Relics of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic, Book 2)
Welcome back, everyone. I hope that your summer is off to a good start.
Today, we return to Lindsay Buroker’s Magnetic Magic series for its second entry. At the time of writing this, I have already purchased and started reading Book 3 (Kin of the Wolf) of the series, while Book 4 is available for preorder (and will have been out for a few weeks by the time you read this). Up front, I will say that I am very much enjoying this series, so unless Kin of the Wolf really faceplants, I fully intended to finish out this series (and review both of the remaining books in due time).
This review will be longer than the one for Way of the Wolf. This isn’t because this book is worse than its predecessor. If anything, it’s better. Rather, Relics of the Wolf serves as an interesting point of comparison. Whether it’s in the things the book does well, the places where mistakes are made, or even just where Buroker walks a tightrope, a more thorough dissection will be useful for understanding both past and future reviews of other books on this site.
With that being said, let’s dive right in.
STATS
Title: Relics of the Wolf
Series: Magnetic Magic (Book 2)
Author(s): Lindsay Buroker
Genre: Fantasy (Urban)
First Printing: January 2025
Publisher: Self-published to Amazon
SPOILER WARNING
Mild, unmarked spoilers for the entirety of Relics of the Wolf will be provided throughout this review. The first paragraph of any given section will be kept spoiler-free. Any heavy spoilers for this book will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
Heavy spoilers from earlier in the Magnetic Magic series (at this point, just Way of the Wolf) will appear in this review. These will not be marked. I’m also going to assume that you have already read my review for Way of the Wolf.
STRUCTURE
For comparative purposes, we will be using almost the same structure as Way of the Wolf. However, there are two new sections, which are in bold on the list below.
Premise
Rating
Series
Content Warning
Plot
Character
Worldbuilding
Prose / Editing
Romance
The elements that we will cover in these new sections did exist back in Way of the Wolf. However, their presence was far smaller, to the point that they weren't worth exploring. Relics of the Wolf dials things up to the point that they are worth discussing, at least for the sake of providing a benchmark by which other books can be measured.
PREMISE
Once more, we’re going straight from the Amazon product page.
When Luna decided to reclaim her werewolf heritage, she had no idea what she was in for.
Frustrated, angry, and betrayed, she must find the mysterious artifact she lost, unravel the politics of the pack, and defend against attempts on her life.
With everything intertwined, she has a daunting road ahead, and her conflicting feelings about the lone werewolf, Duncan, aren’t helping anything. She doubts she can trust him, no matter how charming he is, but she may need to if she wants to get to the bottom of her troubles—and survive the week.
Reaction
My initial reaction, after finishing this book, is that the premise is misleading. Out of the items in the second paragraph, only the bit about the lost artifact gets focus on this book. The pack politics are a background detail that, at most, triggers a single action scene early in the book, while all the attempts on Luna’s life within this book are actually a consequence of her proactively trying to get the artifact back (i.e. she’s not souch defending herself as instigating these events). Everything about Duncan is also blown out of proportion, since that conflict fades into the background within the first few chapters.
Then I started reading Kin of the Wolf. Within just the first two chapters, all of the conflicts listed within this premise are reestablished. These are ongoing plot threads that are meant to span the series.
In other words, this premise isn't actually for Relics of the Wolf. It’s for Magnetic Magic as a whole. Buroker isn’t so much setting expectations for this book as she is updating the audience on the progress of the series-wide narrative. In that sense, it is very accurate
RATING: 7/10
Buroker seems to have found her stride for this series. This book still feels like part of a larger, continuing narrative, but now it feels like its own story within that narrative, rather than a lot of setup with an arbitrarily chosen ending. This produces a better reading experience overall.
Unfortunately, while this book’s ending is not tacked on, Buroker stumbles in her delivery. It’s still a more satisfying ending than Way of the Wolf, but the way she wraps things up has some unfortunate implications for the series ahead.
Since I typically write these reviews from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read any farther into whatever series a book is from, I will give Buroker the benefit of the doubt and rate this book on the basis of its own merits and how it synergizes with Way of the Wolf. If the ending of this book does indeed reflect a trend that ripples forward into Kin of the Wolf or Book 4, I will make a note in those later reviews as to how I rate Relics of the Wolf with the benefit of hindsight.
SERIES
This book is more of what I expected after reading Fallen Empire. It serves as a single milestone within the wider narrative. Specifically, the story follows up on the mystery of the wolf case that Luna found in her apartment, as well as the mystery of who stole the case from her intern. She teams up with Duncan to track the thug down and recover what was stolen, getting drawn into deeper danger than expected along the way. The resolution of this smaller conflict then sets up events for the next book.
To recycle an analogy from the previous review, this is a satisfying episode of television within a serialized TV show. It has a clear beginning, middle, and end with the promise of a continuation in the near future.
Impermanent Consequences
With that being said, there is one detail about that clear end that really bothers me. I’ll save the heavy spoilers for Plot; here, I’ll just describe the narrative issue.
In the climax of the book, Luna and Duncan are separated. It’s heavily implied that Duncan will either be missing for Book 3 or else resurface in an antagonist role. However, before the book ends, Luna is reunited with Duncan, and he’s both perfectly fine and still on her side. Given both the fact that he’s lied to her before and the particulars of how they got separated, it’s entirely possible that he’s now working against her and merely putting on a front. The thing is, because Luna is aware of both of these things, and is also a decently smart person in general, she should have a serious concern that this is indeed the case … yet she doesn’t consider it. Not seriously, at any rate. There’s a line early in Kin of the Wolf where she briefly wonders if she should be trusting him, but that just gets filed away under her general desire to keep any potential love interest at arm’s length. It’s really hard to believe at this point that Duncan is working against her in secret. If he is, then Luna is being character assassinated, as her blindly trusting him at this point goes against one of her core traits.
This walking back of their separation in the climax makes that separation feel contrived for the sake of wringing emotion out of the audience. More broadly, though, it sets a precedent that any consequence that pops up in Kin of the Wolf or Book 4 can be reversed with the flip of a switch. So what if Luna or Duncan gets captured by the antagonists? So what if their identities as werewolves are exposed to the public? So what if one of them dies? Buroker has demonstrated that she’s fully prepared to reverse things when the narrative demands it. Should we even bother getting invested when tragedy strikes in the future?
I hope I am overthinking this. Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation for this that we’ll get down the line, and maybe Buroker won’t have any more reversals like this. That would make this incident a fumbled ending to an otherwise good book.
Until I see where Buroker takes the story and how she resolves future conflict, though, this possibility of going to gnaw at me whenever a genuine threat to either Luna or Duncan presents itself.
CONTENT WARNING
Nudity
Yes, this is a novel, so there’s obviously no visible nudity on the audience end of things, but the way that nudity is handled in this book is noteworthy.
Werewolves in this setting destroy any worn clothing (and, it’s implied, anything in the pockets of said clothing) when they transform. This isn’t a mechanical progress of fabric ripping as the body inside it changes dimensions. Instead, anything on the werewolf’s body disappears “into the ether” with no hope of recovery. This has ups and downs for werewolves. In a dangerous situation, a werewolf does not need to worry about struggling out of clothes before she can transform and defend herself. On the flip side of things, this means that a werewolf will be forced to scrounge for clothing in the aftermath of an emergency transformation. Because werewolf transformation also requires strong magic that is either provided by the full moon or summoned by a heightened emotional states, it’s also possible that a werewolf will return to human form far away from where she left her clothes and be forced to walk back as a human.
This is a rule that was established and applied consistently in Way of the Wolf. I didn’t mention it then because it was a minor worldbuilding quirk without any obvious relevance. What’s more, Buroker acknowledges and accounts for the consequences of this rule. Both times that Luna transforms in Way, she ends up stuck a good ways from where she left her clothing when she reverts back. This use of the rule carries forward into Relics of the Wolf. The first time that Luna transforms in this book, she is holding a cell phone in her hand. Buroker includes a moment where Luna loses her grip on the phone before the transformation kicks in, thereby justifying why the phone still exists after the fact. Also, in the climax, there is a scene where Luna worries about destroying the contents of her jacket pockets, so she takes off her jacket before transforming and then had to carry the jacket in her mouth after she transformed.
All this is consistent, and under different circumstances, I might not be talking about this at all. However, between Way and Relics, there is a noticeable shift in how the nudity is framed.
The Way That Way Framed It
In Way, the nudity is treated as a background detail. Luna sees some of her male relatives naked when she visits her mother around the halfway point, and this isn’t treated as anything awkward. Likewise, after the hunt at the climax of the book, there’s a scene where a good chunk of the pack are standing around naked while questions are answered, and Luna doesn’t even seem to register that fact outside of noticing how cold the weather is (nor is that reference applied as a euphemism).
This made sense. Luna spent nineteen years of her life living as a werewolf and learning to accept the rules of transformation as a natural part of her life. Yes, she’s spent twenty-six years integrated into mainstream human society and avoiding transforming, but it would be a behavior ingrained into her. It’s sort of like how no one bats an eye at nudity within the bathing areas of a Japanese bathhouse. There is a time and place where one learns to accept such things.
The only nudity in this book that is presented as awkward or sexual is in regards to Duncan. He transforms around Luna twice. The first time, the nudity is mainly awkward in that she needs to get him back to her apartment to bandage his wounds, meaning she needs to walk a naked man through a public area (i.e. she recognizes that she is dealing with a situation that is not covered by the usual exception for werewolves). The second time - which is also her first transformation of the book - she and Duncan go hunting together and fall asleep in wolf form, and she wakes him to find him curled up against her with a hand on her breast. This is certainly a sexual moment, but it’s downplayed to the point that it feels no different than the same circumstance occurring while they were both fully clothed.
All this is to say that I completely forgot to cover this in the previous review because it simply didn’t register as something worth commenting upon. It wasn’t emphasized. Buroker merely established rules and kept them.
The Way That Relic Handles It
Nudity suddenly goes from being treated as a casual reality of living as a werewolf to something taboo and strongly associated with sex.
I don’t just mean this in the sense of literal sexual content (more on that momentarily). I mean that Luna is suddenly is very aware of and very awkward about her nudity, and this is used to trigger moments that feed into sexual tension between her and Duncan. Early in this book, Luna has to transform in an emergency situation while visiting her mother again. This leaves her naked in front of her entire family - a fact that is highlighted, as if this is suddenly more of an issue than it was in the climax of Way. Duncan has to lend her clothes, leading to a conversation with her mother as to whether borrowing Duncan’s clothes indicates that she is “mating” with him.
Later, Luna and Duncan both need to be patched up after a fight. This again happens in her apartment. Luna chooses to cover herself up with a bathrobe. This modesty makes more sense than with her family, since Duncan is an outsider and there is already sexual tension between them. What’s a bit stranger, though, is how aroused both of them get in the moment, and that arousal is tied to how close together they are while Duncan is naked and Luna is barely covered by the robe.
There’s also a moment where Duncan walks naked from Luna’s apartment to his camper van in the parking lot, in full view of police officers and any of the apartment complex residents who might be looking outside at the moment. The police just allow him to do this. Luna doesn’t consider getting dressed, going to grab clothes for him, and bringing those clothes back, despite the fact that her residents will probably figure out that this nudist on the property is associated with her and lodge a complaint. It simply doesn’t make sense unless the narrative goal is to have Duncan walking around naked to public.
What I’m getting at here is that, instead of merely being treated as a simple reality of the world Luna lives in, transformation-induced nudity suddenly feels like an excuse for sexuality. It reminds me of the “hedonism” of the Riders Quadrant. I wouldn’t say this case is quite as severe in terms of establishing an elements just to bait the audience with the promise of sex, yet it still does come across as a cheap trick.
Sexuality
Sex was mentioned multiple times in Way of the Wolf. As with the nudity, I didn’t mention it because it was only discussed in passing. Luna describes her ex-husband’s infidelity in terms of him having sex with women around the world while he was away on so-called business trips; when hidden cameras are discovered in her bedroom, one of the reasons she is appalled by them is that, depending on how long they’d been there, they might have recorded her having sex with her ex-husband. Duncan also laces a lot of sexually suggestive comments into his dialogue. The only moment that came close to being overtly sexual was the incident with Duncan’s hand on Luna’s breast while they were both naked, but as mentioned above, this is very much downplayed.
There are two major changes to the situation in this book.
Buroker is moving the Romance subplot forward. There are multiple intimate moments between Luna and Duncan, including two that occur while Luna is naked post-transformation. A couple of kisses are thrown in, and it is made clear that Luna would have had sex with Duncan in those situations if they hadn’t ended up getting interrupted.
A lot more focus is being put on werewolf “mating”, with multiple characters asking if Luna and Duncan are having sex.
In isolation, I see this merely as Buroker following a condensed version of the formula she applied in Fallen Empire. Luna and Duncan will have at least one sex scene before the series ends, but it will likely be kept to Book 4 (or, at the earliest, the very end of Kin of the Wolf). Unlike the purely sexual relationship in the Empyrean, sex is not the core of Luna and Duncan’s relationship, so it won’t happen until they reach a state of emotional commitment.
However, as touched upon above, this synergizes with the sudden focus on werewolf nudity. Whereas a hand on Luna’s breast was downplayed in Way, Relics sees nudity being used to amplify the moment. We have gone from a book with negligible sexual elements to one that is loudly insisting that a sex scene if right around the corner. There’s whiplash here.
PLOT
A Simple Story
Relics follows Luna’s efforts to recover the wolf case that she found in her apartment and that was stolen prior to the climax of Way. She uses footage from the apartment complex’s security cameras to identity the thug as someone who uses supernatural power without being a werewolf himself. Needing a guide to magical society, she sets aside her mistrust and reaches out to Duncan. Together, the pair attempt to track down the thug and the people who said thug works for, gradually uncovering a great conspiracy.
This is a story that is very easy to get into and flows naturally from one event to the next. Buroker establishes audience expectations about this book early on, pays off those expectations, and then ends the book when the story reaches its natural endpoint. The result is a book that is relatively short - a rough estimate from page count indicates that it’s just 62,000 words - but still very satisfying. Nothing outstays its welcome, and nothing feels too convoluted.
Action
While there was certainly action in Way (four scenes of it, by my count), Luna didn’t feel like she was driving that action. She did participate, and she did contribute. However, outside of the fight at the climax, it mostly felt like Duncan was doing all the meaningful fighting while Luna just found something to do. This tied back into her werewolf powers. Luna wasn’t empowered to a state where she could defend herself until she embraced the wolf transformation once more.
In Relics, Luna feels like much more of an active participant and a driver of events - and not just while in wolf form. There’s a fight scene early in the book where she aids Duncan in a brawl against thugs while they are both in human form. While Duncan is still doing the heavy lifting, Luna’s contributions feel more significant.
I know that, objectively, Luna isn’t contributing any more than she did in Way. It’s just that the framing changes the experience. All of the fights in Way were reactive situations. Trouble came to Luna, and she survived as best she could. In Relics, all of the fights are triggered by choices she makes. Even if she still relies of Duncan to do the bulk of the fighting, the fact remains that she has far more agency in these situations than she did previously. It makes the action feel more satisfying.
Mystery
The core plot thread is built around a mystery: “Who stole the wolf case?” Luna and Duncan spend the story investigating this mystery before coming to an answer at the end. It’s simple and effective.
There are a few lingering mysteries. There’s still no explanation for the security cameras in Luna’s apartment. Also, Luna brings up some mysterious hunters who briefly popped up in Way. However, neither of these questions gets much focus. In the case of the hunters, Luna dismisses the mystery in a manner that feels true to her character without deceiving the audience, assuming that her cousin Augustus (the main antagonist from the last book) was the one who arranged for the hunters to be where they were. If Buroker reveals something different down the line, it won’t feel unearned.
Duncan’s Past (Heavy Spoilers)
Relics reveals some very significant information about Duncan about two-thirds of the way through the book, and then his backstory plays a role in the climax. I was caught off-guard by this. With how things were being set up, I thought Duncan’s mysterious past would be an issue that spanned the entire series. Revealing so much in only the second book doesn’t exhaust the narrative, but it does escalate the story very quickly.
Throughout Relics, attention is called to the fact that Duncan is stronger than a typical werewolf. Luna wonders if Duncan is using magical potions to enhance his strength, given that the thug who stole the wolf case is evidently using such potions; she gets a warning from a lone wolf who runs a bar that Duncan reminds him of some of the more dangerous werewolves from his homeland. Then, Duncan reveals his secret to Luna: he’s a clone, specifically the clone of a bipedfuris …
…
No, I’m still not calling them that. We’re sticking with “hybrid”.
Duncan’s immense strength comes from the fact that he’s a werewolf with access to the hybrid form. More specifically, he’s the clone of a werewolf from centuries ago, one who still have the power to assume hybrid form. He was created by a mad scientist-type character named Lord Abrams, with the goal of creating an army of werewolves under the scientist’s command. When he was in his 20s, he finally managed to escape Abrams and burn Abrams’s castle to the ground. We are told Abrams died in the castle.
Then, the climax of the book reveals that Abrams, working in partnership with some mystery man named Radomir, is collecting werewolf relics. It’s implied that his goals haven’t changed; it’s just now he’s broadened his approach to targeting Luna as well (for some reason - Luna knows about her potential power, and we know about it through her, but it’s unclear how Abrams would know about it). He’s also got at least one young werewolf hanging around his evil lair. While not stated, the strong implication is that this boy is another clone of a hybrid.
Given how low-stakes and personal Way was, the rapid entry of Abrams into the story is a bit shocking. We’ve gone from a story about a divorced empty-nester grappling with her identity to a conspiracy about a made scientist with the apparent goal of using magic to take over the world. This isn’t a bad turn for the series to take. I just thought something like this would be revealed (and then immediately wrapped up) as the big finale of the series, rather than redefining the trajectory halfway through.
Also, while we’re on the subject of heavy spoilers: the separation of Duncan and Luna that I referred to in Series happens at Abrams’s lair. He has some sort of magical device that he can used to mind-control Duncan, literally beaming commands into Duncan’s brain. The final action sequence is Luna trying to escape in wolf form while Duncan is commanded to kill her in hybrid form; when she does escape, Duncan is left behind with Abrams. This was a gut punch that was presented as something that would also reshape the series going forward. It was therefore very disappointing when Duncan reappeared in the next chapter, claiming that Abrams merely dumped him naked in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, and asks Luna for forgive him for getting mind-controlled; it was even more disappointing that Luna let her guard down and welcomed him back with no further questions.
Comparison to The Empyrean
Something we’ve seen in both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame is that Yarros will start the book with one idea, exhausted that idea by the halfway point, and then throw filler at the wall until she’s ready to deliver her desired climax. We’ll see the same thing happen in Onyx Storm when we hit Chapter 44, about two-thirds of the way through the book. By this point in the Onyx Storm review, we’ve also covered how everything up through Chapter 18 of the book feels like filler, with some ideas that potentially make for great standalone stories but that delay the promised premise of the book in favor of meandering through needless bloat.
Now that we’re two entries into Magnetic Magic, it’s very easy to see how this series could have turned out like The Empyrean. The two books we’ve covered thus far are roughly the same length as Fourth Wing. After checking the page count for Kin of the Wolf, the total page count of the three books of Magnetic Magic would be about as long as Iron Flame. The key difference is that Buroker knows when to end a book. Rather than churn out a bloated behemoth that runs out of momentum and then has to restart, she breaks the story into smaller chunks that function as their own stories.
This has me seriously wondering: how much better could the Empyrean be if Yarros chose to write it as a long series of 15 to 20 books, each only around 250 pages (62,500 words)? This seems like a situation where everyone could have won. Yarros could work with smaller and more manageable chunks of information while also giving herself more time for family and her romance projects, the fans could get a new book every six months or so instead of getting a lot of content up front and then needing to wait multiple years, and then the publisher could charge people for the same books multiple times by not only doing fancy sprayed-edge copies but also releasing omnibus editions.
I get that not every format works for every series. An indie author who does a lot of business through low-price (if high-value) Amazon e-books is in a very different place from a traditional author with the full weight of the industry behind her. It’s just that, seeing how well Buroker’s approach works for Magnetic Magic, it’s really hard to ignore that this also seems like a far superior approach for The Empyrean.
CHARACTER
While I had a decent amount to say about the core cast in Way, I feel like there’s less to be said in Relic. This is a story driven by plot rather than characters. Luna and Bolin don’t get any meaningful development, and Duncan’s only development is the reveal of his backstory. Not even the advancement of the Romance subplot (more on that later) does that much for any of the characters. Even the antagonists who are revealed later in the story are fairly one-note.
Still, I don’t that is a problem for this story. Buroker lay adequate groundwork in Way for us to work from, and the constant motion of the plot keeps the characters from feeling stale. I hope we get more character development in the future, especially if the Romance subplot is going to progress. It’s just that what we get here is fine for what it is.
WORLDBUILDING
Buroker doesn’t so much expand this setting here as she does deepen it. Most of what’s established within this book are not wholly new ideas, merely elaborations or more detailed views of things that were previously established or that could be assumed based upon archetypes. Despite this, there are a few points where Buroker risked massive plot holes. I wouldn’t say the issues in question are plot holes yet. It’s just that they prompt questions that this series doesn’t seem prepared to answer and/or that could radically alter the interpretation of events depending on how they are answered.
Werewolves
Silver
This book confirms that the werewolves of this setting are indeed vulnerable to silver. If I’m understanding the lore correctly, werewolves have enhanced healing and immune systems, but the silver compromises that magic that sustains these elements, thereby making wounds more lethal and increasing the risk of infection. It’s not that silver is necessary to harm a werewolf, but it does work far better than the alternatives.
What’s less clear is why silver does this. It’s actually not even clear if it’s the silver itself or an enchantment woven into it that has this effect. The silver bullets used by the antagonists and the silver sword that Duncan keeps in his camper are both explicitly stated to have been enchanted to harm werewolves. It’s entirely possible that ordinary silver does nothing.
Other Therianthropes
We learn in this book that werewolves are not the only shapeshifters in this world. Luna and her pack descend from werewolves who emigrated from Europe; we learn that there is a separate werewolf type that originates from Central and South America, as well as a reference to coyote shifters native to North America. It’s not clear if or how these other shifters differ from Luna’s kind outside of the animal they transform into.
While not confirmed, I do think it’s safe to assume that any other therianthrope that exists in real-world lore has a counterpart in Magnetic Magic. At this rate, there are probably boudas running around East Africa and jaguar shifters hanging out in Florida.
Cloning (Heavy Spoilers)
While there are a couple of ways to tackle this particular bit of lore, I think most of them have already been covered in the Plot analysis, so I just want to focus on the problems introduced by cloning magical beings.
We have been explicitly told that the rise of mankind’s developed world weakens the natural magic that gives werewolves their power. We also know that the children of a werewolf and a baseline human will produce baseline human offspring with no magic. How, then, can cloning be recreate a hybrid, an entity that disappeared in the first place because of weakening magic?
Wouldn’t the weakening of natural magic around the world make this hybrid no different from Luna? That is to say, maybe one could create someone with the potential to become a hybrid, but they shouldn’t have the magic to actually transform. If the loss of the hybrid form were only due to inbreeding, this would make sense, but Buroker chose to establish in Way that magic itself is weakening and that said weakening is part of the reason the hybrids disappeared. A fresh genetic sample wouldn’t fix that problem.
Laboratory cloning is, bluntly put, a violation of the natural order. It is about ripping DNA out of a sample and ramming it into different cells via means that would not happen through natural processes. It’s a really hard sell that nature magic that is weakened by the artificial world of humans would transfer cleanly through this process.
Wouldn’t the donor of the egg cell used to make the clone and the surrogate used to carry a hybrid to term interfere in the magic? If werewolf magic can be switched off by merely having sperm come from a baseline human, then surely the donors egg cell (which would include the donor’s DNA courtesy of the mitochondria) would have an even more massive influence. Then there’s all the development factors introduced in the womb, so surely, even a surrogate’s nature would interfere with the magic. If Abrams bypassed this problem with some sort of mechanical incubator, then that just circles us back to violations of the natural order. Or did Abrams grow Duncan in one of those mud-cysts that Saurman used in the Peter Jackson LOTR films?
The only reason that this isn’t a plot hole is that there are potential answers to all of these questions. Buroker hasn’t provided any information to rule those answers out. It just feels like Buroker didn’t think this through, and thus is merely avoiding problems through luck rather than intent.
Of course, then we need to consider the timeline.
Every indication is that Magnetic Magic is set in our modern day. This means Duncan, whom is 50 (as we will be told in the opening of Kin) was cloned in the mid-1970s and didn’t escape Abrams’s lab until the 1990s. Are we really meant to think that, in all that time, with all the advances in gene sequencing and cloning technology, Abrams never successfully cloned another hybrid? Even if we assume that the boy from the climax was his second success, that still leaves a good 20 years of time in which genetic engineering advanced drastically. How does he not already have an army of hybrids?
Again, this isn’t an unambiguous plot hole. Maybe he had no data stored off-site when the castle was destroyed, maybe it took him decades to find a fresh sample, and maybe there are even more hybrids hidden somewhere. It’s just an awful lot of head canon for this story to keep making sense.
Other Magical Beings
We get a couple of other magical entities confirmed in this book. The underground magical community - witches, alchemists, druids, and the like - get more focus in this story, operating watering holes and online marketplaces for sharing their trades. This setting still feels like the paranormal is only kept hidden because no one can be bothered to tell the general public, but I wouldn’t say that issue has gotten any worse than it was previously. There’s a throwaway line that confirms that vampires exist in this setting, though we then immediately learn that Luna already knew that they did exist and just assumed that she’d never encounter one due to their rarity.
However, it’s the reveal about dragons that really opens a can of worms. Abrams makes this comment about Luna’s bloodline.
“She’s from a very old line, perhaps one of the originals, the first werewolves created long ago by the very visiting dragons that we spoke of.”
Are dragons aliens in this setting? Is all this magic really Sufficient Advanced Technology? Or is it more like the Ur-Dragon from the Magic: the Gathering multiverse, where godlike magical entities did a casual flyby and started carpet-bombing the planet with their power?
Much like the cloning, this also isn’t a plot hole. I just feel like we now need to ask questions that could previously be ignored. The origin of werewolves wasn’t necessary for this story to progress. We also didn’t need an explanation for Luna’s power outside of what could be implied by her father being a lone wolf whom her mother had a one-night stand with. By explaining these things, Buroker has opened the door for unnecessary plot holes down the line.
And speaking of things that could previously been ignored …
Powers of Hell
Early in the story, Luna and Duncan visit an alchemist early in the story for information on the thugs who stole the wolf case, reasoning that the thugs’ supernatural strength came from a potion that they’d have needed an alchemist to make. The alchemist’s neighbors are aware of and not fond of her supernatural activities. Graffiti on her door includes “demon worshipper” and “devil-spawn”. These actions are written off as harassment … but not refuted. These are the only two lines we get from Luna on the matter.
I eyed [the graffiti], wondering what the alchemist did besides burning incense. Maybe her magic stirred up other people’s hackles as well.
…
Before following [Duncan] in, I glanced again at the witch and demon graffiti on the door. She probably didn’t deserve that, assuming she wasn’t using her power to do anything harmful to people. since she’d made me a potion to help, I was inclined to believe that she didn’t regularly put hexes on the neighbors or turn kids into toads.
When magic was this unexplained phenomenon associated with the natural world, there wasn’t any reason to ask about its origins. Furthermore, while this was clearly a setting where any and all magical elements exist, the issue of the divine could be skirted around, since it was never put into focus.
Now, though … baseline humans instinctively register this alchemist as an agent of ontological evil, the same way Luna can pick up on the primal fury of werewolves.
So the question has to be asked: what percentage, if any, of the magic and magical entities of this setting are Satanic in origin? Is this alchemist brewing her potions with the help of very literal power from Hell? Are these demons running around to corrupt mortal souls and offer Faustian bargains?
This then further begs the question of whether the werewolves should be saved, or whether it’s best for everyone that they and all other magic fade from the world. As pointed out by Arch when discussing Trench Crusade (on his political channel, so fair warning if you decide to click that link), once a setting establishes ontological evil as existing in a very literal, natural, and empirically provable sense, the morality of everything else in the setting skews around it. Merely hinting that Hell is real, that the Devil might one day go down to Georgia to challenge a fiddler to a music competition, means that there is absolute evil in the world, and anything spawned from it is therefore also evil. The alchemist insisting that she doesn’t use spells that require human sacrifice means nothing if she associates with objective evil to use the spells she does cast. Who knows what horrid agenda she might unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly) be serving? And, by extension, if the dragons engineered the werewolves through demonic power or are themselves demonic in nature, isn’t the world better off without said hellhounds in it?
I sincerely hope that this was an unnecessary rabbit hole for me to go down, but lore details like this really do make a difference. If this setting is one where the association of magic and magical beings with Hell is completely unfounded, wonderful. I hope that’s the case. That makes the magical community into the victims of ignorance and prejudice. However, Buroker has at this point opened the door for objective, natural evil to exist in this world while doing nothing to shut said door. I think it’s reasonable to question whether we really want Luna to bring about a Renaissance of the Hellhound.
PROSE / EDITING
Buroker’s prose continues to demonstrate a professional level of polish. This reads like a book that received an adequate degree of planning and redrafting to ensure that story being told was as good as possible. The fact that this is a fairly simple story certainly helps in this regard. Buroker isn’t tripping over her own lore to make the story happen the way that she wants it to.
Now that we are two books in, I’ve realized that I was mistaken about something I said in this same section of the Way of the Wolf review. I previously thought that we were were getting so much repeated information was due to editing errors. Now, it’s becoming clear that Buroker showing us Luna’s thoughts and reactions regarding obvious things built on previously established information is a deliberate choice. This is a deliberate lack of subtlety. I wouldn’t say that this issue is a severe as in The Empyrean - these aren’t cases of tension spiking due to an implied threat and then bleeding away as the POV character turns to the audience and says, “I think that was a threat” - but there were a few moments where I found myself reacting to these moments with, “Yes, we already know that. Why don’t you have any faith in our ability to remember basic facts that you have already firmly established?”
ROMANCE
A Good Example
Back when I posted my Reshelf Romantasy, I commented that Romance can be added to Fantasy without breaking the genre and alienating the fanbase. it just needs to be part of a well-written story that respects its audience.
Relics is a good example of this. The Romance gets a lot more focus in this book than in Way. As covered above, the sexual elements are also dialed up, and they are absolutely phrased in a manner that’s meant to appeal to women specifically. However, Buroker is not leaning upon this as a crutch. She is still telling an engaging and effective narrative that is worth the price of admission even without the sexual elements. This is a good Fantasy book that features Romance elements, rather than a bad Fantasy book that hides behind them.
I would not go so far as to call Magnetic Magic a Romantasy series. The Romance isn’t what drives the narrative. Luna’s exploration of her identity of a werewolf would be happening with or without Duncan; even where he does contribute, him being a love interest doesn’t alter the trajectory from what it would be if he was a platonic acquaintance. The Romance subplot is just that: a subplot.
A Bad Example
All that being said … this Romance feels very shallow.
I’m not saying that there’s no chemistry between Luna and Duncan. There’s plenty of it, and most of it isn’t sexual. They get along well together. Luna is a straight-laced and disciplined person with a lot of responsibility, while Duncan is a laid-back guy who both relaxes her with his casual attitude to life and gladly helps her bear her burdens. The times their dialogue doesn’t feel natural to me can be chalked up to my subjective take that Duncan is still insufferable. There’s also a clear emotional journey that Luna is undertaking through this relationship. She is learning to trust and open up to someone again after her ex-husband’s infidelity.
This also isn’t an issue of whether the obstacles to the narrative are valid. Luna has very good reasons not to trust Duncan specifically, especially when one of the reveals of Way is that he was working for her ex to steal the wolf case out of her apartment. The fact that he is a lone wolf moving through her pack’s territory also adds a political angle that makes Luna’s already-difficult relationship with her family a lot more perilous. These are problems that need to be solved, or at least accepted, before the subplot can resolve.
The problem comes back to something we covered up above: Relics is driven by the plot, not by the characters, and the characters get very little development. As a result, it doesn’t feel like Luna is undergoing the character growth that this relationship was set up to reflect.
Which brings us to the sexual content.
The Romance subplot within Relics advances almost entirely through sex: through intimate gestures, kisses, and Luna acknowledging to herself how much she wants to have sex with him (both in human and in wolf form, where where recognizes Duncan as the one she wants to “mate” with). Nudity is used to dial all these moments up. As a result, while there may be more to this relationship than sex, it feels like sex is the core of it at this stage.
I’m hoping Buroker goes deeper into the emotional side of things in future. For now, though, this Romance barely has more substance than the one from The Empyrean (which I’ll be dissecting properly on November 7th).
FINAL THOUGHTS
Relics of the Wolf isn’t perfect, but most of the elements that might be considered a flaw could still be salvaged as Magnetic Magic progresses. It all comes down to where Buroker takes things. In isolation, this is a fun and satisfying story with the promise of more to come down the line. If you’re looking for a brief escape, I highly recommend it.
KINDRED STORIES & NE W WORLDS
The review of Kin of the Wolf will need to wait for a little while. I’ve found myself drawn into another indie book, Charlotte Goodwin’s The Queen of Vorn.
This is a book that demands a multi-part series (though not nearly as deep of an analysis as Onyx Storm). The reason for this is that the story is told is a very disjointed way. The balance being Showing and Telling is so askew that the prose is actively undermining the story Goodwin wants to tell. One can certainly see what she’s going for, but her decisions of what to Show and what to Tell actively works against this goal. To fully explore this issue, we’re going to have a four-part series:
Part 1, releasing June 27th, will be a general overview of the book as a whole.
Parts 2 through 4, releasing biweekly from July 11th to August 8th, will go chapter by chapter to hit the key beats of how the imbalance of Showing and Telling undermines the story.
In the interim, the Onyx Storm review is going to leap forward and then slow down, thanks to a pair of Spotlight analyses.
Next week, on June 20th, we’ll go all the way from Chapter 13 through Chapter 18. This section of the book is narrative dead span with relatively little to talk about in each chapter, outside of breaking down how Yarros continues to delay that start of the actual narrative in favor of power fantasy and sexual tension.
On July 4th, we’ll be covering Chapter 19 and analyzing Yarros’s habit of demonizing characters.
On July 18th, we’ll be covering Chapter 20 and exploring how Yarros utterly mangling her theme. For those who followed my progress updates of my first read-through on Twitter, this was the chapter that prompted me to say that Onyx Storm was on-track to earn a 0.5/10.
And, of course, the premiere of “The Unbottled Idol”, a 13-chapter web novella, is just over 2 weeks away, beginning with Chapter 1 on July 1st and continuing with new posts each week on Tuesday.
Mohsen Yavari's task within the Imperial Inquisition was simple: monitor the gods' activities in the mortal world. When a diplomat is killed by a goddess, a maverick inquisitor recruits him for her investigation. Their search for answers will lay bare sinister truths, with a child’s soul hanging in the balance.
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