Bound by Benedict Jacka

Mage Alex Verus is caught between a rock and a hard place in the eighth urban fantasy novel from the national bestselling author of Burned. Right now I wasn’t seeing Richard as the teacher out of my nightmares; he was just another Dark mage, and I looked into the future to see what would happen if I turned that knife on him instead… Alex Verus is still haunted by his time apprenticed to Richard Drakh. He’s been free of him for many years, but now the only way to keep his friends from being harmed is to again work for Richard and his deadly ally. Even worse, Alex is forced to bring the life mage Anne into this servitude as well. After weeks of being hunted and finally cornered into what he thought was his last stand, Alex never imagined his life would be spared—and never anticipated at what price. This time, the diviner can see no way out…

Bound
Benedict Jacka

CAWPILE SCORE
C-9
A-8
W-8
P-9
I-9
L-9
E-10
TOTAL-8.86/10

Wow, what an start, middle and ending. Lots I didn't predict and lots I did. For having read this I remembered very little. I was clearly wrong when talking about the last book thinking more time had gone on than actually had. Great changeup to the writing style. Loved where the story went. Good foreshadowing.
CAWPILECharactersAlex and Anne, Just tell her how you feel Alex!!I feel like it's a small backtrack for vari's character that he is obsessed again, with just attacking. But he had good Alex-Anne adviceRichard—Jinn whats the goal mysterious as everLuna-Backslid because of a loss of direction. And depression loss of selfworth.Rachel-thought we were making some good progress til the end and maybe we are.Atmosphere/SettingGetting the Shadow dimension is a nice thing. Alex spending more time in the council.WritingInteresting writing, breaking it out into months. Good technique. Lots of foreshadowing that its Anne not Alex. PlotAlex has to work as Morden's aide, and perform odd jobs with “Archon”. Tasked with getting a dreamstone, gets 2 . can't train with it. Morden's council attack sneak attack on Vault. Anne bonds a Jinn InvestmentLogicThe tricks that they pull. Morden attacking the council. Deleo and her let Alex dieTemporary loss of magic from Richard at lightbringer and at Verus.????!!!EnjoymentLoved every minute of it.Misc“Lightbringer and Zilean” talking about why nobody trusts the council. How many are truly loyalAnne's TortureRichard has Untyped?? Black magic. Some dark mages aren't as bad cinder, chaliceLuna restarting Arcana EmporiumALEX is ACTING JUNIOR COUNCIL MEMBERAlex's temptation to go full dark. History of Genie's in the lampThe snark. I love it. What am I supposed to do while I'm experiencing this honor.Zilean – it wasn't personal. Its always personal to someone
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 08/07/22

The focus this time around is more on the politics of the Council, with Verus taking part in a series of missions that he doesn't really know the reasons for. Fortunately, the world-building is as excellent as usual, and the story moves on at quite a fast pace. In a sense, we're just moving from one part of the story to the next here, but it's written well enough, and there are enough interesting scenes along the way that it works rather better than one might expect. And we end, once again, on a cliffhanger.

A great entry in the series; the characters, story lines, and the universe as a whole continues to grow, with more and more layers enriching the experience, and the action ratcheting upward as well. Moving on immediately to the next one!