My favorite of the Magpie books. I was surprised by this! The premise turned me off a little, which is why it took me so long to pick up. I’m not really a fan of “redeeming the bad guy” stories, but of course Charles pulls it off. And, as it turns out, Jonah wasn’t really a bad guy for what he did in the original trilogy. He was being coerced, very strongly.
Our narrator isn’t Jonah Pastern, though, it’s ex-policeman Ben Spenser, who was left behind by his lover Jonah to face jail time and months of hard labor for “gross indecency.” Ben’s life was completely ruined after Jonah swept out of it one morning. He lost his friends, his family, his job, and his health, and can no longer find decent work. He wants to find Jonah and exact his revenge (which is the most gentle form of revenge, wanting him to be punished for his crimes, and he can’t even do that in the end because he’s too good of a guy).
For once with these Magpie-world books, the romance is the star of the show and the world and the magic takes a backseat, which I very much appreciated. Jonah and Ben’s relationship is very compelling and sweet, and in the end, satisfying. I did think it a bit hand-wavy how it ended, because it would never have ended that way in real life, but this isn’t real life, and I’m glad these characters got their happy ending.