Bad Magic

Rating:
Summary: edgy roller coaster ride of thrills and chills
Review: Most people are unaware of paranormal entities residing in this world, but those that use the third eye see the creatures of myths and legends quite clearly. An octet with wide open third eyes wants to eliminate these cretins who cause suffering and pain in innocents. One of these individuals manages to remove strands of pain and takes it to his laboratory for study.

This underground group comes to the attention of the Vulture Clan who wants to control the San Francisco human and non human population; the Vultures see this group of eight as a threat to achieving their objective. They send magical dogs to kill the enemy, but the group escapes, but not before one of them were turned into a werewolf. Using their varying magical skills, the octet plans to stop the Vulture Clan, but first must retrieve a jaguar from South America to use in a spell that will convert back to human the werewolf member bit by the dog. Then they will challenge the Vulture Clan knowing that each one of them will probably die in the ensuing battle.

Though a bit difficult to keep track of who's who amongst the champions as BAD MAGIC has eight heroic protagonists, each is eccentric in their own way. Stephen Zielinski's debut novel is an edgy roller coaster ride of thrills and chills as the classic confrontation between good and evil plays out with no guarantees as to whom will triumph. There is plenty of humor as the heroes and the author looks at the upcoming altercation with a tongue in cheek attitude that makes for even more fun reading.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: Scarily good
Review: This is an intensely realistic book. Sure, there's magic (or, if you must, "magickal technology") all over the place, but an awful lot of work has been done making the characters seem like real people (or whatever they happen to be) uneasily at home in their environment...never have I seen a description of a working mage that makes learning what he knows seem at least as difficult as acquiring a doctorate in theoretical physics.

Nothing is perfect: sometimes the studied lightness grates, and there's just a bit too much wackiness-for-its-own-sake near the end...but an author who knows where to lift from Pynchon, Burroughs (probably), Andrews Vachss, and Walter Gibson, and is good enough to acknowledge the fact, scores highly thereby.

But again, Zielinski seems to know very well that when you've dropped the reader in what is in effect a new world, and you're not about to spell everything out, well-made characters serve as a strong anchor when the setting and plot are hard to immediately understand.

I'd like to see more of this world and characters, but wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the author left it and them alone, while they're still pretty much perfect...look at the later Ringworld or Riverworld books to see why.

After that, it's just a book review.