| Genre | Gay / Urban Fantasy / Shifters / Ghosts/Spirits/Hauntings / Magic / Wizards, Witches, and Mages / Gods/Godesses / Interspecies / Romance / Action/Adventure |
| Reviewed by | Serena Yates on 12-April-2015 |
Death is a minor inconvenience in the path to true love.
When the God of the Underworld sends Alstair back to the Academy to help pick out a new headmaster, he doesn’t mention he put Alstair in for the job. Angered but willing to keep his word, Alstair discovers the headmaster position comes with more knots of deception than a sailor’s rope.
Porter Exton had a crush on Alstair. He’d watched Alstair train Elijah through the window and had spent more than one night dreaming of the Reaper. However, dreams were set aside in order to discover the truth about his death and if the man who killed him is responsible for the other deaths at the school.
Two men with different backgrounds need to discover what they have in common if they hope to save themselves from plotting gods, egomaniacs and possible killers.
This fifth volume in the ‘A Wizard’s Touch’ series takes up the story of two extremely fascinating characters from the previous book: Porter, the ghost of a murdered student, and Alstair, a Reaper and Hades’s right-hand man. As such, both this review and the book itself contain spoilers for previous installments; if you want to get the full effect of the well-orchestrated mystery and gradual reveal of all the Wizard Academy’s secrets, don’t read this series (or my reviews) out of order.
Alstair is a very secretive man/wizard/Reaper, so I was looking forward to finding out more. Early on, my hopes for him to provide ample entertainment were summed up by his thoughts: “Alstair didn’t want to spend another century processing incoming souls. The thought of the paperwork alone made him want to die all over again.” The thought of paperwork in the Underwold certainly made me grin, but it’s little details like this that make this series so amusing. Alstair struggling with his assignment, his reluctance to become the new headmaster, and his newly discovered desire for Porter to become his lover, maybe more, made him a great main character and far more “human” than I had personally expected from a Reaper.
Porter has his own issues to deal with. He wants revenge for his death (which was supposedly an accident), he sort of wants a chance to be the wizard he was never able to become, and he definitely wants to explore the physical side of his attraction to Alstair now that they both have bodies that enables them to be physical with each other. He has his hands full once the full extent of Hades’s plan, the villain’s evil intentions, and Porter’s own need for clarity become clear. Porter discovering his own magic (and boy, what a cool type of powers he has!) is just the icing on the cake, so to speak.
If you like stories about wizards who really have no idea what they can do with their magic, if you enjoy reading about men who need to figure out exactly what kind of relationship they want and are ready for, and if you're looking for an entertaining read with lots of magical coolness and some very hot wizard-on-wizard action, then you will probably like this novella.
DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Pride Publishing for the purpose of a review.
| Format | ebook |
| Length | Novella, 101 pages/30011 words |
| Heat Level | |
| Publication Date | 23-January-2015 |
| Price | $4.50 ebook |
| Buy Link | https://www.pride-publishing.com/book/porters-reaper |
