Forged by Benedict Jacka

Alex Verus faces his dark side in this return to the bestselling urban fantasy series about a London-based mage. To protect his friends, Mage Alex Verus has had to change--and embrace his dark side. But the life mage Anne has changed too, and made a bond with a dangerous power. She's going after everyone she's got a grudge against--and it's a long list. In the meantime, Alex has to deal with his arch-enemy, Levistus. The Council's death squads are hunting Alex as well as Anne, and the only way for Alex to stop them is to end his long war with Levistus and the Council, by whatever means necessary. It will take everything Alex has to stay a step ahead of the Council and stop Anne from letting the world burn.

With every turn of a page, it feels like Alex has fewer friends and fewer options. Can't wait to learn what happens next.

The series kinda jumped the shark a few books back, but it's still a good story.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-8
A-7
W-8
P-7
I-8
L-9
E-10
TOTAL-8.14/10

CAWPILECharactersMorden and his character retiring. Is Alex going to far? Kills levistus.. Landis showing his support going too far. Finally an alliance with the council. Anne taking prisoners finally realizing her mistakes. Book12 is taking Anne down. Who will surviveRachel Dead. No redemption. Wasn't expected on my endTeam up with Richard at the end?CALDERA you messed up SONDER as wellAnne likes you because your stronger than herAtmosphereWritingPlotAlex needs to take care of the Council and tries to rescue Anne InvestmentLogicMade sense how Levistus kept going up with failed opsEnjoymentMiscMorden RetirementThe Synthetic IntelligenceAnne trying to recruit 4 jinn Wants ETERNAL WARThe BLINK an infinite amount of time between regular body and new body“trapping” Talised in Shadow realmKilling Symmaris—too far?
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 08/28/2022

The penultimate book in the series wraps up a number of plotlines and does so with a focus that's heavy on action. There are quite a few violent scenes as he faces down one of his main enemies, and the body count is particularly high. As indicated in the last book, Verus is making more of a move towards the dark side and that's reflected in much of what happens here as he really takes the battle to the Light Council.

The violent scenes at the end of the previous book, however, came too close to the conclusion to give any real indication of how Verus was responding. Fortunately, we do get some reflection on that here, and it's good to see that he isn't becoming quite so heartless as it was beginning to look. (Although ruthless, certainly). Having said, this is mainly a series of action sequences as the tension mounts up, and it wouldn't work on its own, heavily relying on the plot that's built up to this point. Notably, it ends on another semi-cliffhanger to take us into the final volume. But, with a lot of the dangling threads tied up in this book, it's clearer what the focus of that will have to be.