Genre: Fantasy
Age range: MG
Star Rating: 4 stars
Series: second book
*SPOILER ALERT: contains SPOILERS for AMARI AND THE NIGHT BROTHERS*
Blurb:
After finding her brother and saving the entire supernatural world, Amari Peters is convinced her first full summer as a Junior Agent will be a breeze.
But between the fearsome new Head Minister’s strict anti-magician agenda, fierce Junior Agent rivalries, and her brother Quinton’s curse steadily worsening, Amari’s plate is full. So when the secretive League of Magicians offers her a chance to stand up for magiciankind as its new leader, she declines. She’s got enough to worry about!
But her refusal allows someone else to step forward, a magician with dangerous plans for the League. This challenge sparks the start of the Great Game, a competition to decide who will become the Night Brothers’ successor and determine the future of magiciankind.
The Great Game is both mysterious and deadly, but among the winner’s magical rewards is Quinton’s last hope . . . so how can Amari refuse?
Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here.
Review:
AMARI AND THE GREAT GAME is a great sequel that raises the stakes and takes us deeper into the magical world living alongside ours.
It has taken me a very long time to get around to this book (my friend’s copy has sat on my shelf for almost a year, oops!) and I’m glad I forced myself to make time for it at last. It was a lot of fun to rediscover this world.
This is a tale of power grabs on both sides, showing what fear does to people, and the actions they might take from this fear. But it is also about overcoming fear and not making actions from that place, desperate to lash out.
The prejudice against magicians is very much still here in this book (and quite obviously an analogy for prejudice based on skin colour and race.) It felt like there was more nuance in this book as it delved deeper into the different ways power systems are used to enforce injustice and how easy it can be for people who the prejudice isn’t aimed at to go against it to make life less uncomfortable for themselves. It’s not just that the situation is unfair, but that the how it possible for it to be this unjust is explored too.
There is also a magical contest going on. Amari is in a race one-on-one to gain power over the league of magicians that she doesn’t want but she most certainly doesn’t want Dylan to have. I liked how the format kept the stages and failure points structure of the previous book (tryouts) but with different challenges and stakes that kept the book feeling like a continuation of the series while not being the same.
There are old friends and new teaming up in this book. I loved Elsie returning but Lara and Jayden were great additions to Team Amari (as well as secondary members coming in as friends of friends pulled into the periphery.) Amari certainly needs all the help she can get to tackle her various enemies.
The book ends on a big cliffhanger for the last book in the trilogy as villains are unmasked and the world descends into war.
Read my reviews of other books by B. B. Alston:
Supernatural Investigations (this series):
Sifa Elizabeth Reads 