Review: A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab

The precarious equilibrium among the four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise. Kell - once assumed to be the last surviving Antari - begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. Lila Bard, once a commonplace - but never common - thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry.

Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery and the Night Spire crew are attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible, as an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown and a fallen hero is desperate to save a decaying world...

Shades of Magic Series:
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light

Visit V.E. Schwab's website for more information

Review:
A Conjuring of Light was exactly what I wanted from the finale of the Shades of Magic series and I love it when a series goes out on a high note! At 666 pages this is a whopper of a book but there is just so much going on that it honestly doesn't feel like it and I flew through it in a couple of days. The action is pretty much non-stop from the first few pages and there is twist after twist as you follow all of our favourite characters to the end. This story isn't all sunshine and roses, there are heartbreaking moments and I'll warn you right now that not everyone survives the book but there are also fantastic friendships and some incredibly sweet and romantic moments to lighten the mood just when you need them.

First let me talk about how much I adore the brotherly bond between Kell and Rhy, these two are brothers by choice even if not by blood and their friendship never fails to make me smile. One of my favourite moments in the book was a conversation Rhy had with his mother near the beginning of the story about the bond he shares with Kell and I think this quote sums up their relationship perfectly:

Rhy shook his head, exasperated. “Kell isn’t the only one you fail to understand. My bond with him didn’t start with this curse. You wanted him to kill for me, die for me, protect me at all costs. Well, Mother, you got your wish. You simply failed to realize that that kind of love, that bond, it goes both ways. I would kill for him, and I would die for him, and I will protect him however I am able, from Faro and Vesk, from White London, and Black London, and from you.”

I also love the relationship between Kell and Lila, they have a lot in common and now that Lila has grown up a bit (she irritated me a bit in the last book but showed a massive character growth in this one!) I think they make a really cute couple. I like that Lila has learnt to accept that she doesn't know everything and that she's willing to take Kell's advice and learn from her mistakes. She's still a very proactive character who doesn't sit around waiting to be saved and is much more likely to be right in the middle of any trouble rather than watching from the sidelines but she's lost a bit of that cocky edge that made her annoying rather than just confident. Kell has changed a lot too, he has the weight of his whole world on his shoulders and that's a lot of stress for anyone to deal with but he is determined to fix the mistakes he made and resolve things. I was shipping Rhy and Alucard so hard from the middle of the last book and that didn't change here. They have a lot of history between them and not all of it is good but I was rooting for them to find a way back to each other.

I think the most surprising character award would have to go to Holland. I never expected to end up liking him after what he did in A Gathering of Shadows but we get to see some really interesting glimpses into his past that showed exactly how he ended up making the choices he did. I still don't agree with his actions but it wasn't too hard to imagine Kell or even Lila making similar choices if they were in his position to begin with. He also works really hard to try and fix the mess he made and I enjoyed the grudging respect that slowly builds between him, Kell and Lila.

A Conjuring of Light was a fantastic end to this story arc but I'm kind of hoping that V.E. Schwab isn't done with this world yet. I think things were definitely left open enough that we could have more adventures in this world but don't worry you're not left with a horrible cliffhanger so it won't matter if there are no more books to come. I'm going to miss Kell, Rhy and the rest though so I hope we'll see more of them in the future.

Source: Received from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review

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Review: A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last magicians with the ability to travel between parallel universes, linked by the magical city of London. It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into his possession and he met Delilah Bard. Four months since the Dane twins of White London fell, and the stone was cast with Holland's dying body back into Black London.

Now Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila. And as Red London prepares for the Element Games - an international competition of magic - a certain pirate ship draws closer. But another London is coming back to life. The balance of magic is perilous, and for one city to flourish, another must fall . . .

Shades of Magic Series:
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light

Visit V.E. Schwab's website for more information

Review:
I absolutely loved A Darker Shade of Magic so of course A Gathering of Shadows was one of my most anticipated books of 2016, I couldn't wait to dive back into this world to catch up with Kell and Lila and I had incredibly high hopes for this story. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high because I certainly came away feeling disappointed. I won't go as far to say AGOS is a bad book but it definitely suffers from second book syndrome and in no way lives up to it's predecessor. The pacing was off in this book and the story dragged, and I mean it REALLY dragged. It took me 9 whole days to finish it because I would read a couple of chapters and make an excuse to put it down and do something else, then I'd have to force myself to pick it back up again later. Things do pick up in the last third but then you are hit in the face with a giant cliffhanger so I can't even call the ending satisfactory.

The beginning of the story sees Lila off looking for adventure like she promised she would at the end of the previous book, she's managed to earn a place on the crew of a pirate sorry privateer ship and she's having a brilliant time exploring the world and finding new ways to steal from people. She's also started learning magic under the supervision of the ship captain Alucard (who is a brilliant new character by the way, he was probably my favourite thing about the whole book!). The trouble is Lila has started to get comfortable in her new life, she's actually started to feel settled and even to consider the crew as friends and that is making her very nervous. Lila doesn't do well with routine or friendship and she decides that she's going to have to make her excuses and leave so when Alucard announces that they'll be returning to Red London for the Essen Tasch, the world's greatest magical tournament, she decides that's a perfect time for her to start yet another new life for herself.

I absolutely loved Lila in the first book and even at the beginning of this one I was praising her for her cocky and self assured attitude because she has always had the skills needed to back up any claims she makes. Lila has the kind of adventurous spirit that means she's always getting into trouble but that doesn't bother me because she nearly always has a plan to get herself back out again and her adventures along the way are so much fun to read about. No matter how much I love her she did start to annoy me in this book though, she grew up in Grey London and didn't have even a tiny amount of magical ability or training until she came to Red London four months ago yet she decides she deserves a place competing amongst the best trained magicians in the whole world. She doesn't even know the rules of the game yet she thinks she has a right to be there competing even though the competitors were chosen months ago.

I don't think I'd have minded so much if she had earned her spot in the contest, in fact she could have even won it by cheating another magician in a card game and I'd have cheered her on from the sidelines. Instead she attacks a complete stranger with absolutely no plan and no idea how she is going to keep him out of the way for the entire contest. What the hell would she have done if Alucard hadn't turned up out of nowhere and found a solution for her? Would she have gone so far as killing the rightful competitor just to take his place? That whole situation left a very bitter taste in my mouth and I still haven't forgiven her for it. That's without thinking about the way she suddenly has the skills to compete in a magical battle against magicians who have trained for YEARS when she's not had a single day of training to fight in a magical duel. She supposedly picks up everything she needs to know from watching the couple of fights before her own match. Up until that point Alucard has been teaching her the basics of how to control the elements and she's been struggling with that so you really expect me to believe she's now a brilliant fighter using nothing but her magic to attack and defend herself? You have got to be kidding me.

So Lila's side of the story started well but went downhill rapidly and left me with a pretty low opinion of her but what about Kell? Kell's whole world has been turned upside down after events at the end of the previous book, his life has forever been bound to Rhy's and he is the only thing keeping the prince alive. The King and Queen also blame him completely for everything that went wrong and they're now treating him worse than ever. So Kell has every right to be upset and angry but it does mean that he spends a lot of his time moping around and feeling sorry for himself. I could completely understand why that was but it doesn't make for very interesting reading. I do love the bond between him and Rhy though, the boys are closer than ever and Rhy is determined to do whatever it takes to pull Kell out of his black mood - even if it does mean secretly entering him into the Essen Tasch, something which is strictly forbidden since Kell is so powerful. At least Kell has the skill needed to make his spot in the contest valid though and I actually really enjoyed seeing him go into battle. His side of the story picked up dramatically when the Essen Tasch started and it was nice to see a more positive side to him that had been missing earlier on.

So there were parts of this story that I enjoyed immensely but there were others that either made me really angry or completely indifferent to the characters. We are also hit with a KILLER cliffhanger at the end of the story. There are two different types of cliffhangers, ones that leave you feeling like you had a decent ending to the book but still make you desperate to get your hands on the sequel or ones that make you want to throw the book across the room and vow never to start reading another series by this author until all the books have been published. Unfortunately for me this was of the second variety. I understand that authors want to hook readers in so that we'll buy the next book but I'll do that anyway if I love the characters and the world building. A Gathering of Shadows reads more like a very long prequel to the third book in the series than a story in it's own right. It's a filler book in which very little actually happens and I'm sorry to say it but I'm disappointed. Will I read the next book? Of course I will, I loved the first book so much and I'm still really invested in these characters so I want to find out what happens to them. I'll be waiting for confirmation that it's definitely a trilogy before starting the next book though, if it's going to be a longer series then I'll wait until all the books are available before I carry on reading.

Source: Received from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review

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Review: A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last travellers - magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel universes connected by one magical city. There's Grey London, without magic and ruled by the mad King George III. Red London - where magic is revered, and where Kell was raised alongside the heir to the empire. White London - where people fight to control the remaining magic and magic fights back. And once there was Black London . . .

Officially Kell is the Red traveller, carrying letters between the monarchs of each London. Unofficially he is a smuggler, a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences. His escape to Grey London leads to a run-in with Delilah, a cutpurse with lofty aspirations, who forces Kell to take her on a proper adventure. But perilous magic is afoot, and an adventure becomes a mission to save all of the worlds.

Shades of Magic Series:
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light

Visit V.E. Schwab's website for more information

Review:
I've heard a lot of great things about V.E. Schwab's writing, in fact I had several of her books on my wish list, so when I was offered a review copy of the first book in her new series, A Darker Shade of Magic, I jumped at the chance to read it. I'm so glad I did because I can certainly see what all the fuss was about and I'm definitely going to be working my way through her previous titles while I wait for the release of the next book in this series.

A Darker Shade of Magic is a wonderful mix of historical fantasy, swashbuckling adventure and magical mayhem. Here there are three very different versions of London, three distinctive parallel universes that only a rare few people known as the Antari are able to travel between. Grey London is closest to a historical version of our world, there is no magic and most people are completely unaware of the other universes. Red London is a lavish kingdom where magic is plentiful and people on the whole are happy and healthy, most people are aware of the other worlds but have no desire to leave their own home. White London has magic but it is a different, darker, kind and people are constantly battling for power over each other, this London is a place where the weak are preyed upon and only the strong survive. There used to be a fourth world but there the magic was twisted and decayed, Black London was being destroyed from the inside out so the other versions of London banded together to permanently close the gateways and cut them off and it is believed that the world has since destroyed itself.

Kell is one of only two known Antari, he was born in Red London and he is tasked with the role of delivering messages between the royal families from each remaining version of London. Although it is forbidden to bring anything between the different worlds Kell is a collector and he regularly smuggles what he believes are harmless trinkets between the Londons to trade with the few people who know of the different realities. Kell meets Lila when his hobby lands him in trouble, injured and trapped in Grey London Kell has nobody to turn to and is forced to rely on Lila to help him. Lila has always dreamed of adventure so when Kell tells her about Red London and the other universes open to him she is determined to find a way to travel there and see them for herself. What the two of them don't realise is that they have dangerous enemies, ones who could be powerful enough to destroy not just Red London but all three remaining universes.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this story, each version of London is vividly described and I found it incredibly easy to picture them. I loved learning about the magical Red London, it sounds like such a brilliant place to visit and I would love to see the glowing red Thames and experience the magic flowing through it. White London sounds absolutely terrifying, it is cold and harsh with danger lurking on every corner and definitely not the kind of place you would choose to go to while Grey London is dreary and smog filled, pretty much exactly what you'd expect of early 1800's London. I loved the descriptions of magic too, we get to see some exciting magical battles and I enjoyed learning more about Kell's ability to travel between the different worlds.

One of the places A Darker Shade of Magic really shines is in it's characters though, nobody is what they first seem to be, they all have complex layers to them and very real motives for everything they do. Kell is great, he is intelligent and powerful but he isn't perfect, he makes a lot of mistakes and has to rely on his wits to get him out of the messes he finds himself in. Lila surprised me, I wasn't sure if I was going to like her at first because she seemed to have so little regard for anyone other than herself but it didn't take me long to warm up to her and I loved how badass she was. Lila is feisty, smart and ruthless, she doesn't play by the rules but she does have her own code of honour and no matter how much she tries to pretend to be completely blasé about things she really does care. What I loved most is the friendship that builds between her and Kell, in the beginning they have no reason to trust each other, they are thrown together though and have to work together if they want to survive. It was great to see that Lila, a girl from Grey London who had no magic of her own, was often the one who rescues Kell even though he is the powerful magician. There are so many other characters who are worth a mention here, prince Rye is definitely someone I'm looking forward to seeing more of but V.E. Schwab also created some truly creepy and terrifying villains.

A Darker Shade of Magic is a fantastic story that was completely different to anything else I've read which is what makes it really stand out. If you love rich world building, brilliant multifaceted characters and plots with plenty of surprising twists then you need this book in your life. It's definitely a series to watch out for and V.E. Schwab has added herself to my list of must read authors.

Source: Received from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
If you have reviewed this book on your blog please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll add the link here.

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