5 Star Review: Max and the Citadel of Light by John Peragine

Is it a school for magic or is it a prison?

I was sent a complimentary eBook copy of Max and the Citadel of Light by the author, John Peragine, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for this opportunity to read the next installment in this adventure! As always, my thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Check out my reviews of the earlier books in this series:
– Max and the Spice Thieves by John Peragine (4 Stars)
– Max and the Isle of Sanctus by John Peragine (5 Stars)

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About the Book

Max and the Citadel of Light
Secrets of the Twilight Djinn Book Three
by John Peragine

Published 17 November 2022
Crumblebee Books

Genre: MG Fantasy
Page Count: 239
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Is it a school for magic or is it a prison?

In this third installment of the Secrets of the Twilight Djinn series, Max Daybreaker finds himself stranded on the Isle of Sanctus. The Spice Pirate ship, the Saucy Pig, is broken and burnt, and Captain Cinn and his crew are marooned. Max begins school at the Academy of Elemental Magic, overseen by a powerful witch, Mistress Pandora. Max uncovers the dark secrets about the island with its ominous tower, The Citadel of Light, at its center. Max must trust his friends, both old and new, to survive the darkness invading his world, free his best friend Mesha, and escape the island before he is trapped there forever.

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My Review

My Rating: 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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I was sent a complimentary eBook copy of Max and the Citadel of Light by the author, John Peragine, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for this opportunity to read the next installment in this adventure! As always, my thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Max has found his mother, but all is not well. Shortly after the resolution of their last adventure, Max is whisked away to a magic school run by none other than his grandmother, but things are not as they appear to be and Max is in grave danger.

This is the best book yet in this series! I couldn’t put it down. While this one doesn’t involve a whole lot of watery settings, it’s still packed with adventure, and Max learns so much more about himself, his family, and the world he finds himself in. Max goes through so much growth in this book, and I’m all here for it! I also really loved all of the in-depth world-building surrounding how magic works in this world, and what exactly Max’s magic is.

Although I do strongly recommend reading this series in order, I’ll note that Max does a fantastic job of summarizing who’s who, what’s what, and where’s where in the opening chapter of this book, so if for some reason you had to skip straight here after book one, you’d probably be okay. You’d spoil book two, though!

I can’t wait to see where Max and his friends will go next, and I’m looking forward to learning more about his father now that we’ve spent so much time with his mother.

Something I just had to note that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the story is the term “demi-boy.” One character consistently calls Max a demi-boy, as opposed to demi-god, and it made me smirk every time. Why? There’s a subset of non-binary gender identity labels known as demi-genders, including demiboy and demigirl. As a user of the demigirl label, I imagined someone mistaking my gender identity for a claim to be half goddess, and I love it! I’ll take it.

About the Author

John Peragine is an author of over fourteen books. The Secrets of the Twilight Djinn series was written as a bedtime story for his son Max to cope with medical issues he was facing as a little boy. John is a full-time ghostwriter who lives with his son, wife, and a menagerie of animals on his vineyard overlooking the Mississippi River.

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