The Master Magician

Holmberg dropped the ball on the perfect opportunity to create a strong, independent female protagonist. Though Ceony is courageous and strong-willed, her only motivation for these traits is to save her family and her lover—the “acceptable” motivations for female protagonists handed down to us by the Patriarchy. At the end of the novel, where there is a glimpse of redemption for Ceony as a character, her aspirations to join Criminal Affair are deemed incompatible (by another woman no less) with the social expectation that she be a mother and housewife. Moreover, the romance between Ceony and Emery is based largely on her cooking and cleaning for him—need I say more?

A bit sad that the finale of this great trilogy turns out to be the weakest. The book feels terribly rushed, with Ceony's magician test and the hunt for Saraj rolled up into one. I'm actually not too fond of the latter since Ceony is being unreasonably brash regarding this, and the decisions she made are just... They don't feel like things an intelligent quick thinker like Ceony would do.

There's also the thing with Zina which doesn't feel necessary. It would've been nice if Ceony's family had more involvement prior to this, but since they only had minor role in the previous book, the issue just feels contrived and random. It doesn't have depth, and this is also something I've been complaining about regarding the antagonists.

That aside, I actually did love the way Ceony and Emery fought Saraj together. They kick ass, and I'm glad to see them finally getting a happy ending as well. It would've been nice if we can see Ceony and Emery's life past that point, but that's probably for us readers to imagine.