Ensnared by Magic

The One Rises #3

by Anna Wolfe

Mark would give anything to go back to the way things were before he got bitten by one of the demonridden. Instead, he has to figure out how to control powers he doesn't want and nightmares that leave him waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Now, to repay a debt, he has to offer his services to a powerful coven leader—an earth witch who has been very vague about what he must do to fulfill their agreement. As tensions heat up amongst the witches, Callie, Silas, Edie, and Mark find themselves in the middle of machinations to decide who will control the fate of humanity.“There is another world touching ours that is filled with demons or, at least, that’s what we call them. They call themselves something else entirely, though that is neither here nor there. Every now and again, human beings manage to pull these demons through to our side. The human dies, of course, and the demon gets a person shaped suit to live in. We call these creatures the demonridden.”

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 30, 2013

About the author

You know, I always find introducing myself to be awkward so I’m going to keep my bio short and sweet. I’m a college professor with a Ph.D. so new it squeaks. I have a husband, a heterolifemate, and two cats. I’m willing to try any food I’ve never eaten at least once. I have jumped out of a plane (awesome), blown fire (also awesome), learned that having accelerant soak into your sports bra hurts like hell, and am a pagan (please note that this does not mean I’m a satanist).

Reviews

[Fangs for the Fantasy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark has to spend some time with the witches as a consequence of a very unwise deal he made. Of course, he never expected a flirtatious witch – witches generally hold Bitten, humans bitten by Demon Ridden – in the highest contempt

Nor did he expect sleeping with Mimi to have such extreme consequences

Now, with a badly misaligned spell and witch politics feuding between the High Priestess and the Seer, it falls to Silas and his band to try and cover up this disaster and restore some sense of order.



I love this series of books, the first two were excellent and introduced me to this fascinating world that has well and truly hooked me in. I love the characters and I love how the shifting points of view lets me see all of the world, each other and the story through shifting lenses that expands everything with an extra level of richness. The writing hits that perfect balance being descriptive and emotive while still keeping the plot and story moving with any info-dumping nicely integrated into the text

I loved the first book, really loved the second book – and really looked forward to this one

And was a little disappointed. Not, I hasten to add, because it was a bad book! No no, not at all, not even remotely! But because my expectations are high and this book didn’t reach the heights of the previous two.

There wasn’t a lot of plot to this book. The witches are up to something that involves the One, but I’m not sure what nor is it completed in this book to add any clarity. Both the mysterious Seer and the, apparently malicious, High Priestess can see the future, so the events they manipulate are all about some long running plan we don’t know about. The witch shenanigans go wrong and we spend most of the rest of the book containing the wrongness.

It’s not bad – but it’s a middle of a longer plot. The beginning – why they’re doing this etc – is missing as is the ending of this actually achieving, so instead the characters I’m familiar with just drop in in the middle of an Event which hooks them in without any real explanation, resolution or depth.

This jumping in the middle also makes it really hard for me to connect to Mimi, a character we’ve only seen briefly in the past. Now there’s a lot from her point of view and I can’t connect with her – I don’t understand her motives, I am not invested in her in a character sufficiently to follow her this closely and, perhaps worst of all, we’re seeing her on her worst day. It’s not that I don’t care about her – I do, I care about her facing consequences, I care about her facing comeuppance. I read from her pov and wait for her to fail out of some kind of vicious schadenfreude – I want her to fail, I think she deserves to fail I look forward to her failing and when she faces pain and difficulty, I don’t empathise with her, I rather cruelly think “this is richly deserved”. Which probably says terrible things about me.

This also extends somewhat to Jiye, Mimi’s girlfriend. Do I think Jiye has every reason to be ragingly pissed? Definitely! Mimi’s treatment of her is outrageous, Mimi is grossly disrespecting her love, their relationship, her loyalty and making Jiye and her pain a very low priority in her life; if I were Jiye I’d be ragingly furious – with Mimi. But Mark, seduced into Mimi’s bed under a false agenda, drugged and then used for magic, is another of Mimi’s victims – and Jiye’s victim – and Jiye’s rage at him is repugnant.

This meant while I absolutely loved the revelations of Silas’s past (and there was so much awesome Silas growth this book and some really excellent history of the world and world building that I just wanted to dive into it all and tell the witches to take a hike) and the difficult choices he has to make, and I loved Edie and her battle to carve out of her own life and the difficulties she has with Hatter and I even liked mark and learning more about him, I ended up wanting way way way more Callie (who was not very present) and spent way too much time glaring daggers at the book when Mimi appeared.

One element that keeps coming up in the series in general and definitely in this book is consent – especially sexual consent. Many of the demons have the ability to feed from sex – and by “ability” that means they have to. Usually when we get some kind of woo-woo that forces characters to have sex I cringe because it’s usually presented as sexy in some way: even if the protagonist resents it, it’s still all kinds of sexy and even used as a chance for personal growth (or for the character to have lots of sex while still being “pure” because they “didn’t want it.”)


This book doesn’t do that – it continues the same theme as the last book where the Bitten try to work around the sex they are forced to have, hating it, often making it as clinical as they possibly can and trying to avoid any kind of glamorisation of it. Silas tries to distance himself and de-entangle himself from the students who develop crushes on him or any emotional attachment – and is made very uncomfortable by the whole thing. Callie herself tries to distance herself emotionally and is frustrated by her sexual desire linked to feeding.


Read More

[Loren Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ensnared by Magic is book three of The One Rises series by Anna Wolfe. If you haven’t read the first two, go back and do that now. I mean it, they’re worth the read.
Now that’s over with, let’s talk about book three.
Ensnared by Magic branches out into the world of witches, which aren’t the same as the Bitten or even demons. They’re not always on the same side as the Bitten either, unless they need help. Mark, especially, is key to the witch’s plan. He’s powerful, and his heritage surprises even him.
Dyshawn’s new harem is not as easy to deal with as he’d hoped. After all, most people don’t deal well with being virtually slaves. But there’s some surprises coming his way out of them too.
Silas and Callie discover some new abilities, and they’re going to have to use them to save Mark and the witches. Callie also makes some pretty intense enemies, as her powers manifest and the bad guys find out how valuable she really is. She’s got to deal with Olivia and Phaedon and all those evil ones.

[Aaron Dubin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am enjoying this series. If a tad under paced, and the whole everyone has a secret and not talking about it, this would be be a four star all the way. This book also has more sex in it (if at all possible compared to the amount in books 1 & 2), but it really didn't take from the story, merely added to it. I enjoy getting everyones point of view on things, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed with characters. I really didn't need to get in Jiye's nor Mimi's. I think maybe only Silas' team. (Silas, Mark, Edie, and Callie) I could live with just seeing everything through their perspective.

I will definitely pick up book 4 when released, and although you can read these out of order I highly recommend not doing so.