"Classic confrontation between good and evil"

Most people are unaware of paranormal entities residing in this world, but those that use the third eye see the creatures of myths and legends quite clearly. An octet with wide open third eyes wants to eliminate these cretins who cause suffering and pain in innocents. One of these individuals manages to remove strands of pain and takes it to his laboratory for study.

This underground group comes to the attention of the Vulture Clan who wants to control the San Francisco human and non human population; the Vultures see this group of eight as a threat to achieving their objective. They send magical dogs to kill the enemy, but the group escapes, but not before one of them were turned into a werewolf. Using their varying magical skills, the octet plans to stop the Vulture Clan, but first must retrieve a jaguar from South America to use in a spell that will convert back to human the werewolf member bit by the dog. Then they will challenge the Vulture Clan knowing that each one of them will probably die in the ensuing battle.

Though a bit difficult to keep track of who's who amongst the champions as BAD MAGIC has eight heroic protagonists, each is eccentric in their own way. Stephen Zielinski's debut novel is an edgy roller coaster ride of thrills and chills as the classic confrontation between good and evil plays out with no guarantees as to whom will triumph. There is plenty of humor as the heroes and the author looks at the upcoming altercation with a tongue in cheek attitude that makes for even more fun reading.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 29, 2004

Summary

Magic is real. Strange forces and uncanny creatures abound. Cosmic evil is loose in the world--especially around San Diego--along with transcendent evil, primordial evil, simmering evil, objective evil, and specific evil. In sheer self-defense, most of the human race long ago taught themselves to shut their magical Third Eye, blinding themselves to this supernatural world around them. As protection goes, it's not 100% effective, but it's still pretty good: If you can't see them, they can't see you. Fortunately for the rest of us, a few people can deal with the weirdness. In San Francisco, a motley group of adventurers have banded together to fight evil. They're an uncanny mix of alchemists, thaumaturges, necromancers, and totemists, working their wildly different magics in a milieu where thaumaturgy is a laboratory science and raw pain can be kept in a flask of liquid nitrogen. They know they don't know what they're doing. And they have to save a world that doesn't know it's under attack from forces that they wish were beyond comprehension. Poised, headspinning, and richly inventive, Bad Magic shows us what people really see when their third eye opens.