Magic University is a series of erotic/fantasy books about, well, a magic university. It's about a young man named Kyle Wadsworth as he arrives at Veritas, a magic campus hidden inside the University of Harvard, and only visible to those with The Sight. Completely unaware of the magical culture, Kyle must learn the ways of magic, as well as dealing with typical college problems.
Written by Cecilia Tan, and admittedly taken inspiration from Harry Potter, the series main focus is the The Power of Love manifested by the ways of passion and sex. The main conflict of the series comes from The Prophecy of the Burning Days, a mysterious event in which magical life suffers a huge cataclysm. Extremely NSFW.
The series contains three main books:
- The Siren and the Sword, first published in July, 2009 as an e-book and October 2014 as hard copy.
- The Tower and the Tears, published in February 2010 as e-book and January 2015 as hard copy.
- The Incubus and the Angel, published both as hard copy in April 2015.
- The Poet and The Prophecy, published as e-book in September 2011 and as hard copy in September 2015.
It also includes the book Spellbinding: Tales from the Magic University, a collection of short stories featuring characters from the books, published first as an e-book in June 2011 and hard copy in July 2015. Christmas Magic, a novella, was also published in December 2016 as an e-book.
Tropes
- All-Loving Hero: Kyle is pretty much this, with focus on the all loving part.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Played with. While this is certainly true from Frost's end, Kyle actually misses both parts of it at first. In the beginning, he is completely oblivious to Frost's attraction to him, and never really reciprocates the belligerent part of the trope.
- Bittersweet Ending: Most of the magical world is safe, but some magic users lose their magic, and a smaller number lose their minds. (Not that this affects any of the main characters.)
- Blood Magic: Dean Bell is a blood mage, a practice that allows him to survive without food and very little rest with only a few drops of blood a month.
- Brought Down to Normal: As the magical crises worsens, many magic users lose their Sight and magical capacity. This includes Dean Bell, and causes him great anguish over being incapable of properly exercising his duty to protect Veritas.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Well, not exactly a comic book casting, but the depiction of Frost in the last book's cover has a staggering resemblance to a certain someone.
- Compelling Voice: Kyle can make sirens do whatever he orders while touching them after he creates an amulet with power over all mantic creatures.
- Energy Absorption: The siren, Michael Candlin, feeds on their partners' energy while having sex with them.
- Extreme Omnisexual: The Esoterics have this as their job qualification, as it requires them to be able to have sex with everyone for ritualistic proposes. It eventually gets deconstructed by the relationship between Dean Bell and Master Brandish: while he is capable of having sex with women for professional reasons, he isn't actually attracted to them, and after Brandish transitions to female, they can't keep their relationship going. After this Bell becomes so traumatized that he quits Esoterics and becomes a Blood Mage, which means that he is essentially celibate.
- Geas: This form of magic is used to maintain the secrecy of the magic world and punish rogue magic users.
- Gender Bender: People can change sex with magic here. Brandish was female, male, then female again. Alex is not sure whether she'd been (physically) female originally or not. It turns out she's a trans woman, transitioning this way physically.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Alex and Kyle. Well, not that heterosexual, if the events of Spellbinding are taken in account, especially considering that effectively Everyone Is Bi where they live. Alex even admits that Kyle is pretty much the most important person in his life, even if the feeling is not mutual.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: A person who violates the secrecy of the magic world can be made to forget it through a Geas. This also extends to other people forgetting about them.
- The Magic Goes Away: The main conflict of the books comes from the main characters efforts to avoid this. In the end, it's revealed that this has happened many times during the history of magic, is responsible for the extinction of many magical species (like the Sphinx) and that its occurrence is tied with the Geas.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
- The prologue which begins the series has a male student having sex with his girlfriend (or so he thinks) in the library.
- Kyle and Jess later have sex in a bathroom.
- Masquerade: The magic world is kept hidden from the mandane world, and is enforced with a Geas.
- Mindlink Mates: This can happen between magic users, particularly Esoterics, in some circumstances.
- Nature Adores a Virgin: In Esoteric Arts, a person's first time having sex gives their ritual an extra boost of magic power, so many students who are thinking of majoring in Esoteric Arts don't have intercourse (for hetrosexual a couple) or anal sex (for gay male couples) until they want to use it for a ritual. (It's unclear what gay women can and can't do sexwise while still remaining virgins.)
- Oh, My Gods!: Magical students sometimes use "Circe's tit!" as an expletive, Circe being a powerful sorceress they seem to revere (the one whom Odysseus and his crew encountered in The Odyssey).
- Our Sirens Are Different: Here, they can be male along with female, they're all bisexual and appear just like humans. They also have many more abilities than just alluring people, such as foretelling the future, projecting visions, mind reading and most plot-relevant, feeding on human sexual energy.
- The Power of Love: A major theme in the series is Sex Magic.
- R-Rated Opening: The very first book, The Siren and the Sword, opens with a male student having what he thinks is a very graphic erotic dream. In it, he's having sex with his girlfriend.
- Sex Magic: This is a whole major at Veritas University, called Esoteric Arts. At the end of the first book Kyle and Jess have (vaginal) sex, which fuels the spell which awaken Frost from a coma.
- Technical Virgin: Magical students planning to major in the Esoteric Arts often don't have intercourse (if they are hetrosexual) or anal sex (if they are gay gays) as being a virgin when they first do ritual sex magic has magical potency. However, other sex acts don't count apparently. Jess is thinking of going into Esoteric Arts, so the first book contains lots of sex scenes where the characters don't count their actions as having sex.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Surprisingly enough, considering the main point of the series, the main character is criticized for this, since he basically rewrites The Prophecy of The Prophecized Pair in the belief and hope that it was about him being destined to find true love. It wasn't. In the end of the book, while he and Frost are deeply in love, he himself admits that he knows very little about him and that he honestly just loves the idea of being in love.
- Truth Serum: A Geas can force people to tell the truth. So can the amulet which Kyle makes with regards to all mantic creatures. Near the end of the first book he uses it to get a confession from a siren.
- Vampiric Draining: Sirens feed on human sexual energy, and if done too much this can put the people they feed on into comas. This happens to Nichols and later Frost in the first book at the hands of Michael.
- Virgin Power: A lot of magical students stay virgins before performing their first magical ritual since this can give certain spells potency (however, it only applies to intercourse for some reason-everything else is still fine).
- Wizarding School: Veritas is the titular secret magic university, hidden inside of Harvard. Aside from teaching magic, it's very similar to a normal American university.