Mages Unbound: Book Review and Giveaway

Review at a Glance

• Title: Mages Unbound
• My Rating: 4
• Genre: Fantasy
• Format: Paperback*
• Publication Date: November, 2020
• Author: Laura Engelhardt

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Mages Unbound Book Blurb

It’s ironic to find out your whole life has been a lie when you’re married to a truth-teller.

If only Mary could find some humor in it. But when her little sister, Cordelia, shows up on her doorstep, she’s finally ready to sift through the fiction that’s been her reality for the past fifty years. To find out what it truly means to live in a world of magick.

Her epiphany can’t come too soon because not only do her siblings need her, Mary’s restart may be the only thing that can save the world from an utter melt-down (and not just the emotional kind).

While Mary and Cordelia grapple with faeries and the FBI in America, their brother Thomas is trapped in a high-stakes game of mage politics in Australia. Back in Boston, Amy can’t even see through the fog of magick to button up her own blouse.

Can Mary pull herself together in time to rescue her family from the coming war?

Mages Unbound is a 400-page paranormal women’s fiction novel told from the perspective of each member of the Bant family. This is Book 2 in the Fifth Mage War Series, a magical epic about sirens, fae, and family ties.

Giveaway

Mages Unbound REVIEW

As a quick reminder, here is my rating structure:

• 1 star: Did not finish
• 2 Stars: Finished but I do not recommend
• 3 Stars: Liked but could use some improvements
• 4 Stars: Loved this book!
• 5 Stars: Rare. The unput-down-able, binge read obsession.

My star ratings are also based also genre based. I compare all books with books of the same genre. While I would love to believe that my love of books in general transcends all bias, there are genres I prefer over others.

I’m human.

Example: If I read a mystery novel and think it deserves a 5-star rating, then I have compared it to other mystery books, and determined it to be one of my absolute favorites. The unputdownable mystery.

This will hopefully keep me from comparing Outlander, a personal obsession of mine, with the experience of reading The Hate You Give. Both 5 star books for me, but completely and totally different. I couldn’t even try to rate them against each other, so I don’t. Makes my life easier. 🙂

My Thoughts About Mages Unbound

So here we go with book two.

Even though a lot of people are wary of the second book in a series, I tend to really like them because we get on with world living instead of world building. Mages Unbound definitely gets the action going.

Since we’ve already discussed that this is a sequel, I want to mention that I think everyone should read book one before reading book two. Laura Engelhardt does a great job of recapping all of the salient details from Sirens Unbound, but I feel like you would be missing a lot by skipping it. There are a lot of characters and POVs, so the background becomes even more critical.

This is a sprawling, epic fantasy novel with tons of detail. It’s our world but absolutely not our world in any way that we know it. There are glimpses of familiar life, but otherwise, Laura Engelhardt seems to be building everything from the ground up.

And building is the appropriate word because that’s the sense you get throughout the book. As the 5th mage war approaches, each character starts to play their own role in the ultimate destination. What’s interesting are the sub-stories and the relationships.

Mages Unbound is the rare fantasy novel that is also great at building the characters as well as their extraordinary world. I feel like I know these characters and am emotionally invested in their lives and relationships, especially the romantic entanglements, as they are dramatic with a capital D.

The chapter intros are awesome too, because they give us snippets of information while continuing to build the universe of the story. It’s scuh a clever idea.

Recommended For…

Fantasy lovers looking for something a little different to break the mold.

About the Author

An avid sf/fantasy reader, Laura Engelhardt writes the kind of book she likes to read: fantasy with intricate worlds and complex characters facing moral dilemmas. She started writing plays in college, then moved to Germany, where she continued to write while teaching ESL to executives. After moving back to the U.S., she supported her playwriting by teaching ballroom dance and working retail. Deciding that living in her parents’ attic wasn’t for her, Laura went to law school and then spent the next seventeen years as a lawyer and compliance officer in New York City. In 2017, she quit Wall Street and began helping people resolve disputes as a mediator and arbitrator. She now lives in New Jersey with her family.

connect with author: website ~ facebook ~ goodreads

*Thanks so much to Laura Engelhardt and iReadBookTours for my copy of Mages Unbound in exchange for an honest review.