Witness the fate of beloved heroes and notorious foes in V.E. Schwab’s New York Times bestselling Shades of Magic series. This discounted ebundle includes: A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, A Conjuring of Light Kell is one of the last Antari–magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. After an … once upon a time, Black. After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive.
A Darker Shade of Magic — Kell was raised in Arnes–Red London–and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.
A Gathering of Shadows — Restless, and having given up smuggling, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks like she always meant to do. And while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Element Games, another London is coming back to life, and those who were thought to be forever gone have returned.
A Conjuring of Light — As darkness sweeps the Maresh Empire, the once precarious balance of power among the four Londons has reached its breaking point. In the wake of tragedy, Kell–once assumed to be the last surviving Antari–begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. Lila Bard has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry.
Tor books by V. E. Schwab
The Shades of Magic series
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light
The Villains series
Vicious
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I didn’t want this series to end.
This series is absolutely perfect, I loved every second.
The Shades of Magic series is one of the best—if not the best—series that I’ve read. With an enticing story, great world building, and amazing characters, this is one sure to hold your attention.
Delicious! I devoured the entire trilogy in four days.
A few months ago, my editor recommended that I read the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. After reading it, I definitely recommend it for fans of fantasy books and would like to share my spoiler-free take on the series.
Here is the official blurb for the Shades of Magic series:
“Kell is one of the last Antari―magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Officially he serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador. Unofficially he’s a smuggler, an occupation through which Kell is tricked into unleashing dark magic across the Londons. Can he prevent the same fate that befell Black London?”
From very early into the first book, A Darker Shade of Magic, I was swept away into its world. Or, rather, its worlds.
The concept of multiple parallel worlds, each with its own history and experience with magic, creates a rich setting for a fantasy series. Red London, where Kell is from, is in a world that prospers and exists in balance with magic. Grey London seems to pretty much be our world, with little magic running through it. White London is a cutthroat world, where people kill for scraps of magic and tyrants rule until they are killed by the next ruthless and power hungry person. Black London has been laid to waste by their quest to dominate magic. Each world is richly developed and feels unique from the others. Through this diversity, the worlds almost seem like characters themselves as they come to life in the series.
Speaking of characters, the Shades of Magic definitely has a strong cast. Kell is a talented and sullen protagonist who takes his responsibilities as an Antari seriously, perhaps sometimes too seriously. The most interesting character is perhaps Holland, an Antari from White London. It is hard to describe what makes his story so fascinating without spoilers, but his tortured backstory, gray morality, and winding character arc combine to make him one of the most well-developed characters I’ve read lately. My favorite character is probably Delilah Bard, a thief from Grey London who has a bit of edge and sass and is quite capable in her own right. I think she and Nereyda from my own Storm Raven would get along pretty well.
As a series, I enjoyed how each book further developed the world and characters without feeling like they rehashed the same storylines. Book three, A Conjuring of Light, stands out particularly for a wonderful use of suspense that lingers throughout the whole book and propelled me to keep reading.
Overall, I highly recommend that you check out the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab.
This is a very fast paced and entertaining trilogy where each book is better than the previous one. In all honesty, I considered not continuing after the first one because, while it was certainly entertaining, the style was kind of YA-ish and I didn’t see it having much by way of theme or sophistication (I was particularly bothered by the black and white good vs. evil divisions). It was definitely worth it to continue on. The second book is a delight in terms of character interactions and the third brings in more themes and moral complexity and ties things up in a very satisfying way (there are some mysteries left unexplained- but I see that the author intends to write more books in the same world, so perhaps we’ll get answers later).
One thing that I appreciated, which many readers may not, was how transparent the mechanics of the story are. The author is clearly very trope-savvy and she clearly clues you in on exactly which ones she’s using and how exactly she might be subverting them. There are certainly some plot points that come as a surprise, but there are also a lot of clear set-ups where the suspense comes from wondering how this element is going to work into the whole. A downside of this is that it’s easy to read into things and come up with some false positives for foreshadowing that might be deliberate red herrings or might be artifacts from previous drafts where things turned out differently or might just be errors. There are some readers who may be bothered that they can guess some plot points before they happen, but they probably can’t guess all of them, so I don’t think that’s a serious flaw in the work. There are some predictable elements, but the series isn’t overall predictable.
Also, I’m noticing that a lot of negative online reviews of this series complain about Lila and call her a Mary Sue. I can sympathize if you find her annoying but she definitely isn’t a Mary Sue. I mean, the term is used to mean a lot of different things, but I don’t think she meets any of the serious criteria. Let me just go through it:
– Author insert- no, Lila definitely isn’t an author insert. I don’t know the author personally, but based on her description she seems very different from Lila. And besides that, I can’t imagine Lila having the patience to write one book let alone several.
-Too perfect- no, Lila isn’t perfect at all. She’s a thief. She doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. She’s impulsive, which is sometimes a strength but also gets her into a lot of trouble.
– The story revolves around her- no, Lila is of equal or lesser importance to the story compared to Kell. The spotlight is shared.
-Overly powerful- she is very powerful, but she does lose fights and needs help sometimes
-Everyone likes her- no, they don’t.
-Bland personality that any teenager can project themself into- Lila is bothering people by having too much personality or being too unrelatable if anything.
-Wish fulfillment- nah, I don’t see it.
So you see, Lila fits none of the criteria of being a Mary Sue except for being a major female character with some power, which should not be a justification for condemnation.
Really, Lila is mostly a gender-swapped version of the rascal outlaw trope. This is clear from her very first scene where she interacts with a wanted poster of herself that gets her gender wrong. The only things she does that a male character wouldn’t do is worrying about/fending off sexual assault (not to a gratuitous extent in my opinion), befriending a dressmaker (probably a demonstration by the author that Lila’s gender nonconformity is not a condemnation of more feminine women- because people are weird about that these days. Oh! But she is genuinely gender nonconforming without any hyperfeminine traits thrown in to “balance” her! That is rare.), and being attracted to men (I mean, it’s rare for male characters, though obviously not unheard of- there are some gay/bi men in this by the way!). It’s fine if you’re annoyed by her, it’s just that 1) she isn’t a Mary Sue and 2) please don’t hold her to a higher standard than you would a male character.
Oh, and people complain about Lila being too emphatically a “strong independent woman who doesn’t need anyone.” Guys! You’re supposed to pick up from her initial interactions with Barron that this is a lie she’s telling herself! A lot of her character arc is about overcoming her fear of intimacy (and she doesn’t get “tamed” as often happens with female characters with a similar starting point!). Do you complain about Shrek being too emphatically a strong independent ogre who doesn’t need anyone? I thought not.
I loved this series. In A Darker Shade of Magic we learn that there are four Londons existing in different realms – Red London, where magic is thriving, Grey London (our London) where magic seems to have disappeared, White London, where the people are starving for magic and sometimes manage to tap into it by manipulating it, and Black London, where magic went out of control and destroyed the city and its people. In the first book the main character, Kell, from Red London, is one of the few magicians who can go between the worlds. He encounters a thief in Grey London, Lila Bard, and the two travel together to get rid of an unwelcome and dangerous artifact that resurfaces from Black London. In the next two books, the characters reappear, you find more about the worlds, and a dark magic figure from Black London seeks to extend his control to the other Londons.
I thought it was a very engaging series and an interesting set of worlds. I loved the characters. Fantasy isn’t my usual genre, but it reminded me some of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, although a much quicker read.