Reviewed by: Sue Eaton

TITLE: Something Wicked

AUTHOR: Eden Winters

PUBLISHED: Self Published

LENGTH: 541 pages

RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2022

BLURB:

A mysterious legacy. A magical journey. The worst guide in history!

Piers Adams never knew his parents or birthplace. All he wants from his mundane life is a better apartment and fewer working hours serving drinks at a club in Asheville, North Carolina. Sure, weirdness happens around him occasionally. Coincidences, right? He can’t possibly wish things into existence. After all, he’s only human.

Maybe.

It’s hard living down to a nickname like Wicked, but Prince Wycke Bertillian of the magical realm tries. He enjoys his lack of responsibilities until he’s coerced into a clandestine mission: find an evil sorceress’s hidden son in the human realm.

A chance encounter awakens magical potential beyond what either realm has seen before. Barely managing his own life doesn’t qualify Wycke to guide a novice sorcerer with infinite magic and zero self-preservation skills. Unfortunately, it’s Wycke or nothing standing between Piers and those who’d take Piers’ magic for themselves—magic powerful enough to rule two realms.

Piers and Wycke had better get their act together. Their lives and the fate of the human and magical worlds rests in their highly incompetent hands.

REVIEW:

This is an epic tale of danger, magic, deception, politics, and chicanery.  The book is very fast paced, and I couldn’t put it down.  So many twists and turns and a very complicated overarching plot but oh so brilliant and a fantastic read.

What’s an evil sorceress to do when the battle rages and she knows she is going to lose?  On the face of it, it seems save her baby son.  It takes until the end of the book to truly understand the lengths and complexities of the evil sorceress plans, layers and layers of plans which are breathtaking but totally evil in their execution.

Piers is living his life, scraping by, ending up in Foster care after his father figure is killed when he was very young.  Life is not easy, but things always seem to work out for him, when he wants something badly enough, but he is just an ordinary human, isn’t he?  Then he meets the mysterious stranger Wycke which sets off a series of events and awakens his magic.

Wycke the joker, saved by his sister when their father was killed for trying to usurp the High King.  Taken together to the High King’s Court where he is reviled by everyone, so turns to mischief and jokes to make his life more bearable, when he is older, he seduces his way through the court, servants, guards, courtiers none are exempt from his charms.

Sent to find the child, of the evil sorceress he is drawn to Piers, their connection is very real and scary to them both, wary of getting too close to anyone who can hurt them.  Their past making them suspicious.  It was great to see them exploring their connection and funny that Piers was who, Wycke was looking for, but Wycke was befuddled by the magic, so didn’t know, didn’t realize, couldn’t put the clues together.   Throw a familiar into the mix, looking for his mage but again couldn’t pinpoint him and it’s a comedy of errors.

The action speeds up and they are transported into other realms, finding out the truth about their parents and realizing that the evil sorceress everyone believed was dead was very much pulling people’s strings and trying to get her evil plans to fruition, reclaiming her power and taking over the kingdoms.

The world building in this book is fantastic, so detailed, and immense, the ruthlessness of the ruling kingdoms and there isn’t anything they wouldn’t do to crush their enemies and take ultimate power.  The book spans years but never feels like you are plodding along until the next bit of action.  It takes off from the very beginning and keeps you engaged until the very end.  It doesn’t appear to be the start of the series, but I truly hope that Eden revisits this wonderful world she has created and gives us more books from it.

RATING:

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