To be destroyed from within is more dangerous than having an outside enemy. It's easy to turn against the people you thought you knew and trusted when a mysterious spy enters the story. With this new enemy, the kids of the Magisterium face a new threat, one they can't see. The third book in the Magisterium series is cleverly crafted; the authors point readers to where they want us to look, so no one can guess what's coming. Striking and heartbreaking, with such a crazy cliffhanger, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare succeed again at writing another well-paced, action-packed, complex middle grade novel. Holly Black and Cassandra Clare first met over ten years ago at Holly's first-ever book signing. They have since become good friends, bonding over (among other things) their shared love of fantasy. With Magisterium, they decided to team up to write their own story about heroes and villains, good and evil, and being chosen for greatness, whether you like it or not. Holly is the bestselling author and co-creator of The Spiderwick Chronicles series and won a Newbery Honor for her novel Doll Bones. She recently finished The Folk of the Air series, and you can find my reviews of those here. Cassie is the author of bestselling YA series, including The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, The Dark Artifices, and The Last Hours. They both live in Western Massachusetts, about ten minutes away from each other. This is their first collaboration, and marks the start of a five-book series. If you're interested in more of my reviews of Holly Black's work, you can find them all here. If you're interested in more of my reviews of Cassandra Clare's work, you can find them here.
Students at the Magisterium are supposed to be safe. Under the watchful eyes of the mages, they are taught to use magic to bring order to a chaotic world. But now the chaos is fighting back. Call, Tamara, and Aaron should be worrying about things like pop quizzes and magic contests. Instead, after the shocking death of one of their classmates, they must track down a sinister killer . . . and risk their own lives in the process. As Call, Tamara, and Aaron discover, magic can only be as good as the person who wields it. In evil hands, it has the capacity to do immeasurable harm -- unless it is stopped in time.
Call, Tamara, and Aaron keep on growing during this series. Call is definitely one of my favorite characters because he's the most complex. He knows who he is, but he doesn't know what he wants to do with that knowledge. He doesn't really know anything about himself, but he knows what he wants to be. These may seem like vague descriptions, but there's a purpose to that: I'm sure everyone can relate to at least one of those descriptions, which makes Call one of the most relatable middle grade characters out there. In this novel, his character is being further cemented, in that he doesn't know if he's the good guy or the bad guy -- but he wants to be good. That calls into question so many things: how can we be truly good, when the way to get there involves dirty shortcuts? Is there even such thing as being truly good? And where will everyone else factor into that decision? Tamara and Aaron are also fascinating, and I wish we could explore their characters more in the series, too. Tamara is the only one not a Makar in their apprentice group. It obviously makes her feel left-out, but I wonder if she's going to find a way to make herself just as important as Aaron and Call, so they can continue their lessons together. I think Tamara still has a ways to go with her character development, and I'm excited to see how far she can go -- because she definitely has the potential to get there. I love how Aaron is the "hero" character, but in a masterful way. He's a hero but doesn't want to be a hero, but will do it if it means paying the magic world back what it gave him. He doesn't like attention, but he'll gracefully accept it because he's a genuinely nice person. Aaron comes from a broken past, and sometimes that gets to him, but overall, he prevails. Call is jealous of him, but also not, because Aaron is the way Call is able to see how unfair the world is. I think it's interesting that Call never really sees Aaron as the hero, despite that spot-on sort of portrayal. Instead, Aaron and Tamara represent different ways to see the world for Call, and helps Call understand how much bigger and meaner the world is than any of them could be.
Loyalties are tested. The focus of the group dynamics in The Bronze Key is if you can truly trust the person next to you, the person you've been getting to know over the past two/three years. Are they who they say they are? The goal of this book in the series is to further cement the characters, rather than just the magic world and the kind of plot arc this series will have. Cementing character is important, and deeper, than those two things. No matter what, readers can always go back to character. Some of the best and most beloved books have that status because of how loved and revered the characters are. The Bronze Key is calling into question which characters we should respect and praise, just by including a spy that piques the curiosity of our trio. When the group is working together to find the spy, it teaches readers that you can work with anyone, because everyone has some unique skill set that can help you solve problems. But, of course, we learn that not everyone can always be trusted, which is pretty scary in the face of the fate of the Magisterium. It goes to show how the most unlikeliest of people can surprise you (in good and bad ways). The authors don't shy away from these complex, personal themes. It's not always rainbow and sunshine with people in the real world, and the authors reflect that into the themes and dynamics of this novel. Of course, though, there's always banter and jokes. The world isn't totally bleak. The banter between characters is much more developed -- it's funny, it's fresh, and it makes you smile no matter your age.
After fighting so many enemies outside the Magisterium (Call's dad, Master Joseph, and the Enemy of Death, to name a few), it's a nice change of pace to be fighting against someone on the inside when everyone else thinks the threat has been neutralized. The originality and excitement of this spy storyline highlights the importance of character and the theme of trust in this novel, in a way other storylines might not achieve. This storyline led to the exploration of so many different characters, endings, and parts of the magic world we didn't get to see in the earlier books as much, like the Collegium, and the great elementals. I enjoy how short the book is (only about 250 pages), but how the authors really use every page to advance their complex themes, fun storyline, and twisted plot. By fighting someone on the inside, readers get to truly understand the complete ins-and-outs of the magic world, in a way we didn't in the early introductory novels. We're invested in characters now, torn in how they might go on, and yet cheering them on and worrying for them when they make their choices. This was all very well-done, making for a captivating read.
One of my favorite little parts of this novel was the inclusion of the romance -- it's not a very big inclusion, or even a really big deal, but it does ground us in remembering that these characters are just kids going to co-ed school together. It's very sweet and awkward, just like real life is at that age. The authors have been working up to Call and Celia liking each other, so the development of that feels inevitable, and yet the authors still surprise us here! It's also part of what makes this book refreshing from the previous two, in that we get to explore what romance and marriage would look like in this magic world, and how relationships form or are abolished. The romance parts with Call, Celia, and Jasper are silly fun, but never overwhelming or annoying to the larger plot of the novel. Like the banter, it's developed and just enough to make you want to know what happens next with this subplot of the series.
After a truly heartbreaking ending and a surprise reveal, what will Call do next to defeat the Enemy of Death, once and for all? Find out in the fourth book of the series, The Silver Mask! Find my review of it here!
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