Junk Magic

Lia de Croisetts, Book 1

By: Karen Chance

Narrated by: Traci Odom

Half werewolf Lia de Croissets is a member of the War Mage Corps, the police branch of the world's leading magical organization, the Silver Circle. She's an instructor assigned to train new recruits, a job considered to be significantly tougher than combat, especially right now. There is a war going on in the supernatural world, and the other side has discovered a deadly new tactic.

Popular street drugs have been laced with a potent narcotic known as Punch or fey wine. An import from Faerie, the wine has been known to bring out latent magical abilities in humans, but this version does much more than that. It is so strong that it is drawing forth dangerous talents that were long ago deliberately weeded out of the magical gene pool.

Someone is making monsters out of regular people and turning them loose on an unsuspecting and very unprepared world. The Corps cannot afford to fight on two fronts at once, so Lia gets a new class: one made up of the only people who might be able to counter these latest threats. It remains to be seen if a group of sullen, disaffected magical outlaws can come together to contain an ancient plague before the whole world gets sick.

Contains mature themes.

©2022 Karen Chance (P)2023 Tantor

Another brilliant tale

Karen does it again. Furthers her plot across the magical realm while adding to it by a personal narrative of a special mage. Lia has had her short story but this brings her and the storyline another dimension. Don't want to give it away but the implications for this are far reaching and the character development is awesome. Narrator is new to me but I liked her.

The story line

Love the author, she keeps your attention the entire time. The overall story is wonderful. The performance of the story was great as well. 

Nonsensical info dumps

How can a book with so many info dumps be so confusing? Every other minute there’s a summary about werewolves, or the magical drug, or how kids get cast out, interspersed with fight scenes that spend more time in the Mary Sue MC’s head than any actual fight. This was also mind numbingly dull.

Long winded screed

I actually was enjoying this some what until I got around chapter 12 or 13 when it went into a long winded verbose speech about her, dealing with the results of the drug that was given to her illegally. I kept thinking that she would come to some kind of resolution, but it just went on and on. I kept thinking ‘can we just get on with the story!?’ I just quit. Ms. Odom‘s narration was good, however.