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After making my way through Burned I enjoyed Gayle's voice enough - and the excerpts available online were good enough - to convince me that Bound by Magick was worth a try. I wouldn't say that it was a total wash but ultimately I think there was a lot of non-sex related plot stuff going on that didn't get wrapped up as well as I would have liked.
The whole series centers around four brothers who have to find their four empathic mates to defeat a curse and their evil uncle. It's a great setup but things are just rushed, due either to length or focus on sexy times, resulting in plot points that don't get enough screen time. Especially at the end - there's the big showdown between the Uncle, a coven for hire and some other players that is suddenly over and done with with almost no time taken to show the battle being fought.
And even though I figured that since the couples were 'destined mates' they'd jump into bed pretty immediately, I still wanted to see a bit more development of that lust turning into love. The BDSM elements are also thrown in there a tad haphazardly, which made me feel like the brothers were nothing more than alphas who liked to have their way in bed - which isn't bad, just don't write in any submission/dominant elements to attempt to explain. Oh and one more pet peeve: the use/non-use of condoms. Maybe due to Twitter chatter lately I've been paying more attention but NO ONE uses condoms - except for during gay sex. What exactly does that say? Vaginas are the receptacles of all that's good and wonderful in the world but somehow ass f*cking needs a little coverage? Shrug. I just thought it was weird and it negatively impacted by feelings towards one of my favorite stories in the set.
All in all it's not bad, but I do think it could have been better.
Overall Feeling - C
Series - 1) Untamed Magick 2) Magick Ignited 3) Force of Magick 4) Magick Provoked
