A Wizard Scorned by Patricia White
Fantasy
Hardshell Word Factory
I was looking forward to reading this book. It was a Hardshell best-seller, and written up in several e-publishing journals. It is a long book (often I reproach e-books being a bit short) and I liked the fact that it had 330 pages, making me feel as if I really got my money's worth. E-books are already inexpensive, and this one was definitely a good buy.
The story is well woven and the characters, while sometimes a bit two-dimensional, are fun and speak in convincing voices.
The story opens as the heroine, Jane, is staring at her secretary Maggie who has just announced she's quitting. Not only that - she's going to be a mail-order bride.
Jane, vice president for Smith, Smith and Melrose, (busy, successful and chic,) thinks Maggie has fallen off the deep end. Determined to save her from a fraud (Maggie, Wizards don't exist - and if they did exist, they wouldn't be advertising for brides in the New York Time's classifieds!) Jane agrees to go meet this so-called wizard and save Maggie. Sure she's about to dismantle an enormous fraud or a white slave ring, Jane strides into a room full of brides-to-be, and meets - a wizard.
Will has his hands full. He's been hired to bring brides to a town where women are in somewhat of a shortage. What his contractor had neglected to tell him was that Cordelia - resident wizardress - is furiously determined that no woman should come to that town. It seems she was jilted by a certain Max, and until he accepts her marriage proposal - no woman for anyone!
Will and Jane, caught in Cordelia's spell, find themselves in a bordello, with no brides, and lots of explaining to do.
That's just the beginning. Jane, believing she's been kidnapped, drugged, hypnotized or worse - is a less than willing partner to Will, who only wants to straighten out the mail-order bride problem and find his beloved Maggie.
Parallel to this story, Sojourner, a mighty wizard cursed and transformed into a black panther, sees Jane in a dream and recognizes her as his one true love. Doomed to search forever for 'That Which Was Lost' - he roams the world in black panther form, linked to Will through telepathy.
Whenever Jane and Will come to grief - Sojourner is there to help.
I won't tell the rest of the story - suffice to say it is a nice mixture of magic and humor, with good characters and a story-line complicated enough to keep a reader interested all the way through. Patricia White has done a nice job creating a fascinating world.
Reviewed by Jenny