REVIEWED by Sarina

TITLE: The Burning Magus

SERIES: Blue Unicorn #3

AUTHOR: Don Allmon

PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing

RELEASE DATE: November 18, 2018

LENGTH: 219 pages

BLURB:
JT was a perfectly happy orc building cars in the Arizona desert until his old friend and sometimes lover Austin showed up and talked him into one last crime. Now “one last crime” has snowballed. With a new team of thieves—a supersoldier, a hacker, a driver, a graffiti artist, and a seafaring wizard—JT and Austin are determined to free an artificial intelligence from the dungeon of the Burning Magus.

For JT, this job is more than a prison break; it’s a do-over of The Job That Went Bad two years ago, the catastrophe in which JT lost his closest friend and then chose to abandon everything, even Austin. Maybe this time no one will die. Maybe this time JT can return to Arizona and bury his old life for good.

Except Austin won’t be buried. After two years alone, Austin knows he wants JT—not just as a partner in crime, but as the lover he always should have been. Maybe this time they won’t make the same mistakes, especially when it comes to each other.

REVIEW:

I have to say, I was absolutely thrilled to be getting into this book; the series thus far has been fantastic and I couldn’t wait to see if the finale lived up to the expectations I had.  The entire crew is back and recruiting a couple new members for one final job: freeing the blue unicorn.  It isn’t as simple as it sounds, however, as they need to get past a group of particularly nasty mages while keeping others from cashing in on the price on their heads.

The story went along at a decent pace with some flashbacks scattered throughout the first part of the story; I was particularly happy to see this as you FINALLY get to find out what happened with the “job that went wrong” that’s been alluded to in both of the previous books. I felt integrating this information into the story was done well and I was grateful to finally have the holes in my background knowledge filled.

Now, while I enjoyed the story, I did find myself…not quite as engaged with this one like I was with the first two books; With the planning, recruitment and general set up for the heist, things were a little on the tame side for most of the book.  (There was also unexpected tentacle sex but it wasn’t horribly graphic if that isn’t your thing.) The last 25%, however, made up for all of that! It was practically perfect in every way and I was glued to the pages.  Good guys won, bad guys got owned and I finally got my happy ending.  It was just made of win all around.

Overall I’m happy with how the series ended; things were wrapped up nicely and I was left smiling.  If you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series, this is a must read and if you haven’t read it I have to know, what are you waiting for?

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Riptide Publishing

Amazon