Three Mages and a Margarita
The Guild Codex: Spellbound series, Book 1
Annette Marie
Dark Owl Fantasy Inc.
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Tori knew what was coming when she smacked the unruly, conning customers upside the head with a drink tray - the drink tray they'd just spilled all over her, after making bogus claims about their meals. Another job lost, the latest in a string of firings, and she's rapidly running out of new places to apply; worse, word is getting around the industry, that she has temper control issues despite being a hard worker. Her cop brother Justin says she can stay rent-free on his sofa for as long as it takes her to find her feet, but Tori has learned the hard way that she can't trust anyone, not even her family, to take care of her. Mere chance leads her to a flyer advertising an opening for a bartender at the Crow and Hammer, an out-of-the-way bar in a seedy part of town. She has some experience tending bar (sort of), and she's desperate - and, fortunately, so is the flustered woman who agrees to give her a trial-by-fire that very night. Tori wasn't doing too bad, all things considered, until the three hot guys decided to make teasing her their personal project... and, inevitably, her infamous redhead temper gets the better of her.
What's strange is that she isn't fired on the spot; they actually seem amused.
What's even stranger is that the three men - all of the clientele of the Crow and Hammer, actually - are mystics: people with magical gifts, ranging from divination to sorcery to telekinesis and more. And ordinary humans are strictly forbidden from their guild headquarters at the bar.
But the bar really needs a bartender. And Tori really needs a job. And she's not about to give up just because of a few unruly mages, some pesky guild rules... or the attacks that show just how deadly hanging out with mystics can be for a lady.
REVIEW: This was another audiobook "read", one that's pretty much what it says on the label: some magic, some humor, and some teased romantic potential. It's also the first of a series, and thus a fair bit of its relatively short length is devoted to explaining and establishing the mystic world as a whole and the key characters in general... time that it could've used developing a fuller arc or exploring the romantic potentials (which are, quite unusually for a title billed as a romance, left a bit up in the air even by the end, without the clear happily-ever-after match-up and relationship development one would expect). So, this isn't quite a romance, but isn't quite not. It's also, due (again) to the time lost in the worldbuilding, not quite a fully fleshed-out and developed urban fantasy, yet it's not quite not, either. And there is humor and some snappy dialog exchanges, but it's not truly a humor title, either. What, then, is it? Basically, it's another "pilot episode" book that's more about setting up the world, characters, and future installments than anything else; though there is indeed an in-book story arc that's reasonably complete, there are some missing details and gaps (not to mention at least one incidence of outright stupidity on the part of the characters) that left me feeling a bit unsatisfied at the end, as though I was expected to read onward for full resolution. It's a tough sensation to put my finger on, let alone describe, but at some point I found myself wishing Marie had trimmed a bit of the setup explanations and filled in more actual story. I enjoyed the characters for what they were, and things moved well enough. All in all, it's not a bad start to an urban fantasy series, though I don't know if I'll continue.
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