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Dime Store Magic

by Kelley Armstrong

This lazily paced yet entertaining novel offers readers a detailed view of the shadowy world of covens and cabals. The book is a departure from Kelley Armstrong’s first two novels, which chronicled the adventures of the world’s only “living female werewolf.” In Dime Store Magic, Armstrong debuts a new character, Paige, who would be right at home on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer set or cooking up spells with the cast of Charmed.

Paige is a 23-year-old computer graphics designer and the high priestess of a coven filled with frumpy witches who can’t stand sorcerers, a revulsion that stems from ancestral memories of witches being sacrificed at the stakes. She is also the foster parent of Savannah, a child destined to become the most powerful witch in the world, a fact known to her father, Naste, the leader of an international cabal of sorcerers.

Armstrong’s take on witchcraft covers the Salem witch trials, the war between sorcerers and witches, spells gone wrong, teen witches with attitude problems, and basic demonology. The novel ultimately functions as a metaphor for the idea that all women are victims of male oppression, here given the form of a man-versus-woman war between warlocks and witches. A kind of 1970s sisterhood becomes the only option for the beleaguered witches.

Despite these well-worn themes and sometimes trite characters, Armstrong manages to forge an intimate relationship between the reader and Paige, who comes across as a likeable, contemporary gal. It might be most correct to describe Dime Store Magic as chick lit masquerading as a novel of supernatural fiction.

 

Reviewer: Donna Lypchuk

Publisher: Random House Canada

DETAILS

Price: $24.95

Page Count: 350 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 0-769-31295-1

Released: Feb.

Issue Date: 2004-2

Categories: Fiction: Novels