A Darker Shade of Magic

Straight forward and immediately immersive. Love it when the book pretends you know where you are and the rules of the world and just keeps it at a gallop. Nice enough to see the scenery, but not too slow that all you do is wish you were walking.

Wow!!!!! I love how unique the worldbuilding in this was! I was in a reading slump for some time and this snapped me out of it. I always love victorias writing style and it’s a little rough around the edges in this, but the characters are some of the best I’ve ever read

This is a book about magic and who can/can’t use it. The magic system is a lot of fun and so is the world. It was a ton of fun for me going into it without knowing anything about it at all except that it’s one of my daughter’s favorite books, and it was fun to talk to her about the characters and scenes as I read it. She warned me “Don’t get attached to these characters” and she is so right! I would get attached, and Schwab would kill them off!It was confusing to begin with because there are three different Londons with different characters in each, but if you stick with it, it becomes easy to navigate the larger world. After that big ending, I’m really looking forward to more from Kell and Delilah.

This is the opening book in what is currently a fantasy trilogy, though perhaps it will expand to additional books. The second sentence tripped me up(*), but after that I raced through the book. The setting is compelling: adjoining worlds with different versions of London - Red London, rich in magic; Grey London, poor in magic and closest to our own; Black London, sealed off from the others; White London, fallen, as the book describes it, "to chaos and conquering. Blood and ash."Kell, one of the book's two chief protagonists, has the exceedingly rare ability to travel between the worlds. Lila, the other main protagonist, is a cutpurse whom readers are clearly meant to find likable. I did. I liked both the main characters considerably. I came close to liking the book very much, but stopped short and merely liked it.Two things put me off. Firstly, the level and amount of brutality exceeded my comfort zone. Secondly, to me, the book felt manipulative. The book's popularity indicates my reaction is atypical, so don't attach much weight to this. I like to care about characters in stories and to react emotionally to fictional events, but, with "A Darker Shade of Magic," I sometimes felt those reactions were scripted by the author. For instance, spoiler warning for details, sympathetic minor characters are killed rather summarily. We are shown the point-of-view of Barron, a tavern-keeper, for a few pages, just enough to make him likable, before he is killed. His death reinforces the enemy's villainy and gives one of the main characters brief pause, but seems largely gratuitious. Similarly, we follow a royal bodyguard, Parrish, in a couple of scenes -- he's also very likable -- then both he and his partner bodyguard die. Their deaths upset me and, more so, the fact that we don't see Kell or Rhy grieving for them. Likewise, I felt I was being steered to sympathize with Lila from the second scene where a man she knows well tries to rape her.Three and a half out of five shaded stars.(*) The second sentence, which describes a coat, is: "It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but *several*, which was, of course, impossible." The sentence wants to establish say that this is no ordinary coat, nor even a reversible coat, but instead a magical coat. I tripped up because I consider ordinary coats as having an inside and an outside, plus a front and a back, plus a left and a right, i.e. multiple ways that an ordinary coat has more than one side. I'd consider this a minor stumble later on in the story, but it was offputting for the second sentence.About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).

***4.00 Stars***Overall,This is only my second V.E. Schwab book, the first being The Invisible Life of Addie Larue and I think the most basic thing I can say about this book is that it is a very V.E. Schwab book. She has a way of writing that is pretty unique to her. I enjoyed reading this book, and as the first in the series it introduced us to a new magic system (not as fleshed out as I would like) and 4 unique London's that can only be traversed by special and rare magic users. Our two main characters Lila Bard and Kel have a lot of character growth and its fun to read them go from adventure to adventure. Lila is by far one my favorite character. She is a thief and ruthless and not apologetic about it at all. I am very interested to see where she goes and what she does in the next two books in this series. Kel is ok, there are times where he really annoyed me, and again I still don't reallllly understand how the magic REALLLY works so that could be frustrating at times. I am unsure of its limits. For the first book in the series it does a decent job at world building and the end almost feels like it could be left as is. There is no real cliff hanger, just a sense of wanting to explore more stories within the world.Cover,V.E. Schwab always has very minimalistic covers. And this one is very V.E Schwab.Recommendation,If you enjoy the authors writing, and like a fast paced fantasy book I would tell you to give this a try. Though dark in some places it never felt TOO dark. There is definitely quite a bit of violence and blood so if that is a trigger for you then I would say pass. There is no romance what so ever, maybe like the smallest hint, but honestly its not really there. I will be continuing on in this series to see what happens to our duo.