Jacob Proffitt's Reviews > Three Mages and a Margarita

This shouldn't have worked very well, really. The worldbuilding is haphazard with only enough framework to support the story and lots of undefined details around the edges. Plus, I have a hard time imagining that a group of magic folks would call themselves "mythic" anything, let alone "mythics" as a group. Maybe if they were unicorns or something? And the plot only works if you take the worldbuilding seriously and that takes some effort with how threadbare it is.

But Marie takes a huge risk by giving us a heroine who isn't the super-tough warrior chick or a hidden talent who discovers her ginormous power and instead giving us a bog-standard human who has a problem letting things go, getting in trouble in all those low-level waitress jobs that require at least a little tact and social give. She antagonizes back when antagonized, so she finds herself hopping from job to job and we start the story at a point where she has a troublesome reputation in the places close enough to her home to walk to. Which, frankly, also should have bugged me because so many UF heroines exhibit a blind snark reflex that inevitably gets on my nerves when it becomes clear that it's their primary response to every input.

But that's probably why this worked for me, now I think of it. Tori snarks when snarked upon, but her initial response to people is cheerful and helpful. And Marie does a good job depicting the insecurity at the core of her interactions with others and that drew me in, too. Don't get me wrong because she's tough and determined and she steps up to help others so that insecurity isn't about being weak. Instead, it's about companionship and finding a place in the world where she can feel like her loyalty and giving to others will be reciprocated. i.e. she wants to belong.

And Marie does another very smart thing in making the magic world not that place for much of the story. She finds friends, but they're the exception ((view spoiler)[to start out, at any rate (hide spoiler)]) and they start off rocky. So the story is as much about her winning others gradually over while also showing her mettle and willingness to give back as good as she takes.

So what worked for me turns out to be Tori and her core group of friends. And the gradual expansion of that circle was engaging. And the plot didn't suck if you were willing to go along with the bare-bones premise, so that didn't hurt, either.

So I'm going to give this 3½ stars that I'll round to four; not least because the author managed a snarky heroine for whom snark wasn't her initial, let along go-to response to everybody.

A note about Chaste: The relationships in this start off rocky and build towards friendship and the core group of her friends are three guys who are more-or-less equal possibilities romance-wise, but with none of them taking enough foreground to qualify as an actual relationship. Two of them actually make believable overtures to her through the course of the story, but none get far enough that intimacy is really possible. So this is chaste with only a few kisses and some sexy flirting but nothing more.