The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne by C.L. Schneider – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

Magic-Borne by C.L. Schneider
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ian Troy returns and he has more magic scars than ever, but when his spells show him something he was not prepared for, he has to think about his past, present and future and base his decisions on the uncertainty surrounding him. He is still a fugitive, thanks to his past castings, but he is now wanted in multiple lands, as well as by his father, but he still tries to make the world around him a better place, even though as usual, it doesn’t always go to plan for him, or those close to him.

While he is casting spells to find out what his father has planned, he journeys to different times and places, but not all the answers he seeks are available to him and while on one of these journeys, he experiences a bleak future where everything he has worked towards has been thwarted. The resistance he has been routed, the tenuous relationships within it destroyed and nearly everyone he knows is alive and all hope that was there is now gone, so when Ian returns to the present, he is determined to stop this future in its path, so he uses the knowledge he gained while there to do this.

Meanwhile, tensions build between Rella, Langor and Ian’s father as peace treaties are stretched to breaking point and political posturing is showing people’s true colours and is leading the armies closer to the return to the brink of war between the lands. Ian is also realising his increasingly apparent transformation into the more beastlike form of an eldring, he tries to stave off from casting in an attempt to buy himself some time, but as he searches the past for a way to defeat his father, bring peace to the lands around him and break the transformation the Crown of Stones is causing, he has to battle his inner demons too.

How far can Ian go before he breaks, or worse, becomes an eldring and how big a sacrifice will he be willing to make in order to reach his goals and will he be able to pay the price demanded? This is another epic race against time in a fantasy land where apartheid rules, magic is both life, death and currency and those who wield it are both saviours and destroyers, but whom is which is what you will only be able to find out by reading this addictive story until its conclusion.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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