This was easily one of my most anticipated books of 2023. I love the Mage Errant series for lots of different reasons, primarily it’s fantastic world building and it’s surprisingly deep approach to magic. And this is the finale! In the run up to this getting released I poured through all the other books, highlighting bits there were interesting or I thought would be relevant and bothering friends and family with my theories as to what would happen.

And now that I’ve finished it I just want to say, I called it!

Well some of it. Some of my guesses were right and some of them were completely wrong. And I loved all of it.

One of my complaints about Tongue Eater was that it was mostly just build up for this. Judging by what was written in the author’s notes, originally they were both planned to be just one novel but seeing as Tongue Eater was 577 pages long and this is 816 I can see why it was split into two. But all that’s fine because this is 816 pages of almost pure payoff.

I just charged through this book, to the surprise of no one that knows me. I didn’t mean to, I honestly meant to pace myself but I got about a third of the way in and just couldn’t stop. When you read it you’ll completely understand.

And then the next day was spent rereading parts of it, enjoying my favourite moments again and again. Honestly, even writing this review is taking longer than it should because I just keep going back to it.

So what makes it so good?

Well one it’s just written very well. I’m a sucker for big dramatic moments and this is full of them. But I’m also a sucker for sweet, emotional moments and it’s got a lot of those as well. This is, as said, the last book in this series and as such a lot of lingering questions in relationships and just in general are resolved one way or another. And, though I haven’t talked about it much in my previous reviews, the relationships in this book are lovely to see. A lot of people are very understanding and supportive of each other and it is, as I said, very sweet.

The series is also good at going off on odd angles that you didn’t see coming and yet were set up books ago and man were those good to read. There’s the usual assortment of odd and fun Great Powers showing up here, in as great a variety as you’d expect. And the action between them is a lot of joyous and nonstop. The pace of this book was amazing and I just flew through it, despite the 800 odd pages.

And finally, it’s just a good ending in general. Things are revealed and concluded and it definitely felt like an ending. But it leaves the door open for more and it’s a more that I want to see.  

In summery, this book gave me everything I was desperate for. This is a great way of wrapping up the series, and has left me very confident that whatever we’re going to see next will be spectacular.