No Rest for the Witches

This is a group of short stories, the first of which is by MaryJanice Davidson. It's entitled The Majika and its incredibly funny. A girl named Ireland has a house that's sort of like a place where people pick up stray pets and let them stay.

In her case, though, the beings aren't pets. There's Lent, a tall fairy; Ezra, a vampire; Owen, a werewolf cast off from the pack, and Judith, whose spirit inhabits Ireland's car. If that wasn't enough, Ireland picks up a new 'stray,” a woman she thinks is a zombie but turns out to be a dryad.

And then there's Micah, who is supposed to be training Ireland since she's The Magica, but Ireland doesn't really have enough time to pay him any attention while other things are going on. It's a really, really funny read.

The second story is Voodoo Moon. This one concerns Dana Duran, and F.B.I. agent who comes to a small town to try to solve a series of murders. She initially doesn't believe in paranormal types of things but her growing friendship with a guy who runs a store that carries voodoo-related materials and her sighting of a creature without a face gradually cause her to change her mind.

Then she needs to figure out how to stop this being, because she is the next person marked to be murdered.

The third story is Breath of Magic. This has traditional elements of an evil god and goddess, Dark Elves, witches, etc. A group of beings is fighting a being named Darkwolf who has an eye from an evil god. The story is basically divided; half of it dealing with the fighting, half dealing with explicit sex scenes between one of the witches and a warrior.

The over-dependence on sexual scenes actually hurts the story. I can't tell if it was used so much to pad out the basic plot lines, or if this is really a sex story with material about elves and witches padding it. Either way, it doesn't work.

The final story is Any Witch Way She Can, which is about a woman that wants some man to love her and she casts a general love spell. She makes improvisations in the spell, though, and ends up going one day back in time right into a meeting of witches and 'others.'

She's also at her grandmother's house and she doesn't get along with her at all. Seems Randy is not an actual witch, and that disappoints her grandmother. There's also a theme about a guy wanting to discredit her grandmother so he can take control of the Council, and there's a man that ends up taking a very strong interest in Randy.

As with the third story, there's a lot of sex here, but it doesn't overwhelm the general plot. It comes close, though.

Overall, I think this is an okay book, but just barely.


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