booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

Sky’s mother, Rosalind, has ME and he’s her caregiver. She's a single parent because Sky's father is a popular musician whom she met at one of his concerts and they were only together one time. This is relevant because it means Sky hasn't had his father, but has been able to know what he's up to in public through magazines and gossip. 

I like Sky and Sulien as characters and I generally like the Talien half of this book’s plot. However, I have two big problems with this book: how Sky is treated in the narrative generally; and how he and the other few Black characters are handled. 

Sky's problems are that his mother is sick and his father is absent, having never been a part of his life, except for an early gift of money. His mother's illness is chronic and not well understood, and it suddenly starts getting better once he begins travelling to Talia. Even Brother Sulien doesn't try to claim that his visits and her sudden recovery are linked when Sky asks him about a connection. Sky is in Talia to help with what ends up being a disaster so tremendous that eight Stravagante aren't able to avert it. Even in the dramatic moment of rescuing much-needed medicines from a flooded building, the actual heroics are done by Sandro, a street kid he befriended. In CITY OF MASKS, Luciano saved the Duchessa's life. In CITY OF STARS, Georgia was the jockey who rode to victory for the Ram. In CITY OF FLOWERS, Sky is nearby helping, being one more person with a body who can help in a local disaster. In some ways, it feels like Nicholas, Georgia, and Luciano have bigger roles even though it's supposed to be Sky's book.

The way Sky is sidelined in his own book starts to feel even worse when placed in context with how his blackness is treated. In the first two books, the characters received general physical descriptions consistent with whiteness but no one was explicitly identified as white (as far as I can recall). Since most of the narrative in each book takes place in an alternate version of 16th century Italy, the concept of "whiteness" doesn't map neatly and is highly anachronistic for the Talian characters, but generally applicable to the 21st century English ones. Regardless of their actual ethnicities, I'm inferring that they are not Black because of how some brand new characters in CITY OF FLOWERS are handled. Brother Sulien is the first Black character in the series, appearing in the prologue as the Stravagante who supplies Sky's talisman. Sky is Black, with a white mother and an (absent) Black father whose stage name is Rainbow Warrior (real name Colin). That wouldn't have to be racist characterization, except that Sky's father is not only absent, but by the time Sky is seventeen his father is on his fourth marriage, had some unspecified number of girlfriends, and has at least eight kids (that he knows of) with various women, in addition to his more secret son Sky. He gave money to Rosalind when Sky was first born, and she sends him a photo of Sky every year, but he doesn't try to have any additional contact until after Sky begins visiting Talia. The idea of a deadbeat dad with many children and a line of exes feeds into a long history of racist stereotypes about Black men. Rainbow is also portrayed as hypersexual (another racist stereotype) when, in the final chapter, he's present while Nicholas, Georgia, and Sky come out of the same bedroom having secretly spent the night Stravagating. He makes a serious of strange and not very funny comments insinuating that they were having sex, including but not limited to congratulating Sky on having a threesome (a thing which did not happen). The other characters are very uncomfortable and largely ignore him, which means his main contribution to the scene is to make an ass of himself. Sulien is treated a bit better, but because he's the only Black friar at his church and he's the one who introduces Sky to Talia, Sandro and a few other characters suspect that Sky is Sulien's secret son. Somehow, the idea that Sulien the friar secretly has a son makes more sense to several characters than the truth that the two Black people aren't related even though they are spending time together. Towards the end of the book Sky and his father visit his grandmother briefly, meaning that of four Black characters in the book, three of them are related. Sky also doesn't feel connected to this new grandmother. It feels like Sky is buried under a pile of stereotypes and diminished in his own book.

As a sequel, this wraps up several things left hanging from previous books. Luciano and Arianna's relationship progresses, Georgia comes to terms with that reality, and Nicholas starts to move on with his new life. The new storyline involving Sky's background isn't well developed, and the main Talian storyline involving the di Chimici weddings was set up at the end of CITY OF STARS. This wraps up so many hanging plot threads that I used to think this was the conclusion of a trilogy, but the di Chimici's have more plans and there are more cities for the Stravagante to protect from their creeping influence. Sky is a new narrator and his voice is different from Luciano and Georgia, but it doesn't feel particularly distinctive. It likely wouldn't make sense to start with this book because it heavily relies on a lot of things set up in the first two books. This is mitigated slightly by how new everything is to Sky.

This book is important to the series, but I'm unhappy with how it treats Sky and I don't recommend it unless you're planning to read the rest of the series afterwards. 

The plot is very slow, with a lot of time spent on the characters having the same worries over and over. I wanted a story about dragons, and instead it's a contemporary-ish teenage romance where some of the characters happen to be dragons but are generally human-shaped. The love triangle involves a teenage dragon (female), a teenage human (male), and a young adult dragon (male). I wasn't sure how big the of a deal the dragon-to-dragon age gap was, but once I got to a section from his perspective I found out he thinks of the teenage dragon as a hatchling, which makes his interest in her much creepier. If I'd been more interested in the plot this might not matter (that's not automatically a DNF reason for me), but this was one thing too many when I was already not engaged in the story.

MAGIC BINDS revolves around Kate's attempts to avert two terrible prophesied outcomes based on her marriage (or not) to Curran. Based on the guidance of the Witch Oracle, she tries to do the right thing in a series of seemingly unconnected moments which shape her trajectory on the way to the wedding and/or war with her father. She's trying hard not to be a monster. Sometimes she's trying to remember why that matters at all.

There's a little bit of new worldbuilding, mostly related to the history of Kate's family, but this is a book which pulls together things from the rest of the series so far. It's not trying to build more of the world, it's trying to show how Kate and her allies are determined to defend Atlanta.

I love the details about Kate being interrupted with details of wedding planning in the middle of everything. It shows an enormous amount of trust that everyone even can think about this huge party that will mostly likely happen after the battle where they could all die. They believe that they'll survive, even if that's not outright stated as Roman makes Kate answer about yet another wedding detail she hasn't even begun to ponder.  

Kate comes so close to crossing a line she promised Curran she wouldn't cross, and it happens early enough that she has time to sit with that moment and process it. She doesn't want to be her father, she doesn't want to be Sharrim. But it'll be hard to save the city without understand him and her role better before the battles to come.

MAGIC BINDS addresses several things which had been somehow unresolved by previous books, such as Julie’s conversations with Roland, Andrea’s pregnancy, Ghastek, Christopher’s mental health issues, etc. The new storyline for this book involves a prophecy which threatens dire consequences whether or not Kate marries Curran, and her actions have the chance to shape which terrible thing happens. She hopes to avert them both. It both introduces and resolves Saiman’s kidnapping, using that as part of the main plot. The technically-not-a-cliffhanger ending leaves one very specific thing to be resolved by the final book, and the final few events leave some others which will need some more concrete resolution later. 

Kate is still the narrator, but the growing influence of her inherited powers means she's starting to sound like someone else sometimes. The differences in narration are sometimes made obvious though things like typesetting, but even without that there's a distinct way that Kate-as-Sharrim speaks when she's in danger of losing herself. It wouldn't make sense for someone to start here. The last good entry point to the series was book seven, where there's a detailed synopsis of the series so far. MAGIC BINDS is the penultimate book in the series, the one where big favors are called in, allies are brought to their side, and old rivals are bound to new service. It feels big, climactic, and very cool for someone who has read the main series so far, even more so for anyone who managed to read the various short stories and associated novels which accompany it. For anyone who tries to read this book without that background, there are too many characters and too few explanations of their importance, combined with not enough explanation of even more characters. This is perfectly fine for the penultimate book in a long series, but it does mean it's a poor starting point for someone determined to ill-use it so. 

I love this one, it wraps up enough things to let the actual finale maybe have a cleaner ending, but doesn't feel like it's putting things away early. I'm excited for the final book!

All four stories in HEXED are part of ongoing series and contribute to those stories to various degrees. 

“Magic Dreams” takes place before the fifth Kate Daniels book and stars Dali and Jim at the start of their romantic relationship. It establishes enough of the setting to make sense to someone who hasn’t read the main series, as well as clearly indicating what’s happening elsewhere at the time. From having read the main series I have a sense of just how much information was left out, but it would have been confusing extra stuff even though it’s true about the world. I appreciate how succinctly just the important parts were told. I particularly enjoyed Dali’s insight into Kate’s troubles with technology. Highly Recommend.

“Ice Shards” is part of an ongoing series and has a lot of backstory to convey in order to set up this particular story. Unfortunately it makes it feel like a string of nested infodumps and a blur of names. Much of it is flashbacks for things which happened earlier in the main character’s life. This seems like a story which has very little action and a bunch of lore for fans of the main series, but holds little attraction for me. I also dislike the way infertility is wielded as a punishment, with restored fertility as a reward. Not recommended.

“Double Hexed” is set before the third book in the Stormwalker series, and it does a good job of giving enough background to make sense without being overwhelming. The fact that early on the characters become trapped in a building helps to keep the cast small and avoid being just a parade of names. Recommend.

“Blood Debt” is part of the Anna Strong series and takes place after book six, CHOSEN. The plot makes sense even though I haven’t read anything else in the series, and gave me enough of a sense of the main characters to let me decide whether I’d want to read the rest of the books. Recommend.