I recently finished reading A Darker Shade of Magic and, as usual, I left my review on Goodreads (follow me). What I’ve been neglecting to do is share my reviews with you guys, readers of this blog. So I’m gonna start doing that now. Over the next few weeks, I’ll copy over some of my reviews so they live here as well and in the future I’ll post all my 3.5 stars and higher reviews here.
What was setup to be an interesting exploration of a setting that involves parallel worlds and follows a charming MC turned out to be a run-of-the-mill, fantasy action story where intrigue is paid off with cliché, and the stakes are artificially lowered through a dash of deus ex machina. So, there were good parts and bad parts.
I really loved the first third of A Darker Shade of Magic, written by V.E. Schwab. The slow pace let the author explore MC Kell and the parallel worlds he inhabits. I felt like his character was well fleshed out and the pace of reveals was perfect. Not to mention his awesome coat.
Then we get to Delilah, and the story goes south. Where Kell feels like a three-dimensional character, Delilah feels like a more violent, less intriguing, one-dimensional version of The Artful Dodger. Her motivations rarely go below surface level, her actions are often kind of dumb, and when she’s shown as a badass it feels contrived.
Speaking of unearned, let’s talk about the climax. Ok, so I didn’t hate it, but I expected way more given the setup. The second half devolves into a fairly basic chace sequence, followed by a standard “dramatic showdown” with the villains. Will good triumph? Of course, but will good actually earn their inevitable victory? Solid no.
What’s more, the villains are wholly uninteresting. They are bad, and because they are bad they want to take over the world. They do bad things to show how bad they are like drink blood, touch people in weird ways while they talk, have a floor made out of bones, etc. etc. If you’ve played any video game ever, you’ve seen these guys before.
Spoilery stuff follows
I think this was my greatest disappointment. We get to the end, and all of the baddies are defeated because their bad people. Literally, that’s it. The good guys might strike the final blow, but if the baddies weren’t so mean to their subjects, then they totally would have won.
If an editor had told the author, “we get that their villains, could you tone it down a smidge” the author would have been forced to find a new, more interesting demise. Too bad this didn’t happen, cause the end could’ve been so much better.
End of spoilers
As it was, the final chapters chalk full of deus ex machina (the hand of the author comes in to save the characters, not the actions of the characters themselves), which was very disappointing.
I enjoyed aspects of A Darker Shade of Magic. I like Kell and wish this would have been more of a character focused story around him. I’m told the sequels solve a lot of these issues, so I think I’ll pick them up in the near future, but to be honest, I’m not chomping at the bit to dive into them. However, the first third of the narrative gives me hope that from the ashes of this book a better story can rise.
3.5 out of 5
MY RATING SCALE
5 – Excellent. Either this book was incredibly enjoyable, or I learned something that will improve my own writing.
4 – Fine. The book was pretty good/fun, but was held down by several issues.
3 – Meh. The issues in this book hampered my enjoyment.
2 – Not for me. I didn’t like it, but I can see why other people might.
1 – Not for anyone. I hated it, probably didn’t finish reading, definitely didn’t take the time to write a review.
Note: I don’t write fully negative reviews. Books I don’t like will be given a star rating on Goodreads with no review. As a writer, I don’t want to add my voice to a conversation that might negatively affect another writers income.