A sorceress with attitude manages to get her hands on a powerful artifact, which suddenly makes her the most popular (read: most hunted) girl in town. It sound like a great set up, right? That’s how Raine Benares begins her adventures in Magic Lost, Trouble Found, narrating the entire adventure with wry commentary and snarky remarks. For fans of contemporary fantasy, the narration style is a familiar one. Throw it into a high fantasy setting where the narrator is an elven seeker–a sorceress who finds things–and it makes for an odd combination.

Review by Alana Abbott

The Flash Fire Mini-Reviews are back with a mix of fiction, games and comics this week. Mages, Wizards, Witches and other spell-slinging heroes, villains and monsters make appearances in this collection of reviews.

We’re looking at a variety of magical styles, ranging from the dark and evil to the divinely inspired. I’m not talking about spellbooks here, but magic wielding characters or plots about magic in the world around them. We’ve got Harry Dresden, Willow and Redcloak alongside some Live-Action Mage and the Unwanted.

Anyway, let’s get on with those mini-reviews…

One of my sources at Wizards of the Coast tells me that there is going to be a Magic: the Gathering movie. This is part of the press release from Hasbro: Hasbro Inc. (HAS) and Universal Pictures formed a six-year strategic partnership to produce at least four motion pictures based on brands such as Monopoly, […]

Great for writers and game designers, I’ve never come across a more thorough and massive work detailing creatures so rare you may not recognize them. There are two, other books in the series entitled, The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells and The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft. If either of those two books are as down-to-earth and fact-filled as this one, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy either one to add substance to my fantasy stories.

As the last of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the finishing touch to a series full of magic, mystery and friendship. Having read all of the books, I’m sure that fans of the series have either already picked up this book or will shortly. Still, there are interesting things to point out here that have left many readers feeling a little bit unsatisfied with the events that have happened here.

Sometimes, as an author, you might have it in your head that you’re going to write a very long story. Instead of writing an “epic novel” in one book, you break it up into smaller pieces so that when the end is in sight, the pieces fall together neatly like a stack of dominoes. Small Favor was, to me, one of the dominoes of the over-arching plot. While it tied up a lot of previous plots, it also opened the door to a host of questions for Thomas, Murphy, Michael and, of course, Dresden.

Review by Monica Valentinelli

I didn’t really know what to expect when I picked up The Fountain; I had read some other reviews of it before I went out and got it and was intrigued by Darren Aronosfky’s writing and film style. Going into it, I had thought it was a film about the fountain of youth, about a couple who were possessed with finding the mythic “fountain” to restore and heal Izzy (played by Rachel Weisz) from her terminal illness.

Written by Patricia A. McKillip
Reviewed by Alana Abbott

Secrets weave upon secrets in McKillip’s tale of weaving witches who bind their neighboring fairies, keeping the otherworld at bay. When Sylvia’s grandfather dies and she becomes the heir to Lynn Hall, one of the places where this world and the other intersect, secrets she’s been trying to hide for years start coming to the surface. She never knew the identity of her father–her mother kept it secret until her death–but she knows that he wasn’t human.

In Marvel’s continued Ultimates series, this particular feature is a re-imagining of Doctor Strange. This film focuses heavily on eastern philosophy and mythic influences, adding several characters that emphasize a larger setting.

The Dresden Files, a series of novels penned by Jim Butcher, came to the small screen in 2007 on the SciFi channel bringing with it some variations – both good and bad. This is a difficult review to write for two reasons. First, the series was canceled after only twelve episodes. In such a short period of time, there wasn’t a lot of ability for the directors to explore the setting in this format. As a result, the events in this series loosely resemble only a few, choice events from one or two books. Secondly, this television series didn’t feel like a literal translation from the novels and, as a result, could easily stand alone on its own merits.

The Ninth novel of the Dresden Files series, White Night advances the plot that has been building up for the last few books. This novel also features more than a few characters from previous books in what feels like a “Who has a beef with Harry?” vibe. Heroes and Villains show up in this story, trading blows and witty dialog throughout.

Within the realm of post-apocalyptic novels and settings, there are books that inject religion into fire and brimstone and then there are those that fast-forward into a totalitarian, bleak, hungry future where hope is a luxury. In the realm of Seraphs, the main character, Thorn St. Croix, lives in a world that is somewhere in between. Angels, demons, neo-mages (advanced humans that lack souls), and biology are all at play in an ice age following a biblically-inspired apocalypse.

Billed as an erotic thriller, Season of the Witch is a mentally-seductive tale of tragedy that delves deep into the occult. Before I go any further, I’d like to say that there are a lot of books within the spectrum of supernatural romance that are not soft-core. This is one of those books; personally didn’t think that it was “erotic” in the physical sense; hidden far deep beneath the layers of the plot is a subtle message that will make you stop and think, as if the alchemy in this tale has worked its magic on you.

Shadowplay is the second book in the Shadowmarch series, written by veteran novelist Tad Williams. Truthfully, I have not read Shadowmarch, the first of the three books in this trilogy—but I have read almost every other book that Williams has ever published. Picking up Shadowplay was an experiment, in the sense that I wasn’t sure whether or not I would need to read the first book. The result?

Shadowplay has very little recap from its predecessor—you can glean the details as you read on—and the first hundred pages proved difficult to me as a reader simply because I hadn’t read the events leading up to the scattering of the royal Eddon family and the takeover by the Tollys.

Prophecies, magic, and a powerful darkness come to life in the novel End of Heroes, written by an up and coming author. Although this is a fantasy novel, there are many elements that do not follow the mainstream cutouts you might find in your local bookstore hidden away on the shelf. First and foremost, it is strongly apparent that there is an intelligent author behind the planning of this book. Herbst has created a very, well-detailed setting with a complex wizard society and magical rules.

Review by Monica Valentinelli

The most praise that I have is for the magic system. It reflects the dangerous nature of magic (as well as it’s unpredictability) and the steps needed to advance along your arcane studies. The power of spell casters is minor in the beginning, but just by looking at the math of any mid/high level spells you can tell that they will one day be capable of easily destroying hordes of enemies. In short, magic is taxing, dangerous, and a life long learning process, but well worth the effort in the end.

Epic Role Playing is a fantasy role playing game system published by Dark Matter Studios and presented in three separate volumes (the Rules Manual, Bestiary, and Book of the Arcane, respectively). Additionally, a setting designed for use with the Epic system is also available in the form of the supplementary Atlas of Eslin (Volume 1). This review deals specifically with the Epic Role Playing Besitary, while other reviews discuss other Epic core books, as well as the Atlas of Eslin setting supplement.

Epic Role Playing is a fantasy role playing game system published by Dark Matter Studios and presented in three separate volumes (the Rules Manual, Bestiary, and Book of the Arcane, respectively). Additionally, a setting designed for use with the Epic system is also available in the form of the supplementary Atlas of Eslin (Volume 1). This review deals specifically with the Epic Role Playing Book of the Arcane, while other reviews discuss other Epic core books, as well as the Atlas of Eslin setting supplement.

Within the horror and dark fantasy realm, it seems as if a lot of fans are concerned about setting. Sorcerer takes an extremely bold approach – it is more concerned about how you play than where. The book, published by Adept Press, is beautifully bound in hardcover form and retails for about $20.00. At around 140 pages in trade size, the size of the book threw me for a loop. After all, how can such a thin book without a pregenerated setting pack such a big punch?

Sorcerer is a Faustian game for people who want to test the limits of their character and have complete freedom to use their own imagination to fill in all the details.

If you are looking for tens of new rotes and tons of cool rules for initiates you are looking for the wrong place. Initiates of the art consist of stories and dialogs as if It has been written by a group of mage. You can also trace two characters from Initiates of The Art to Masters of The Art, Lee Ann and the kid called Kyle. Other character of notice is Sir Lawrence.