Burning Magic, a great end to Shadow Magic that leaves you wanting more.

I have never read a Harry Potter book and I feel as though I’m in front of a support group when I say that. To further spread the butter of the heretics, I’ve only seen one Harry Potter film and that was the one that had the large snake in the climatic final showdown. We have most of the Harry Potter books in the home library, courtesy of my wife, as well as, those from Rick Riordan. I have to mention all of this before commenting on the third and final novel in the Shadow Magic series, Burning Magic from Joshua Khan. As with the aforementioned book series, Shadow Magic has a large and passionate fan base. They’ll also be rewarded with Burning Magic, a book that’s detail rich, action packed and has character development-with plenty of twists that will leave them clinging to the end of each chapter.

One fact that will make Burning Magic stand out to readers is the length of each chapter. Most chapters are shorter than what you’d expect, around 6-8 pages. The vocabulary is on level with fourth grade readers, with some high third grade readers being able to make their way through the book.

As this was our entry point into the series I was impressed at how effective author Joshua Khan painted a sense of age appropriate dread. This is the form of atmospheric fog that can take many forms in kidlit. It’s the unspoken depth of villainy that heroes have to overcome in order to achieve their goals.

It can also be the pacing at which the heroes have to eventually confront said evil. If they confront it too early then the book ends with a curve ball, leaving some readers feeling like they’ve been sucker punched. If the confrontation happens too late in the book, then it’ll feel as if things had to be added to the climax in order for it to make sense or otherwise shore up weak characters.

Burning Magic does all of this correctly. It has otherworldly aura about it that almost physically smells of a middle Earth campfire, complete with the phosphorus smell of magic and the burning hair scent of a large bat. Fans of the series will immediately latch onto where Lily- the witch queen, Thorn, Hades (the giant bat) and K’leef are in their respective story arcs. Readers will also appreciate the chaos and change that happen very quickly to each character.

When the friends are reunited things immediately go south when a royal murder throws all of their futures into question and uncertainty. What follows is a quest for a Phoenix that could unify the kingdom or thrust it into a perilous future where our friends would be on the wrong end of the rulers.

Burning Magic is the final book in the Shadow Magic series and manages to pull a Road Warrior*. It ends the book in a way that is a solid finish, but gives you the mental image of the heroes continuing their story  in some way-and that’s exactly what readers get.

*The Road Warrior was the second film in that series of films. Whereas Mad Max had a drive-in, low budget appeal to it, its sequel The Road Warrior was a full on action movie. The Road Warrior is an example of a film where it, the sequel, was better than the original. It’s also a no hold barred chase film with some really fabulous car crashes, big scale baddies and action sequences. At the end of The Road Warrior our hero realizes what’s been in his tanker truck all along. The confluence of emotions is that viewers accept the end of this story, but are eager see another story staring the character-so long as the quality and pacing are the same as what they just saw.