Kim M. (Eucalia) reviewed on 11/23/2008 + 52 more book reviews

This book was an impulse buy for me in the check out line of the grocery store a few years back. I like magic, I like Seattle--this seemed perfect! Honestly, I didn't even turn the book over to read the back before I bought it. If I had, I would have seen the steamy harlequin romance picture there and probably would have put this right back on the shelf. This is definitely a romance novel and not a fantasy novel. Yes, the main characters are nominally wizards and yes, they do inexplicable things, but I doubt many fans of fantasy would include this novel in that genre. And yes, the story is partially set in Seattle, but nothing happens to distinguish the setting from any other city in the world--I don't think it even rains. The story goes that a male and a female wizard in present day Seattle fall in love, but for some reason it's taboo for male and female wizards to fall in love. So they decide to go back in time to Atlantis before it disappears so that they can attempt to fix whatever happened to cause this taboo and then go back to present day and live happily taboo-free ever after. I'll give the author points for coming up with an elaborate scenario that would somehow induce wizards to not want to marry each other, but she would've racked up a few more points had this scenario been remotely believable. If I try to set aside my hope that this might have some merit as a fantasy novel and just look at it from a purely harlequin romance perspective it still doesn't rank highly, although I have to admit I've never read anything in the genre to which I can compare this. The steamy bits of the story were all between the bad guy and his mindless "brood mares," which, to me at least, was just gross. The main romance was so obvious from the beginning and so poorly developed throughout, it made me wonder why they even bothered with the steamy picture of these two on the back cover. All of this on top of a very weak supporting cast. Although I wasn't completely bored while reading this book, the highest compliment I can bear to give this is that it could've been worse.

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