A Power Unbound

A Power Unbound (2023) Freya Marske (The Last Binding)

Set in England in 1909

The final book in the Last Binding Trilogy centers on Alston, Lord Hawthorn who has been arrogant and supercilious throughout the series, but here becomes Jack, and Alan, Alanzo Rossi, who met Alston, Maud, and Violet on the ship from America back to England.

Now Jack needs to keep his cousin and Edwin’s brother from stealing the Contract–and the magic of all the magicians of England.

“Crisis,” said Jack, “is an excellent justification for the seizure of power.”

Alan Ross was unbusheled aboard the Lyric, and found himself curious about magic–and what crazy aristocrats were willing to do to protect it.

But the only thing Alanzo holds precious and worth saving is his family.

Alan Ross was a sharp, careful Londoner with an employable accent, who just happened to turn a nice burnished colour in the sun. Alanzo Rossi now existed only under this roof, with these people.

So yes: Alanzo Rossi slipped into Italian when he could, if only to savour the feel of it in his mouth.

The book opens with the events that caused Jack to lose his magic–and his twin–and turned him into the careless arrogant man we met in the first book. Starting with that lets you see him as Jack, rather than Alston, and as a far more sympathetic man than in the previous books.

The past had a heavy fist around his heart. What he was waiting for was for it to physically hurt.

The year of limbo between the loss of Jack’s magic and the loss of his twin had been like walking with a large, sharp pebble embedded between sock and shoe, and afterwards—even worse.

It’s also, of course, the romance between Jack and Alan.

Alan’s fine-tuned nerves told him that there was no real threat in this conversation. They were tossing a grenade back and forth, each of them pretending that it was primed to explode, but it wasn’t.

As with the previous books, the writing and language is delightful.

He watched the invitation being weighed as Alan Ross weighed all gifts: as if suspecting them of being hollow and containing Greeks.

And there were the bits that were a punch.

There’s only so much fight in a person. If it never lets up, if they can never rest—it gets squeezed out of them, forever.

I will need to read this again, later. But I am very content with how the story went and ended.

Publisher: Tordotcom

Rating: 8.5/10

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