Magnetic Magic (Final Retrospective, Part 2) - Character
Hello, all. Welcome back to our Retrospective series for Magnetic Magic.
This part will exclusively focus on the character writing across the series. If you’d like to read by breakdown of the series-wide plot arcs, please see Part 1. Otherwise, let’s dive right into it.
STATS
Series: Magnetic Magic
Author(s): Lindsay Buroker
Genre: Fantasy (Urban)
First Printing: January 2025 through August 2025
Publisher: Self-published to Amazon
Overall Series Rating: 6.5 / 10
SPOILER WARNING
Heavy, unmarked spoilers will be provided for the entirety of the Magnetic Magic series. I’m also going to assume that you’ve already read my reviews for the individual books.
TERMINOLOGY
The names of the books in this series are all rather similar, so we’ll be abbreviating them as follows.
Way of the Wolf (Book 1) = Way
Relics of the Wolf (Book 2) = Relics
Kin of the Wolf (Book 3) = Kin
Quest of the Wolf (Book 4) = Quest
Curse of the Wolf (Book 5) = Curse
Triumph of the Wolf (Book 6) = Triumph
Also, I will be referring to the werewolves in this setting who are capable of assuming a half-human, half-wolf form as “hybrids”.
STATIC CHARACTERS
I would not classify any characters within this series as dynamic . They certainly do develop across the series. It’s just that this development manifests as revealing new insights about them, rather than them changing. The closest thing we get to a meaningful character choice is at the end of Book 1, when Luna makes the conscious choice to no longer take the potion to suppress her werewolf side (after simply being unable to suppress it throughout the book due to a lack of available potion). Elements that normally would reflect character growth, like Luna building a relationship with Duncan after her initial distrust, her warming up to the idea of having more children, or her confronting Chad, come across less like Luna has undergone a journey to come to those moments and more like circumstances evolved to allow her to do what she otherwise would have from the beginning.
I don’t necessarily think this is an issue. As stated a few times during the individual reviews, this is a series driven by plot, rather than characters. If it seems like I don’t have a lot to say about recurring characters who played major roles in every book of a 6-book series, though, this is why. The people are are introduced to in Way are the same people in Triumph.
CORE CAST
Luna Valens
The protagonist and POV character of this series is very effective in her role. She is, as described by Buroker in the foreword of Way, “a middle-aged, divorced empty-nester”. Luna has a no-nonsense attitude, and her quirks pervade the narrative (namely, her obsession with chocolate), these never become distracting or strip her of credibility. While not groundbreaking, she is likeable and relatable. She is slow to trust her love interest due to the circumstances of her failed marriage, but welcomes him into her life once she has seen that he is indeed trustworthy.
While I would have liked Luna to be a more dynamic character, I think she works perfectly well within the narrative presented to us. Also, while this is a plot-driven narrative, Luna does display significant agency. From Relics onward, she tackles problems head-on. Her attempts to solve problems often land her in deeper trouble, but even in these circumstances, she thinks on her feet to either escape the bad situation or else regain the upper hand. Even in those awkward moments where contrivance or Deus ex Machina save her, it never feels like she has plot armor.
Well, I suppose her cell phone has plot armor, given how it always conveniently escapes from her hand or her clothing a split-second before she transforms into a werewolf, and since she benefits from never losing cell phone access, that benefit does extend to her. That’s a logistical issue, though. If she had kept losing her cell phone, it wouldn’t have changed the narrative drastically, as then we’d just get a running gag about her needing to waste her budget on burner phones. I feel this is more a worldbuilding hiccup than a character issue.
Duncan Calderwood (aka “Drakon”)
A clone of an ancient hybrid-form werewolf who found new life as a freelance treasure hunter, Duncan is Luna’s obvious love interest from the moment he enters her story. He attempts to woo her with his charm and many innuendos and helps her with her family troubles while accepting her help in dealing with his creator. As one might expect, he settles down with Luna to build their family at the end of the series.
I found Duncan immensely annoying at the start of the series. To be honest, he never got less annoying. It’s just that I built up a tolerance to him. Additionally, as the series progressed, the overall increased emphasis on sexual tension and the fact the quippy banter between him and Luna spread to Luna with other characters meant that the things that bothered me about him became more pervasive. He specifically became less of an obvious problem.
On the whole, though, I think Duncan is a functional love interest. He fits the fantasy of the dashing rogue with a dark past that Buroker seemed to be going for here.
Bolin Sylvan
I haven’t talked about Bolin a great deal during the reviews, despite him being in every book and often playing a heavy role in multiple plots.
Bolin is the son of the people who own the apartment complex where Luna is the manager. When he shows up in Way, he has been dispatched by his parents to serve as Luna’s intern, building up practical work experience before they’ll entrust him to manage one of their other properties. He is also, as Luna soon discovers, a druid, able to utilize nature-based magic. Working with his father, he helps Luna research various elements of the supernatural world that she is now reentering.
Despite this narrative relevance, Bolin’s primary role is that of comic relief. All of his character traits are used for running gags. He has a man-purse. He loves sugary coffee drinks and brings at least two coffees with him to work each morning. He is a druid who drives a gas-guzzling SUV and needs to constantly deal with birds pooping on it. He is a former spelling bee champion who loves to dump trivia about the origins of words in moments of banter with Luna. He is awkwardly trying to get the attention of Luna’s niece, Jasmine. Not helping his impression, at least for me, is the fact that Bolin shares his name with a certain Avatar character. I kept hearing the voice of P. J. Byrne every time he opened his mouth.
As with Duncan, while I found Bolin grating at times, I do think he is well-written overall. He fills his roll effectively.
Jasmine
Luna’s niece plays an important role in dragging Luna back into the narrative. We learn at the end of Way that Luna ran out the potion to suppress her werewolf side because Jasmine scared off the apothecary who made said potion, with the hope of luring Luna back into pack affairs. As the narrative progresses, she also pops into the story regularly to provide Luna with information about who owns what real estate (which is helpful when trying to find whatever facilities the antagonists are operating out of in that book) and for more banter. She seems mildly put-off by Bolin at first, but it’s implied she gets together with him at the end of the series.
I like Jasmine more than Duncan or Bolin. That said, I do feel like she is the most tacked-on of the core cast. The only narrative contributions she makes that couldn’t have been covered by Bolin are a few scenes where Luna wants werewolf backup instead of druid backup and the fact she is the Pair to Bolin’s Spare.
OTHER KEY CHARACTERS
Luna Mother (& Lorenzo)
The alpha female of Luna’s pack (and her lover, who stands in as the alpha male to enforce her will), Luna’s mother begins this series with a terminal cancer diagnosis. She wants Luna to return to the pack, take her place, and have werewolf children in order to ensure the pack’s generational survival. When Duncan enters the picture, she begins actively encouraging Luna to have “offspring” with him.
Luna’s mother (and Lorenzo) isn’t so much a character as a motivator for Luna. She exists to serve as a source of pathos, with Luna worrying about her deteriorating health, and to encourage Luna to take certain courses of action. She’s fine for what she is. If Luna had been given a more dynamic character journey, I’d have also liked to see her mother fleshed out into a more dynamic character as well.
Augustus
Luna’s conniving cousin is indirectly the reason she is drawn back into pack politics, as Luna is the main obstacle to him seizing control of the pack upon her mother’s death. His protection racket upon Seattle’s supernatural community damages the pack’s reputation, and his hunger of relics that he can turn around into fast cash makes him a threat to the pack’s legacy. While Luna has to overcome him for the sake of her own survival (since he’ll only feel secure once she’s dead), removing him from the pack is in the past interests of all involved.
I wasn’t a fan of the Augustus plot, and I missed it more because of the void it left than because I actually thought it was good. That said, upon reflection, this was really a plot issue, not a character issue. Augustus is consistently written as a treacherous snake, and every action he took against Luna made sense in light of his goals.
Radomir & Lord Abrams
I lump these two together because, as touched upon in the Plot retrospective, they effectively function as a single character. They are a shadowy figure from Duncan’s past who planned a pivotal role in his origin and now will stop at nothing to collect werewolf relics, only Abrams got all of the history with Duncan while Radomir got the resources and motivation to drive the narrative forward.
As a collective unit, I think these two are fine. Individually, their behavior baffles me.
Radomir needlessly puts himself into danger in the climaxes of Quest and Curse, plus getting very hands-on for a couple scenes in Curse. He has no motivation to do this. He doesn’t have a personal motivation that might drive him to act irrationally, and we’re give no reason to think that he’s a hands-on guy in the same vein as, say, Raymond Reddington. This ultimately leads to his death.
Abrams has a personal motivation to get involved in the action, yet he never does. He doesn’t even seem to have a clear-cut plan to go with his motivations. He just follows Radomir around until Radomir dies, then he waits around for Luna and her allies to stumble across him in his insane pocket universe secret lair.
If the two were collapsed into one character (i.e. if Lord Abrams were given Radomir’s resources and ruthlessness), I think we’d have gotten a functional (if a tad bland villain). Individually, they end up feeling like puppets who serve the narrative, rather than people experiencing the narrative in opposition to our protagonist.
Izzy
As started in the Plot retrospective, Izzy is a character who we’re introduced almost at the last minute, has no time to make and impact, and ten gets saved by Luna at the end of the story. There was absolutely narrative potential to this character. As the sister of Raoul, she is an embodiment of Luna’s guilt for killing Raoul all those years ago, the event that led Luna to abandon her werewolf heritage. The problem is that we just weren’t given time to appreciate any of that. Izzy just shows up for a couple of fight scenes and then gets captured by Abrams in Triumph. She needed more time to be properly developed. As it stands, she could be cut outright from the story with minimal impact.
Rue
This is a recurring character who’s a bit odd to me. The reason I’ve only discussed her in regards to worldbuilding, pondering whether the magic is this world is linked to supernatural evil, is because there really isn’t much of interest to her character beyond that. She’s the archetype of an eccentric old woman with a lot of sass. Narratively, though, she’s mainly here to provide Luna with potions on the many occasions when such potions are necessary to drive the plot forward (truth serums, tracking potions, etc). Not only is her role purely utilitarian, but much like with Jasmine providing information linked to real estate, her role as a brewer of potions could have been taken over by Bolin and his druidcraft.
I wonder if Rue was written into Buroker’s outlines as the character would was originally meant to have a larger role. There are a couple of moments when Buroker puts her in peril as a means to up emotional stakes (i.e. Luna feeling guilty because the fallout of the various adventures is falling upon the residents of her complex). It’s just that, on the page, she’s effectively an NPC merchant with a memorable personality.
Lykos
This is Duncan’s 8-year-old clone brother. While he is introduced in Relics, he basically spends this series floating around in the background, only to pop up in Triumph with the goal of killing Duncan on Abram’s orders. Duncan apparently has an arc about experiencing fatherhood by trying to connect to this clone. I saw “apparently” because it happens entirely in the background, with the audience merely being told about it in passing or seeing Luna’s own attempts to communicate with him.
Much like Rue, I think Buroker initially intended Lykos to have a much larger role in the narrative. His story, such that it is, gets rushed through in the last book, despite a fairly early introduction. This whole story about him wanting to kill Duncan feels like Buroker ran out of time and page count to properly set up an arc for him and just didn’t want to leave him as a dangling thread.
A HIDDEN (?) WORLD
On Sunday, March 1st, we’ll dissect the worldbuilding of Magnetic Magic. Most of this will focus on the lore of the werewolves, which are an element I think Buroker handled well. However, we’ll also be interrogating the idea that this magical world that is supposed to be hidden (according to the narrative itself) as actually a secret.
I hope to see you all then. Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter if you’d like weekly e-mails with the latest post links, and please share this review with others if you enjoyed it. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
Volume I of my first serialized Romantasy novel, A Chime for These Hallowed Bones, is now premiering over in Tales of the Five Worlds!
Kabarāhira is a city of necromancers, and among these necromancers, none are more honorable or respected than Master Japjot Baig. Yadleen has worked under him since she was a girl, learning how commune with bhūtas and how to bind these ancient spirits into wights. Her orderly world is disrupted, however, when a stranger appears with the skeleton of a dishonored woman, demanding that her master fabricate a wight for him.
To protect her master from scandal, Yadleen must take it upon herself to meet this stranger’s demands. Manipulating the dead is within her power, but can honor survive in the face of a man who has none?
Chapters 1 through 6 are now available! I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.
