Elemental Magic [Kindle Edition]

Angela Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Charmed meets The Last Airbender!

Aileen Donovan is an oceanographer with magical control over the element of water. While her normal focus is on research and fighting poachers, she's about to go up against the stuff of legends--and that's saying something for a supernatural.

A transport ship is missing and everyone's eager to get their hands on the cargo. No one knows what exactly it is, but when fragments resembling coral begin to drive local residents insane, Aileen suspects a preternatural source. Whatever is at the bottom of the ocean, a power-hungry alchemist wants it, and releases a sea dragon to eat the competition--literally.

Aileen sees this as an opportunity to win the professional recognition she desires, but keeping secrets is complicated when she's working with local Coast Guard officer Colin Benson. Her sense of love and duty will be put to the test, and when the tide washes out, it might have been better if that lost ship had stayed lost.

Readers love Elemental Magic!

"It had the right balance of mystery, suspense, romance, and the paranormal."

"With likeable characters, a kick ass story line, and well-written prose, it was hard to put down."

"I say pack your boats to get in on this story!"

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Angela Wallace loves gun-toting good boys and could have been a cop in another life except for the unfortunate condition of real blood making her queasy. Good thing writing gun and sword fights isn’t a problem. In her books you’ll find the power of love, magic, and redemption.

Product Details

• File Size: 512 KB
• Print Length: 251 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006AF90PK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,325 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars it has a great setup... the follow thorough is ok. September 16, 2012

By silvergray

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book has a great setup.

A female elemental with the power to wield water, is put to the test as an evil alchemist tries to gain ultimate power, leaving destruction in his wake.

Awesome.

This book also does quite a job at universe building. You learn all about elementals, where they come from, their place in history. You are told about the reasons why magic and magical creatures aren't seen in the world anymore. Everything makes sense. There is also a limit to what characters can achieve using magic and a price to pay if they try to use too much. There's a reasoning behind the magic as well, kind of.

The characters have limits to what they can do ability-wise which is both an asset and a problem. Yes, the main character isn't all-powerful, which is often considered a good thing when writing a story. The problem is that she spends quite a large part of the book talking about how tired she is, or being knocked out. She is often bruised, battered and scarred. It got to the point where I was thinking about drinking games for this book. 1 shot for every time the main character is knocked on her behind.

What this book isn't: it isn't a romance novel. There is some romance in it, but a lot of it happened prior to the events of the book. We're already in the thick of the main and the love interest's story when we begin. It's the turning point. We're at that part where one asks: Do they become a couple or don't they already? Any flirting that may have happened, unrequited or otherwise happened before. There's a teste of it here and there but only a taste.

Most of the book is concerned with action and the adventure of the main as she battles with supernatural forces. So enjoy it for that.

The writing is clear but drags now and then. Still, once I had invested some time in the world and the setup of the story, I just wanted to keep going. I wanted to know what would happen, because I honestly had no idea where this story was going to go (in a good way). That being said, I'm not interested in purchasing the next book in the series.

The writing though imaginative, struck me as being too impersonal. Kind of like a newspaper article rather than a novel. I prefer my adventure books to draw me into it a bit more with the writer's/character's personality in the writing. Then again, maybe I'm not the target audience for this style of book.

3 stars - I was intrigued by the story but not invested. All in all, it was an ok book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting premise May 28, 2012

By Larry M. Paroubek

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

An interesting premise with too much "young adult" interjected into urban fantasy, which makes the 26+ year old primary character a bit too "screamy, whiney", with conversations that don't seem quite "real".

More research into the Coast Guard, and it's missions, restrictions, and regulations would be in order. Not many CG officers carrying "badges" and sidearms in normal daily activities (searches, boardings, etc being exceptions).
Doubtful that a LCDR would be in charge of what appears to be a small boat station -- Coast Guard vessels are generally termed "cutters" and "small boats".
Also doubtful that a "battalion of CG officers" would appear -- battalion is an organizational term for the Army & Marines -- finding 500+ CG persons within close proximity would be difficult anywhere (but DC).
Also noted was "17 knots" used as a distance measurement -- 'like saying something was "20 mph away". "Knots" is a measurement of speed -- nautical mile (or N, NM, or nmi) are the correct terms/abbreviations.

In general, the story-line expanded well, with sufficient detail to obtain a reasonable background of the people involved. Several of the "action scenes" imagery was unclear, even after several reads.
All-in-all, a good first attempt in this series (and second novel)...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm ready for more! November 25, 2011

By Mistress of The Dark Path

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Aileen Donovan is a woman with a few special skills regular humans don't have. As a water elemental, she can manipulate water and communicate with the creatures in the sea. This made it ideal for her to become an oceanographer and work with her father and brother (who are also water elementals) at their research center in Westport, Washington. Though there is a whole society of people with skills like theirs, it is a heavily guarded secret. Aileen is fine with that, but it does become tricky to cover up when paranormal occurrences begin happening in their area. She is good friends with one of the local Coast Guardsmen, Colin, who gets his hands full with a suspicious ship wreck. What she can't tell him is that there is a lot more going on that normal science can't explain. This is further complicated by an attraction she is beginning to have for him.

Aileen finds herself caught in the middle of solving the mystery behind the wreck and why this one is so different from any others. It begins with a simple job of plotting possible locations for where the ship may have sunk, but quickly escalates into so much more. As it turns out, a sea creature thought to be nothing more than a fable has risen from the depths of the ocean and is causing mayhem and destruction. Not only this, but there appears to be key players who want a strange object that was on board the sunken ship. Based on gathered clues, Aileen realizes that the item could be extremely dangerous if it gets into the wrong hands. She and her fellow elementals must find it first before any more innocent people are hurt. This means lying to a man she is falling for and it makes her job all that much more difficult.

Elemental Magic is a light urban fantasy full of intrigue, paranormal, and action packed scenes. The main character, Aileen, is not your typical UF heroine. She isn't fearless and doesn't normally fight bad guys through physical confrontations. Rather, she is a down to earth woman that is driven to help keep the human population and sea animals around her safe. If that means putting herself in harm's way, then she is willing to take the risks. Despite her lack of combat skills, she does have a few tricks up her sleeve. She can manipulate water to use in attacking her foes and her father taught her how to shoot handguns rather well. This means she isn't completely inept in a dangerous situation, but simply lacks experience in fighting. She does manage to be resourceful and that gets her out of a few messes.

Aileen also has a few insecurities that affect her behavior. She believes her magical capabilities aren't as perfected as other member of her family and she tends to be somewhat introverted, which has resulted in a lack of social graces. It makes for some rather interesting confrontations that she gets into. This also means she doesn't know how to handle her feelings for Colin who is showing obvious signs of attraction to her. It makes for a sweet romantic story set in the midst of action packed scenes occurring throughout the novel. There is rarely a dull moment to be found.

I found the world building and character development to be well done with this debut novel for the series. There is still a lot more to learn, but a clear picture is drawn and the story has a realistic feel. I would have liked to see a bit more about Colin's background outside the coastguard but I'm sure that information will come out in future novels. The romantic scenes in this novel will not go beyond some hot kisses, but that was enough to satisfy me. Overall, Elemental Magic was a great story to read and I will certainly be following the series closely as it continues. I highly recommend those who read paranormal romance and urban fantasy check this one out!

More About the Author

Angela Wallace has been penning adventures ever since she was sucked through a magical portal as a child. What she saw and whom she met gave birth to exciting and complex fantasy worlds where defying the laws of physics was a bonus. She has since come back down to earth, only to discover this mortal realm has magic of its own. Now she is also quite at home in the world of urban fantasy, though believes that love, faith, and hope are of a stronger magic than fire wielding and sorcery. She loves gun-toting good boys, and could have been a cop in another life except real blood makes her queasy. She'll have to stick to solving supernatural mysteries. Language is her pleasure, whether it's weaving words on a page or lassoing linguistics into translations as a sign language interpreter. Angela is currently working on her next book.