A review by amynbell
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Did not finish book.

This book series has been tempting me for years with its amazing covers. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to abandon ship 1/4 of the way through the book. The premise is interesting. There are 4 Londons in parallel worlds that are all different, and only a few people can travel between these worlds through magic. I don't often read fantasy books because I need my fiction to have logic. I want to think that magic is really science in disguise and that, if you look deeply enough, everything has a scientific answer. So if these guys have to use their blood to move between worlds, I want there to be some explanation in their DNA. But that's not the case, so I finally resigned myself to stop trying to figure everything out. Fine. I've read enough time travel and parallel world travel books that don't explain the science. I can deal with this.

HOWEVER ...

The reading I did in the first 100 pages was a slog because the author reiterates again and again how special, rare, and powerful our protagonist's magic is. Not only that, but we have to endure him cutting himself and bleeding and bleeding over and over in a sacrifice to travel between worlds or use his magic to put out fires and whatnot. Enough of the goth emo magic and cutting already. And the majority of the characters we meet are just bad people. They burn ships, they murder, they enslave, they drink blood, and they do torturous magical tattooing with inky knives. I do not care about these people.

Yeah. No. Not my kind of book. Life is too short. I'm done.