pages in length (with me randomly selecting 130 pages as the page count for book 3).

This was supposed to be my ‘the story line in all three works occur at the same time, chronologically, the story hasn’t advanced as the new works have appeared’, but I got distracted by page numbers.

Story one, ‘Wild Magic’, follows a ‘wild mage’ and a ‘connected but not a member of the Society of magic users’, and tells things from their point of view (I forget if both actually have a point of view, oh, and while it involves a F/F romance, it also involves bisexuals, as in I have it on that shelf). Story two, ‘Death Magic’, follows a young woman of 17 who knows nothing about magic prior to the start of the story (as the wild mage knew nothing of magic prior to the start of ‘Wild Magic’), and a 33 year old mage and daughter of one of the Society’s senior leaders (at least in London, I forget how high his powerbase goes). So this one is the ‘Society’ view point story – the society mentioned in the first story, but not elaborated on. Well book 2 elaborates on the Society. Book three follows a ‘House Leader’ (whatever that specifically means) who is somewhere in her forties, and an important member of the Inquisitio. Inquisition without the n. The people who fight magic users. This one I can say is a solo point of view work.

To a large extent we, the readers, learn more about Viktoria Wagner’s current role in life, a tiny fraction of hints about her past, and snippets from her ancestor, another Wagner, who wrote a book about killing witches, than we learn about the Inquisito. We also learn that Viktoria, for reasons, really really hates Alena’s father (Alena being one of the main characters in book 2, the 33 year old, and the father being that London leader guy). We already knew that neither Alena nor Claire, the other main character in that book, is romantically entangled with anyone, though there is major flirtation going on between the two. But I mention that again because Viktoria’s ex-girlfriend isn’t Alena, but Noah, the ‘aligned/unaligned’ mage in book 1, who becomes deeply and romantically entangled with Ania in that first book. So the woman fucking a man in book three, Viktoria, still has feelings for a woman, but that woman is ‘taken’ now. I mention that part because I had had this vague idea that various couples would be starring in the first three books, then the story would advance and all the couples would come together into a story in book 4. But there’s only one actual couple so far (baring heavy flirtation), so . . . . *shrugs* (I do not consider Tempest, the man Viktoria fucks, and Viktoria to be in a romantic relationship – Tempest is something of a ‘bodyguard’ who tries to help Viktoria keep from using magic, not a boyfriend).

I’ve forgotten where I was and where I was going.

The story annoyed me in certain ways, once I got past that annoyance (Viktoria isn’t a very likable character), I was able to switch from reading this as a character-lead story to reading it as a plot-lead story, and enjoy what I saw unfold. As a character-lead story, I’d rate this 3 stars. As a plot-lead story I would rate it . . .whatever would lead me to rating the overall work 3.75 stars.

There is sex in the story, but it isn’t graphic, beyond mention of Tempest pushing down his penis, so those worried about MF sex . . . um . . . don’t worry? Heh. At least I do not specifically recall graphic sex. *thinks* Let’s see, Tempest and Viktoria are mentioned as fucking in the middle of a group meeting, but I do not recall it being graphically described – one of the reasons I’m not really sure if Tempest and Viktoria even like fucking each other – because the hints that are in the story would lead me to believe Tempest kind of fucks Viktoria more as a duty, less as a desired thing to do; while Viktoria definitely fucks Tempest because he’s there and sexual release, apparently, is an alternative to magic release (there are some jokes I could now insert here, I’ll refrain).

There was no romance in this story. The closest to a romance is when Viktoria remembers her time with Noah.

Rating: 3.75

June 14 2018



View all my reviews