In the world of Black Magic, there were once two races of wizards: the good Aequitas and the evil Omnivatics. The Omnivatics, who often lived in snake-form, are thought to be extinct, cursed long ago for their wicked ways. Jackson Slater, a geologist and Aequitas wizard, telepathically receives a cry for help from his ex-fiancee Sara Temple, also a wizard, who is half-way around the world in the jungles of Venezuela. There is a bad history between Jack and Sara, but he cannot ignore her call. Jack saves Sara from a deranged wizard, and they soon discover there is an evil force targeting their kind causing madness and death, and the evidence suggests that their ancient foe the Omnivatics is responsible. Despite their mistrust for each other, Jack and Sara are faced with the task of locating and destroying the sorce of evil before the snake-wizard can destroy the earth.

Though the chemistry between them is electric, it took me awhile to accept Jackson and Sara as a couple. Jackson was likable from the beginning. He's a down-to-earth, take charge, no nonsense geologist who lives his life "roughing it" out in the field. Sara likes the finer things in life, like wearing designer clothes, flying expensive helicopters and decorating luxury hotels as an interior designer. Even traipsing through the South American jungle, she's dressed to impress. But, opposites attract, and that certainly added to the sexual tension between them. Sara's character was a bit naive and stubborn at times refusing to see the obvious, but by the end of the story I really liked her. It was several chapters into the story before we're given the reason for the bad blood between Jack and Sara. After hearing their heart breaking story, I can see why Sara acted the way she did.

This story had me entertained from the first page. Wizards and ancient evil snakes are a nice change of pace in a paranormal romance. At times the plot seemed far-fetched, but overall it worked for me. This is the first book by Cherry Adair that I've read. I liked her writing style. The story flowed nicely. The author gives us the history of the Aequitas and the Omnivatics in the prologue, which I had to read twice to fully grasp. It certainly helped me understand future events in the book. There is a upcoming second book called Dangerous Magic, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the author takes this story.
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Hot and sexy book. I don't have a problem with snakes at all, so I thought Cherry came up with the craziest, insane, creepy, disgusting and kinda the coolest thing ever in the book (if you don't like snakes prepared to be grossed out, but I have never read anything like that so I thought it was very original and disgustingly creative). ( )

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy:
www.allthingsurbanfantasy.blogspot.com

BLACK MAGIC takes a little bit of “Romancing the Stone”, adds some grown up Harry Potter, and finishes off with a whole lot of “The Temple of Doom.” Despite the flavors of adventure, magic, and romance, I never felt particularly engaged by either the plot or the characters. Unfortunately, the bulk of my thoughts after finishing BLACK MAGIC revolved around trying to create some order out of this welter of mythology and sex.

Admittedly, my failure to connect with this book could be just that, my failure. The opening leaps straight into a contrived exposition about the magic and mythology surrounding the Aequitas race. This explanation came before I was invested in the characters, or the book, and put me off from the start. Furthermore, despite the exhaustive detail provided about the Aequitas and their enemies, I was frustrated to find no detail about the parts of magic I did find interesting. Prophetic, floating book? Cool! Tell me more! ... Um... hello? Anyone out there? The mystical book was so under-explained I stopped reading to make sure I was starting at the beginning of the series (According to Wikipedia, BLACK MAGIC is first in this particular series, but it’s set in the established world of a prior series). Given how much I like to piece together magical “physics” in a book, I think I would have been better off starting with one of Adair’s earlier T-FLAC psi unit books.

Given my frustration with the magical portions of the book, I have difficulty objectively deciding if I had valid issues with the romance. I felt like too much of the book revolved around one of my least favorite romance tropes, with a break up based on lack of communication (made famous in Rebecca, and a thousand romances that followed). Despite later revelations to explain Sara and Jack’s behavior, it couldn’t make me go back and enjoy the beginning of the book. Outside what is fundamentally my own negative reaction to a common romance plot line, I enjoyed Sara and Jack. They had their moments, and I enjoyed the scent details and staging Adair includes. She made me want to hunt down ginger body soaps and an ice hotel in Greenland.

As for the villains of the book, the dastardly, snake-people, they were as obvious and unbelievable as the magic. I found several attack and attempted rape scenes both confusing and egregious. The best thing to come out of reading BLACK MAGIC was, when I solicited my husband’s help in figuring out the mythology of the book, he was derailed into a 30 minute hunt to find out if “snakes get erections” (Google yielded some obscene results, but his college herpetology text book says “Yes.”).
When it comes down to it, my dislike of BLACK MAGIC could be the result of several of my own pet peeves combining to create a gestalt dislike. In a better mood, these shortcomings might have struck me as an enjoyable comedy of romance and fantasy themes, but as circumstances had it, I could barely make myself finish it.

Sexual Content: Several explicit sex scenes, explicit attempted rape, descriptions of rape. ( )