Jinx's Fire

December 15, 2014
Multiple threats to his beloved Urwald send tree whisperer Jinx down magical Paths of Ice and Fire in this populous closer.Readers who haven't followed Jinx from his eponymous beginning (2013) will likely stumble along behind in confusion as he makes his way through crowds of new and previously introduced (and uniformly contentious) wizards, witches, werewolves, trolls, elves and human refugees from two worlds in a desperate effort to save his (equally contentious) trees from three invading armies and the evil wizard Bonemaster. Ominously, not-so-cryptic prophecies indicate that he will succeed only by overcoming his stubborn reluctance to kill and embracing the Bonemaster's icy "deathforce"-a moral test he's been avoiding. The pseudonymous author saddles Jinx with other challenges too, from a really close friend bearing a curse that forces her to answer any question with the truth to an almost satirically archetypal journey up a glass mountain and then down through Eldritch Depths to the Nadir of All Things. Many references to the mixed hazards and benefits of choosing paths, keeping to them and leaving them add further thematic underpinnings. A solid conclusion to a trilogy that, though overcrowded and about a half volume too long, is nonetheless threaded with proper amounts of heroism, humor and ingenious twists of character. (map, not seen) (Fantasy. 10-12)

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March 1, 2015
Jinx, sometime apprentice to Simon the wizard (Jinx, rev. 5/13; Jinx's Magic, rev. 1/14), is facing two seemingly insurmountable problems. One, his former friend Reven, deposed king of Keyland, is teaming up with King Rufus the Ruthless of Bragwood against the Keyland usurper. They're burning trees and killing folks in Jinx's forest home, the Urwald, as they stage assaults there. Two, the Bonemaster, a rival magician steeped in death magic, is holding Simon captive and using him to suck the magic out of Jinx -- and out of the Urwald as well -- preventing Jinx from fighting back on either front. Blackwood keeps an astonishing number of balls in the air for this third book, exploiting facets of her versatile magical world (erudite-but-ravenous werewolves; the Paths of Fire and Ice) by means of multiple alliances, complex plans of attack, and sticky wizardly puzzles to solve. It's the puzzles within Jinx himself, however, that give the tale its heart. How can he get others to work with him if they see him as arrogant? If it's bad to use his magic to kill, is it worse to fail to use it and see his friends killed instead? The author's multifaceted invention and sprawling, brawling, well-delineated cast combine forces for a tight, cohesive conclusion. anita l. burkam

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