REVIEWED by Jay V.
TITLE: Familiar Beginnings
SERIES: Demon Magic #2
AUTHOR: Alice Winters
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 214 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2020
BLURB:
Smart men quit while they’re ahead—they lay low and hope disaster blows on by them. Not me. Especially when disaster seems to follow me and my soulmate Havoc, a demon I bound to me three hundred years ago with my magic.
The dark mage Geoff is back from the dead and creating chaos by devouring the hearts of people with magical abilities, giving him overwhelming power as his followers grow. And since I’m one of the strongest mages alive and am leading the resistance against him, he’s coming for me next. Oh, and it might have something to do with the fact that I was also the one who originally killed him. But you can’t blame me; the guy needed to die.
Havoc and I, along with our unlikely band of… (I don’t want to say heroes, I can’t give them that much credit) annoyances will stop at nothing to end the destruction. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a sexy demon by my side every step of the way. For the first time in three hundred years, I’m finally with the person meant for me, and I will do anything to keep from losing him.
REVIEW:
Miles the mage and Havoc the demon are back again to save the world. After trying to deal with the dark mage Geoff in the first book, Happy Endings, he’s back to cause more pain. And Miles is still gathering more unusual characters with Havoc complaining the whole way.
It’s been quite some time since the first book came out, and it was my first introduction to Winters’ writing. So it was nice to revisit some old familiar characters. The first book felt like Winters was finding her way in comedic writing and it’s nice to see how she takes the characters now that she’s honed her craft with this book being an interesting study. They are more clever and the situations pay off even better. Like always, Winters continues with her odd characters and introduces some entirely new ones. It’s like Miles is a magnet for the strange and unusual friends, or well, people that will go to bat for him. And with these odd ones, Winters takes off with them trying to help Miles and Havoc.
There’s a lot to be said for some great writing in the middle of this book. Good steamy together time and a nice plot twist that made me exclaim out loud, “Brilliant!” There are several flashbacks which tell the backstory of Miles and Havoc, which helps us understand them a bit more. It’s near the end that could have been expanded. The big bad Geoff is truly an evil character but it feels like he isn’t fully fleshed out this time and it felt like the end of the book was a little too short and too clean of a resolution. If you love Winters’ humor, you’ll love this book and I feel it’s worth reading as things are wrapped up pretty well. Of course I’d love to hear more of their shenanigans as they are truly unique characters.
RATING:
BUY LINK: