The Wizard of Seattle by Kay Hooper

I read this book for the Summer Challenge in 2009 for #4 Read a Title published before 2000 but am now just getting to posting my review. When I picked this book up I honestly didn't know what to expect. I knew I needed an older book and this was the first book I came across. I was very surprised by how much I liked this book.

Serena finds Richard when she is 16 and asks him to teach her how to use her budding powers as a Wizard. Richard does so and through the next decade or so she stays with him as a pupil only. Through the years Richard keeps a respectful distance from Serena even into adulthood.

As an adult she tends to be a little spontaneous when it comes to her magic and not disciplined as Richard has taught her. When her actions intrigue a news reporter things start to get hairy. What Serena doesn't know is that the Wizard Council is made up of men and only men. Women are prohibited from becoming Wizards and are stripped of all powers when they start to develope.

Since Richard is breaking all the rules to train Serena his life is also at risk so he decides that the only thing to do is to travel through time to go back to the very beginning. To the start of why women were banned from magic and why the men were so afraid of a woman with power.
So that is what Richard and Serena do. They create a magic time traveling spell and off to Atlantis they go. Oh, and they fall in love along the way.

I loved this book. Although it was written well over a decade ago it didn't feel completely dated to me. I tend to not care much for time travel books either but this one was very thought out. It doesn't rely on someone falling into a time traveling rabbit hole or an object when touched sending the subject back in time which to tell the truth never really made a lot of sense to me. This book often had the characters reminding each other that they were there to change one part of the history of Wizardry and nothing else as to not create issues with ancestors and such.

I loved the "history" of Atlantis that Hooper created. Richard and Serena were one the island around the time it was being destroyed.

As far as the romance goes I think it was pretty average. I didn't think that this part of the book was what stood out to me but I was ok with that. I tend to not really read a Kay Hooper book for the romance anyway. I love her paranormal woo-woo stuff and this is a book that you should check out, especially if you like to read books with magic in them.

A little warning though. The book opens with a rape scene. Some might find this type of situation not their cuppa.