DATE WITH DEATH

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 100TH EPISODE SPECIAL

GARDEN OF EVIL

CHARMED AGAIN

SPIRIT OF THE WOLF

Piper's to the fore on the cover of THE CRIMSON SPELL, and very nice she looks too, but sadly that's one of the best things I can say about Pocket Books' latest CHARMED novel.

Ever the caring soul, Piper has decided to become a mentor to a teenage girl, and unable to say "no" she finds herself mentoring two of them.  And as you'd expect, one is friendly towards her, while the other isn't.

Meanwhile, Prue is a surprise visitor at a local Wicca shop, where she strikes up a friendship with the owner.  This does seem a little out of character, and Phoebe would probably have been a more likely suspect here.  However, she's got her karate classes to attend - which at least provides some continuity with the TV series itself.

As the back cover tells us, and as we learn from the prologue, a coven of warlocks is after our heroines, and they'll stop at nothing to seize their powers.  This might have been better had it been revealed over the course of the story inside of giving it away from the outset.  Okay, so there's a twist or two along the line, but it's hardly Earth-shattering stuff.

Although there are a couple of nice ideas in THE CRIMSON SPELL, the end result is rather disappointing, with simple two-line chants to get the sisters out of a tricky situation on more than one occasion.  Whilst CHARMED often looks to the Book of Shadows to provide a solution, this seemed to be taking the easy way out idea just a little too far.  All in all, THE CRIMSON SPELL is reasonably well written, but the simplistic nature of the whole thing disappoints. BACK TO THE TOP

Written by
F. GOLDSBOROUGH

POCKET BOOKS

£4.99

RATING: 4/10