Book Review: The Darkest Magic by Morgan Rhodes

12 Sept 2016

Book Title: The Darkest Magic
Author: Morgan Rhodes
Series: Spirit and Thieves #2
Release Date: June 28th, 2016
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy Romance
In the second installment of New York Times bestselling author Morgan Rhodes's highly acclaimed Falling Kingdoms spin-off series, danger looms and the mystery deepens as two warring evils vie for possession of one elusive, powerful book.

Modern-day Toronto: Sisters Crystal and Becca Hatcher are reunited after reclaiming the Bronze Codex and narrowly escaping death. They have no one to trust but each other, and the only thing keeping them safe is the book that sent Becca's spirit to Ancient Mytica--the same book that their enemies would kill them for.

Ancient Mytica: Maddox grapples to keep his newly discovered powers under control, while the ruthless goddess Valoria hunts him down.

Modern-day Toronto: Farrell embraces his dark side as he unwittingly falls further under the spell of Markus, the mastermind leader of the nefarious Hawkspear Society, who will stop at nothing to find Crys and Becca--and the remarkable book in their possession.





If someone had to ask me to choose between loving this series or the Falling Kingdom series better, it'll be a tough pick because I think both series have great appeal on their own. In comparison, ABOSAT takes place in both a modern Toronto world and the ancient Mytica world (which fans of FK will appreciate). ABOSAT also currently sticks to 4 main POVs as opposed to FK which could span out to almost 5 to 7 POVs in a single book itself. 

The Darkest Magic picks up from where ABOSAT left, with Becca back in the modern world and narrowly escaping the evil clutches of Markus King. The book starts off rather slow with Maddox's chapter where he continues his journey in Mytica to find the other goddesses. Personally if you asked me, among all the main 4 POV's I was the least interested in Maddox's one. I was more excited on what was going on back in modern Toronto.

Thankfully, we got back there soon enough and I absolutely loved the Crystal/Farrell chapters! No doubt that Farrell is my favorite with him being an anti-hero in this series so far. I liked that we could see him embracing the dark power Markus gifted him with those ancient marks and the occasional struggles he had with them. Not to mention, the inner turmoil he keeps getting when he comes close to Crystal, struggling between saving her or killing her. 

You can definitely expect a number of surprises thrown into the storyline and an even bigger villain than Markus starts showing up which could threaten to destroy both worlds. All the exciting times seemed to take place in the Modern Toronto chapters, so you can imagined that I didn't really care too much about the Maddox/Mytica chapters. I only started liking the Mytica ones towards the end when Becca finally went back there, so thank god for that too!

Overall, The Darkest Magic does continue to build the momentum of the ABOSAT series, hopefully leading up to an epic showdown in the next instalment. I'm very excited to see how the Crystal/Farrell ship will play out in the next one because with these two, it's a 'will they, won't they' situation that is driving me absolutely nuts! Also I can't wait to see how the big bad villain will be tackled in the rest of the series, he seems like a pure diabolical one. 




Morgan Rhodes

Morgan Rhodes lives in Ontario, Canada. As a child, she always wanted to be a princess -- the kind that knows how to wield a sharp sword to help save both kingdoms and princes from fire-breathing dragons and dark wizards. Instead, she became a writer, which is just as good and much less dangerous. Along with writing, Morgan enjoys photography, travel, reality TV, and is an extremely picky, yet voracious reader of all kinds of books. Under another pen name, she’s a national bestselling author of many paranormal novels. Falling Kingdoms is her first high fantasy.


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