This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Reviewed by Verity Wilde
Kell is one of a rare breed – a traveller, who can use magic to move between parallel universes. His home is Red London – where magic is revered and where he lives with the royal family. In Grey London, mad King George reigns and magic is gone, while in White London, the magic is disappearing with its residents are in a fight to the death to control it. And no-one knows what has happened to Black London after the doors to it were sealed…
Kell travels between the three Londons taking messages between rulers. But he’s also running a side line in smuggling artefacts from one world to another. And that’s how he meets Delilah, who picks his pocket and decides her destiny is an adventure with Kell – no matter what he thinks. But dark magic is on the loose, and it could destroy everything.
I always think the secret of a good fantasy novel is for the author to know exactly how everything works and what the rules are, but not to feel the need to dump all that on the reader just for the sake of it. And V E Schwab has done well – creating a fascinating universe and explaining it very subtly, without pages of explanation – just dropping in the details the reader needs to know to make sense of what’s happening at the time.
A Darker Shade of Magic is a fast-moving, action-packed adventure, with plenty of peril – I was sucked in from the first page. Kell is appealingly flawed – I understood why he behaved the way he did, even if sometimes it made me want to knock some sense into him. And Delilah is equally attractive – she’s a thief, but she has rules and goals and I found myself willing her on as she jumped feet first into a dangerous new world.
This is the first book in a series – and although there is a satisfactory ending, there are enough dangling threads for me to make a note in my diary to look out for book two.9/10