I did review this book back in March, but I was very busy during the middle of the semester and feel like my review was a lot more rushed than I wanted it to be. Now that I have plenty of time between summer+quarantine, I want to take the time to re-review this book before I write my review of the second book in this series!
Magic Unleashed transports you to a new world full of vampires, shapeshifters, werewolves, succubi, and Venators. My favorite character for this novel was Rune, a strong college-age girl who spends most of her time trying to keep her twin brother Ryker out of trouble for her parents. She was tired of her normal life, but she wasn’t ready to be transported to this new world. Her first thought when she was there was worrying about whether or not her brother was safe on the other side. I was excited to see how she would grow into her powers, as she was brand new to everything in this new world.
Grey was Rune’s friend, but his relationship with Ryker was very different. Ryker seemed to hate his guts, and no matter how Rune tried to draw the two together, Ryker refused to be cordial to him. Grey wasn’t sure why Ryker hated him, but he tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. I wish that the reason why Ryker hated Grey had been explained more in this book, but I hope it is expanded on in future installments of the series. Now Rune and Grey are both away from Ryker in this new world, but they have new dangers to worry about. Grey knew about these dangers from an event that occurred many years ago, but he still couldn’t have imagined what the future would bring.
My favorite part about Grey’s storyline was how he knew about the world from years prior. Most characters who have some sort of traumatic event happen to them at a young or preteen age tend to convince themselves that they were dreaming/hallucinating. Grey knew that something had really happened to him, even if he didn’t understand everything about the event, and decided to prepare himself. He did not know when this world would try to hurt him again, and he wanted to be prepared. He trained physically daily in order to be strong enough to fight back next time. Even if he didn’t understand/know his powers he knew that he would stand a chance against these unknown creatures if he was strong enough.
The side characters in this book are pretty amazing. I don’t want to go into too much detail about them because of spoilers, but I enjoyed every scene with them. The only thing that I disliked about the book was that I felt that the ending scenes were a bit weak. I was looking forward to an action-packed ending/action-packed fight scenes, but they felt weak to me as I was reading it.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new YA fantasy novel.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books
This sounds like a great option for teens! I’ll keep it in mind for recomendations!
I reviewed the second book as well, I can’t wait to see what the final book brings.