Sunday 13 February 2011

100 Books in 2011 review: Forbidden Magic

I love the idea of paranormal romances. Erotic romance combined with fantasy sounds like something I could really enjoy. What could go wrong?

Forbidden Magic by Cheyenne McGray is the first of a series. A witch who works with law enforcement to solve mystical crimes discovers that a coven of black warlocks is planning to summon people-eating demons to earth. Failing to convince her coven to summon the Tuatha D'anann, she does it on her own, but only one of them comes. Her coven is attacked by the demons and then she and her warrior ally convince the rest of the Tuatha D'anann to come to fight the demons.

You know, it sounds promising and I'm always up for a bit of silliness in plot terms, so long as it's well-written silliness. And that's what could go wrong. The characters are pretty stereotypical. Aside from the witch Silver, and her Tuatha D'anann lover Hawk, the characters are flat and boring. The members of the Tuatha D'anann party, the law enforcement team, and the coven, are just names with the odd bit of description attached. There is no personalisation and no individualisation.

Romance writing is different in that the focus is on the development of the central relationship and on the sex scenes. But for me, the relationship in this case didn't feel convincing. The sex scenes did the job they're supposed to do. They were ok but not great. And I was rather disappointed by the kinky sex only being allocated to the evil characters - the kind of sex you have doesn't say anything about character and it's not good writing to rely on such obvious tropes.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to recommend about this one. Anyone got any recommendations for really good paranormal romances?  

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