"Three Mages And A Margarita" is a light-hearted story with a sassy main character falling into a dangerous situation she doesn't understand and can't extract herself from but surviving because..., well, actually that's not entirely clear.
She stumbles into a barkeeping job in the hidden headquarters of secret warriors with supernatural powers - yeah, you can see how that could happen to anyone - and then manages to move from sassy innocence to misguided fits of temper, which are apparently explained by her red hair rather than any lack of control on her part. that she doesn't have the muscle to back up. Although she earns the enmity of women far more powerful and ruthless than she is, she wins through because the three most powerful guys in this little world adopt her as a sort of mascot.
It's a fun set-up. At the start, I thought of it as a brandy snap of a book: light, sweet, with slightly brittle humour that I could only eat one chapter at a time.
Unfortunately, after the initial set up, the pace slowed and the plot slid, ever so slowly, towards a predictable reverse harem where our hapless but relentlessly sassy heroine, who describes herself as a fire-cracker redhead, keeps having all-three-of-these-hot-men-make-my-stomach-flip-but-as-a-fiercely-independent-woman-why-should-I-have-to-choose? moments. As the clichés piled on, what was meant to be Unresolved Sexual Tension seemed to me to become Unnecessary Sexual Tedium that made me sight and look for the fast forward button.
I persevered to the 40% mark, waiting for something interesting to happen, then I set it aside.
I'm sure there will be lots of people who enjoy "Three Mages And A Margarita" but I'm so far off the target demographic that I feel like I'm the only vegetarian at a hog roast.
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