The Conjurer is the third and final installment in the Vine Witch series. All three women, Elena the vine witch, Yvette the fee, and Sidra the jinni, who bound their fates together in a fateful jail cell are back, this time to aid Sidra whether they want to or not. Sidra and Yvette are ousted from the Fee lands by Yvette’s grandfather and king and transplanted to Sidra’s old hometown. Elena is visited by Sidra’s brother-in-law Jamra who is hellbent on revenge for the murder of his brother seemingly by Sidra’s hand. When Elena doesn’t give Jamra the information he wants right away, he curses her husband, and the only way to save him is to track down Sidra. The three women soon discover that Jamra has other plans besides just revenge, plans to tip the balance of the world toward chaos. They must join forces one more time to stop Jamra dastardly plans.
Out of the three in the series, this was my second favorite and a definite improvement on the second novel. Smith certainly found a rhythm for these characters that felt lived in but not boring. The comradery between Elena, Yvette, and Sidra is that special kind of relationship that can only be formed between people who faced immense obstacles danger together and lived. Smith also continued to find new ways for each of the women’s magic to expand in this novel as well as introduce some other ways that magic can be worked which was fun to discover and see playout through the novel. Some of Sidra’s magic was less well-explained than Yvette’s or Elena’s (like, is Sidra actually conjuring all of those things all of the time? What is the point of physical items then ever? Where did those items come from? Or is it all just a really wonderful illusion?), but I can largely set those issues aside. After all, it is magic.
The only complaint that I have about this novel is the same complaint that I had for The Vine Witch and The Glamourist: the action sequences got a little muddled. It was sometimes difficult to follow who is where and doing what which took me out of those high energy moments.