Tag: LGBTGIA dark urban fantasy

Review: Only Unity Will Spare Us: The Magi Accounts Book 5 by Michele Notaro

Rating : 5🌈

There’s always so many thoughts and emotions one has when approaching a finale novel in a beloved series. When that series is a dark urban fantasy about a particularly extremely violent, torturous dystopian world, the range of emotions will be deeply varied as the storylines. Especially here where in a world where a different US is at war. A almost recognizable one we’ve seen before where the humans in charge have used other species (or races) shifters and mages, as weapons and tools, things. Those in charge inhumanly categorizing them as objects to be abused, used and discarded as the humans wanted.

Make no mistake, as gorgeously written and powerfully conceived as The Magi Accounts series is, these books are often equally wrenching and disturbing to read. The compounds the magi are bred and raised in like stock animals, as well as the abusive, torturous, often deadly nature of the treatment they were subjected to there, is harrowing reading. And the subject of more than one trigger warning. The same is said about that of the narrative treatment of shifters, although not necessarily in the gore-ridden way.

Through four books, we’ve found all the members of the now combined Ono-Nai tribe, watched them grow, in some cases learning to deal with the pain and abuse that brought them into the tribe, and for others form mate bonds with each other, until this enlarged family has become a greater whole that means something deeply special to us as readers. It’s not just the mage dyads Madeo aka Mads and Jude. Or the main bonded pair of mage Mads and alpha lion shifter Cosmo Ono-Nai. It’s Jude, and his bond mates. And the rest of the tribe, shifters, mages, humans, even pets. All have made an indelible impression and contribution to the heartfelt rightness that has developed into the Ono-Nai diverse family/tribe. One of the unity of the title and one that Mads and his family is striving for their future.

It’s a truly agonizing epic showdown, one that’s been long awaited between Mads and his tribe and the horrific, terrifying Anderson, the Red Cloak witches, with their plan to destroy all the mages and shifters for a human only universe.

Did I end up sobbing buckets of tears? Yes, yes I did. As I expected to. There’s so much going on in the narrative. From beautiful scenes of family life and laughter, to sheer terror and heartbreak, memories of darkness and pain, blood and death, all that has to come , realistically in this world, before even large battles can be won.

Is everything solved at the end? No. But the majority of the problems are resolved in a manner that leaves the characters and readers in a better place . One that makes sense and leaves us with a sense of completion and satisfaction .

Only Unity Will Spare Us: The Magi Accounts Book 5 by Michele Notaro is a fantastic finale and a perfect way to end a magnificent dark urban fantasy.

I highly recommend this series. Read it in the order it’s written and with regard for its trigger warnings.

Just a side note. I wished for more for the Taragorians. Logan had it right. That the rift or a magical aspect of it seemed sentient was fascinating. I wish for more of this place please.

The Magi Accounts:

✓ The Scars That Bind Us #1

✓ The Shackles That Hold Us #2

✓ A Purpose That Restores Us #3

✓ A Ruse To Unchain Us #4

✓ Only Unity Will Spare Us #5 -Series Finale

The Magi Accounts Companion stories:

✓ Our Hearts That Tie Us: The Magi Accounts Prequel

✓ A Kiss To Revive Me: The Magi Accounts 1.5

✓ A Date to Impress Him: The Magi Accounts 2.5

✓ A Holiday to Sustain Us: A Magi Accounts Holiday

✓ An Embrace To Hearten Me: The Magi Accounts 3.5

✓ A Heart To Revitalize Me: The Magi Accounts 4.5

Buy Link:

Only Unity Will Spare Us: The Magi Accounts 5

Blurb:

I made a promise to the enemy… and I intended to keep it.

Thank the goddess I have my pride and my wonderful, amazing mate—whose patience matches no other—because the world is in chaos, and Cosmo is my rock, my safe place inside the storm. If only I could find the time between witches, work, politics, and family to prove it to him.

The Shifter and Magi Equality Act is in full effect, supposedly making us equals, but the people themselves—the humans—are still treating us as lesser. Every time I turn around, we’re running into trouble between humans and non-humans.

To make matters worse, witches are everywhere in Fairview City, and the Red Cloth is encouraging humans to join their forces and challenge the equality my people have fought so hard to get.

And now, Anderson is back. Back and gunning for me.

But he doesn’t realize I’m gunning for him, too.

Only Unity Will Spare Us is the fifth and FINAL book in the MM urban fantasy series, The Magi Accounts. It’s recommended to read the series in order because the romance and plot progress throughout the series.

*Intended for adults only. Please read the trigger warnings at the beginning of this novel.

• Publication date: April 19, 2024

• Language: English

• Print length: 417 pages

Review: The Shackles That Hold Us (The Magi Accounts #2) by Michele Notaro

Rating: 4.75 🌈

I sometimes wonder if you can really love a story when you spend so much time cringing in anxiety over the anticipated horrors you know will be visited upon the characters you’re coming to connect with and the found family that’s being constructed. Somehow I’ve found a way. It’s just that great.

The Shackles That Hold Us is only the second book in Michele Notaro’s fantastic dark fantasy series, The Magi Accounts, but already it’s served as both a outstanding foundation for the characters but also as a warning for this horrific, grim universe where several species of beings are seen as nothing less than disposable tools, or worse.

Tagged, tortured, served up as war fodder , born in breeding camps. This is the nature and foundation of the Magi. And the Shifters have it only marginally better. Be warned. The torture scenes happen on page. And to characters we have come to care about.

And because dyad pair magi Madeo and Jude Driscoll are magically powerful, they are targets so any “misbehavior “ will see them collared and taken to a compound for punishment.

This is a utterly brutal world and Notaro makes us feel every inhuman rule, every legal enforcement that uses to pain to degrade and in some instances kill those that would fight back against humanity and those that are oppressing them.

Each story dives a little further into the heartbreaking , cruel conditions under which the humans have managed to contain and imprison all magi for decades. Compounds become breeding camps, children removed to become tools for war. All seen slowly through the tortured memories of Mads and Jude when they’re able to emotionally to look back at what they’ve endured.

This includes, and will probably continue to bring up instances of child sexual abuse.

As I said this series is a dark fantasy fiction and each book will fill the reader with dread as the stakes build higher for all the characters as the events point towards even more deaths and battles to come.

The characters here. The magi, and all the members of the pride are so perfectly layered. Each has a well developed personality and each shows growth as the Pride and the three magi, Mads, Jude, and Logan (all part of the Pride) face greater challenges to the multitude relationships forming and the ones hitting them as a team.

Notaro’s storylines continue to build a series arc that carries a potential for horrific events and further deaths to come.

I’m both highly anticipating the next book and highly afraid for all the characters.

If you love fantasy, read this. But only if you read the trigger warnings first. You decide what you’re comfortable with.

Here’s the series. They must be read in the order they were written to understand the events and relationships.

The Magi Accounts:

🔹The Scars That Bind Us #1

🔹The Shackles That Hold Us #2

🔹A Date To Impress Him #2.5

🔹A Purpose That Restores Us #3 – TBR

The Shackles That Hold Us: The Magi Accounts 2 – Kindle edition – Amazon.com

Synopsis:

As if crushin’ on a shifter wasn’t bad enough, I had to go and date one.

A mage and a shifter walk into a bar… No, that’s the whole joke.

Magi and shifters don’t mix, and yet I find myself in a relationship with Cosmo, a lion shifter. And on top of that, Cosmo, and all his pride members, consider my brothers and me to be a part of their pride. Three magi in a shifter pride. Who would’ve ever thought?

Navigating our connection while trying to figure out what’s going on in the world isn’t easy. Trusting that Cosmo means forever when he says it? Even harder. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned since meeting the Ono-Nais, it’s that taking a risk with my heart will be worth it to be a part of their lives.

The Shackles That Hold Us is a 113K novel and the second book in the MM urban fantasy series, The Magi Accounts. It’s recommended to read the series in order because it has an ongoing storyline.

*Intended for adults only. Please read the trigger warnings at the beginning of this novel.