A Power Unbound

By Freya Marske

tl;dr: A sociopath’s plans for a magical dictatorship come to fruition and our motley crew of assorted magical persons and one journalist have to not kill each other long enough to stop it. All while sparks and arguments fly between said journalist and the resident aristocrat.

Lord Jack Hawthorne never wanted to go back to the magical world, but after his (mis)adventure on the Lyric with the implacable Maude Blythe and the delightfully scandalous Violet Debanham, he’s being unwillingly dragged back, inch by inch.

Alan Ross, unmagical thief/journalist, had no intention of involving himself further with the likes of the magicians aboard the Lyric, especially not the arrogant Lord Hawthorne, no matter how much he enjoyed aggravating his lordship.

But the people after the Last Contract have other plans and both Alan and Jack find themselves in the middle of the deadly endgame of a conspiracy that could alter the foundations of British magic beyond imagining.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I’ll be honest, I did not like Jack Hawthorne and I had very little interest in reading about him, but watching him pick fights with someone who wanted to give it back as good as he got was so much fun! I enjoyed the heck out of watching Jack Hawthorne begrudgingly become part of an eccentric, fierce family.

I wanted to live in this world a little longer and understand the consequences of the ending for both the world and the characters, but otherwise, I loved the ending. This was by far the spiciest (and hottest) installment, and Marske deftly handled a romance trope I typically hate.

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