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: Kyle and Frost end up together and are very happy, and most of the magical world is safe, but many magic users lost their magic, and some their minds, and Kyle realizes that he is not actually a part of the Prophesied Pair, and that while he and Frost are deeply in love, they are not necessarily destined to be Happily Ever After and that just the fact the fact that they're infatuated right then does not mean that they're good for each other in the long run, especially with Kyle himself admitting that he loves the idea of being in love almost as much as he loves his actual partners.
- 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: Once the magical crises starts getting worse, many magic users lost their Sight and magical capacity, including Dean Bell, which causes great anguish to him to being incapable to properly exercise 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 so whatever he orders while touching them after he creates an amulet with power over all mantic creatures.
- Energy Absorption: The siren, AKA Michael Candlin, feeds on its partners' energy while having sex with them, as poor Frost realized.
- 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, and he becomes so traumatized that he quits Esoterics and becomes a Blood Mage, who are 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, along with other people forgetting them sometimes.
- 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, being responsible for the extinction of many magical species, like the Sphinx, and that its occurrence is tied with the Geas, the spells utilized by magic users to maintain the secrecy of their world.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
- The prologue which begins the series has a male student having sex with his girlfriend (he thinks) in the library.
- Kyle and Jess later have sex in the bathroom.
- Masquerade: The magic world's kept hidden from outsides, something enforced with a Geas.
- Mindlink Mates: This can happen between magic users, particularly Esoterics, in some circumstances.
- 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: The main point of the history.
- 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 course at Veritas University, called Esoteric Arts. Kyle and Jess have (vaginal) sex at the end of the first book, fueling the spell which restores Frost from his coma, which itself was caused by his siren boyfriend Michael taking too much of his sexual energy.
- Technical Virgin: Magical students often don't engage in intercourse, as being a virgin has magical potency. However, other sex acts don't "count" apparently and so they can do those.
- 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. He makes Michael confess how he'd fed on Frost which put him in a coma this way at the end of the first book.
- Vampiric Draining: Sirens feed on human sexual energy, and if done too much this can put them into comas. This happens to Nichols and later Frost in the first book at the hands of Michael, though he didn't mean to.
- Virgin Power: A lot of magical students stay virgins since this can give certain spells potency (however, it only applies to intercourse-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.
