A review by toggle_fow
A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab

adventurous mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

 Reading this book was a mistake I made with my eyes wide open.

Book one was good, with a lot of potential. Book two was not good. Book three? I have only myself to blame.

The thing is, there is SO much here that I wanted to be invested in. For instance:

1) Kell and everything about him. He's got a mysterious past. Where did he come from? What secrets lie behind his amnesia?

He's got an immaculate aesthetic, which doesn't hurt, and a too-serious killjoy thing going on, which I'm always a fan of.

He's got a GREAT and extremely compelling relationship with his adopted brother. We could live for WHOLE BOOKS just on the strength of the Kell/Rhy bond.

And finally, we have the whole "adopted son of family never feels fully accepted" dynamic, which book two just lit a bonfire underneath with the king and queen's terrible treatment of him. I wanted to see them all face this unhealthy dynamic and work it out as a family. And I wanted to see the king and queen apologize.

All of this? Is PLENTY to work with and weave a compelling arc out of.

2) Holland. My BOY. From book one I was overly invested in this guy whose entire role had been, clearly, to just suffer. What is Holland's backstory? What drives him? Who could he be, if given the chance to break free of his (many) chains? Will he ever just go absolutely feral??? Inquiring minds want to know.

3) The overall worldbuilding and aesthetic of the series is truly on point. I really think this is the catalyst of its intense popularity, because just look at the covers. The only thing this series really does deliver on is the vibe and allure of the different Londons.

As you can see, we do not lack for good material. I was READY for the whole world to unfold after book one, and dive deeper into a well-crafted web of politics, magic, and relationships.

I genuinely don't understand why it all went so wrong.

WHERE it all went so wrong is clear, on the other hand. That would be the magic tournament, which took up almost all of book two for no real reason.

Book three suffers from... so many things. But most of all it suffers because it tries to give us

• Holland's backstory

• Rhy and Alucard's star-crossed romance

• The king and queen as actual, dynamic characters instead of cutouts

• Background on Rhy grappling with his and Kell's magical bond

• Literally any reason to care about side characters like Ojka, Losen, Kell's guard whose name started with an H, and Tieren

ALL AT THE LAST SECOND of the series.

And, on top of that, mostly through ponderous, navel-gazing flashbacks. The only marginally well-executed one here is Holland's backstory, because I can see why it makes sense that we got it now and not before.

The others NEED to have been at least laid as groundwork earlier. It's truly egregious that we waited to spare one shred of narrative interest in the king and queen as people and pushed off dealing with Rhy's angst regarding his raised-from-the-dead status to book three, when book two was RIGHT THERE. What were we doing all that time?!?! Nothing! Playing little gladiator games that didn't end up mattering a BIT.

A Gathering of Shadows was literally just an anime beach episode.

Because of this, we end up trying to shoehorn all of this unearned pathos and emotional investment into book three. It doesn't fit and just reads like the author beating you over the head with a cardboard sign that says YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT THIS THING.

You're too late, Ms. Schwab! I don't care!

The character development coming off as a sloppy afterthought to the Cool And Very Important Magic Fights of book two was the true, massive failing of this book -- but hardly the only one.

I have several other gripes.

First, I'm not going to talk about this too much because you all already know, but... Lila Bard is truly intolerable.

One of the worst characters I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. In book one she was annoying, but I was like okay! Great! She's growing, and we're going to see her become a person beyond her snarky little selfish thief persona... Nope. Book two regressed her right back to the beginning and she pretty much never changed again.

Only NOW she's a snarky little selfish thief with vast amounts of power. And somehow she's wildly capable in a way that the other Antari often fail to be, even though she's just discovered her power and they've been training for years. I love an overpowered character honestly, and I would love this if she weren't so ANNOYING in a way that makes me want to violently murder her.

Second, not only is Lila annoying but incredibly, almost every meaningful character interaction produces shockingly high level of nails on a chalkboard.

Lila's cartoonishly villainous hatred for Holland. Kell and Alucard's cartoonish rivalry. To a lesser degree, Kell and Holland's friction. Alucard and Lila's cartoonish "we talk violent to each other but actually have a deep and abiding bond" *wink* dynamic.

All of this seems like it was written to come off as witty and snappy and smart, but it's not. It's overdone, grating, and painful. Again, this feels like flash and aesthetic prioritized over meaningful character moments and interaction.

Third, the actual style of the prose.

I don't know if I have ever brought this up in any review ever before, and that's because I do NOT care. Under normal circumstances, the technique of the writing itself is just the cinnamon tography through which I consume the story. It's a background concern for me almost all the time.

The problem here was that I could not stop noticing it, even when I tried. The tryhard stylistic choices kept intruding on my attention like an irritating little chip in one of my fingernails right before I bite it off in a fit of rage.

The stabs at being lyrical and poetic. Like, I could SEE the sentence attempting to crank out a stirring John Williams theme. But you know when poetry just doesn't hit? You can see where it was going, but it just doesn't go there, and instead it misses "fresh and hard-hitting" and lands on "sappy and cringe"? It can be entirely a matter of personal taste and is such a fine line anyway, but for me this was definitely too far towards cringe.

In concrete terms, the worst offender was where the book would go:

*something shocking happens, a death or betrayal involving Character*
[Character] who [sentimental description 1].
[Character] who [sentimental description 2, slightly longer].
[Character] who [sentimental description 3, longest of all this time].

I only started counting about halfway through, but it was at least six times just in the latter half of the book. This setup is a little bit over the top in the first place, but once I would be fine with. Even twice you might be able to get away with it. But approximately A DOZEN times in ONE book?

No. Pick another trick, please.

Fourth and last, was just the number of plot threads and cool things that went absolutely nowhere.

The most offensive of these was Kell having the opportunity to solve the mystery of his past, and just deciding, Eh, don't really care that much anymore. This is a valid choice for Kell to make, but it did NOT feel satisfying or earned. If this had come as the conclusion of an arc built through book two or even the beginning of book three, where his adopted family confronted their issues and Kell came to find a confident and emotionally secure place among them, then this would have actually been great.

Instead, nothing was ever solved in the Maresh family, and this moment felt like a half-baked resolution because the author didn't have time to actually deliver on plot promises made in earlier books.

There were several other things that felt really random. Notably, the king's secret spell thing? He spent all that time being mysterious and planning something awesome that culminated in him taking up the mantle of his bloody youth and sallying forth in a moment as dramatic as Aragorn and Theoden's last ride at Helm's Deep... for that? Really? (view spoiler) This was a very record scratch moment, and seemed contrived for no reason other than to (view spoiler)

Honestly, as I write this I've literally just thought of two more annoying things to mention. But it's better to just end it here.

I know this book is extremely beloved, and I can see why this series stands out so much in people's minds. All the compelling dynamics and characters I listed at the beginning SHOULD have come together to create a truly unique, vibrant adventure. I'm glad that, for a whole lot of readers, they did and kind of bummed that I wasn't one of them.