Review: Blood of the Sorceress by Maggie Shayne

I loved this book, absolutely loved this book. Before I read it, I didn’t think it was possible for it to live up to Daughter of the Spellcaster – which I thought was amazing. But it did. I couldn’t put this book down once I started reading it.

Blood of the Sorceress has everything I need in a book – plenty of action, good versus evil, some very intense, steamy romance, and it’s all wrapped up in magic – lots of magic.

This is the third book in Maggie Shayne’s The Portal Series. Everything that happened in the first two books has been building up to this book. After 3,500 years, Demetrius has escaped the Portal, and now Lilia has to convince him to reclaim his soul. The problem is, Demetrius doesn’t remember the past they shared, and as convincing as Lilia may sound, he’s afraid she may be using magic to persuade him.

I really liked these characters and was glad to see that the characters from the first two books in the series play a significant role in this book. These women – all witches — are strong and fierce, capable of taking care of themselves and determined to protect the people they love. The men help out, quite a bit, but they know who has the powers. There’s a scene when two of the sisters are trying to rescue the other sister, and their husbands are with them. They’re about to walk into a potentially dangerous situation, and one of the husbands says something along the lines of, “I know you’re the super witches, but would you please let us walk in first?” I thought that line summed up the relationship between the men and the women fairly well.

Strong women, and men who respect their strength – whether it’s mental, emotional, natural or supernatural — are pretty much essential for me to love a book. This book does well in that area.
   
And while this book is entertaining and exciting, there’s also a much deeper meaning to all of this.
Demetrius has a big decision to make. If he accepts the final piece of his soul, held by Lilia, he becomes human again, and sacrifices his immortality. As an immortal, he’s powerful and wealthy and can have whatever he wants, he’s only living sort of a half-life – he derives no pleasure from his senses: food all tastes the same, he’s unable to view things as beautiful, he feels no pain, but also no great joy. He likes the idea of living forever and having super powers, he likes the idea of never having to feel guilt or loss, but as he grows closer to Lilia, and she shows him bits of what he’s missing, he’s not sure if immortality is worth never being able appreciate beauty or humor or love.

I’ve been recommending the books in this series to all of my friends. I really enjoyed reading these books and I’m hoping there will be future books with these same characters.

I received a review copy of this book through Netgalley. Blood of the Sorceress will be released on January 22, 2013.