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A review by gothhotel
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
4.0
this book is the kind of good where, to list its flaws, you first to articulate its merits, because it is so exceptional in many ways. you see, schwab is very, very good at balancing her world. she knows how to calibrate the ship and steer it, how to tell us about the journey. this is partly because she knows her limits: when she should move forward, what things are too large for her to tell. the plot isn't super amazing, it's actually pretty predictable, but it's a perfect fit for the world and the characters: it's action-y, quick and compelling enough to keep you reading in a world that would clearly lend itself to slow lingering. she has a kind of restraint that doesn't feel stingy or underdeveloped, and that's hard to find. the plot wasn't perfect but it worked very well, much better than it might have.
the writing is the kind of good that reminds me of very good fanfiction. this is not an insult: it is a descriptor for the kind of writing that is clearly in love with the world and the characters and even maybe itself, leaning into the poetry of its description. sometimes she slides into telling more than showing just to keep the pace up, but it strikes me as a clever balance rather than ineptitude: she shows enough to make the world tangible, but not so much that all but the most starry-eyed readers drift off.
the world is an absolute strength, balancing dark and light in a way that channels a lot of what makes GoT great without even remotely trying to rip it off. it's remarkable to me how, in far fewer pages than GRRM, schwab gets a critical thing: the philosophical underpinnings of the magic system are a beautiful complement to its technical structure. things make sense and yet there's enough mystery for it to be truly fantasy, an exploration of the felt and not an expansion of the seen. any grimdark tendencies are well-tempered: sure, there's killing and stuff, but it's clearly not the point.
one thing, though: the characters. i cared about them, sure, enough to keep reading, but at the end of the day they were kind of... stiff. Kell is dull and broody, like most leads, I guess, but even the cooler characters, like Lila, often act in ways that don't always feel completely organic. often their actions will feel like someone thought out how her character would react but didn't feel it, or didn't place it quite right. and the development is often presented as an explanation for their actions, like, oh, she did this because she felt this way now, rather than their actions feeling like an organic event. the dialogue is a little unnatural, too - nowhere near as bad as certain genre contemporaries (looking at you, br*ndon s*nderson), but it does tend to feel a bit more like an in-character d&d exchange among serious roleplayers rather than a conversation. probably this is because it's so careful and considered, like the rest of the book - trouble is, people aren't careful or considered most of the time and certainly not when they speak. it doesn't go crazy out of tone or anything, but let's just say Lila's got stunning poetic sense for a cutthroat. that's not to say she has to be an unwashed idiot, but it gets tiresome to read about people who are always so articulate, at least to me.
overall, I think that stiffness is my main complaint. Schwab gets so much of what makes GoT et. al. fantastic, but she doesn't seem to intuit that human quality. she's smart and she loves her world but at times, it feels a little like a really interesting homebrew tabletop campaign. Schwab's characters sometimes look to me like intricate wooden cutouts: exquisite and carefully wrought, with articulated joints and a range of motion - like shadow puppets that some craftsman put together with a great deal of love. and you can become very fond of them, you might know how they might act in a situation and how they wouldn't - but they're still made of wood. they don't seem to live and breathe, not quite.
the writing is the kind of good that reminds me of very good fanfiction. this is not an insult: it is a descriptor for the kind of writing that is clearly in love with the world and the characters and even maybe itself, leaning into the poetry of its description. sometimes she slides into telling more than showing just to keep the pace up, but it strikes me as a clever balance rather than ineptitude: she shows enough to make the world tangible, but not so much that all but the most starry-eyed readers drift off.
the world is an absolute strength, balancing dark and light in a way that channels a lot of what makes GoT great without even remotely trying to rip it off. it's remarkable to me how, in far fewer pages than GRRM, schwab gets a critical thing: the philosophical underpinnings of the magic system are a beautiful complement to its technical structure. things make sense and yet there's enough mystery for it to be truly fantasy, an exploration of the felt and not an expansion of the seen. any grimdark tendencies are well-tempered: sure, there's killing and stuff, but it's clearly not the point.
one thing, though: the characters. i cared about them, sure, enough to keep reading, but at the end of the day they were kind of... stiff. Kell is dull and broody, like most leads, I guess, but even the cooler characters, like Lila, often act in ways that don't always feel completely organic. often their actions will feel like someone thought out how her character would react but didn't feel it, or didn't place it quite right. and the development is often presented as an explanation for their actions, like, oh, she did this because she felt this way now, rather than their actions feeling like an organic event. the dialogue is a little unnatural, too - nowhere near as bad as certain genre contemporaries (looking at you, br*ndon s*nderson), but it does tend to feel a bit more like an in-character d&d exchange among serious roleplayers rather than a conversation. probably this is because it's so careful and considered, like the rest of the book - trouble is, people aren't careful or considered most of the time and certainly not when they speak. it doesn't go crazy out of tone or anything, but let's just say Lila's got stunning poetic sense for a cutthroat. that's not to say she has to be an unwashed idiot, but it gets tiresome to read about people who are always so articulate, at least to me.
overall, I think that stiffness is my main complaint. Schwab gets so much of what makes GoT et. al. fantastic, but she doesn't seem to intuit that human quality. she's smart and she loves her world but at times, it feels a little like a really interesting homebrew tabletop campaign. Schwab's characters sometimes look to me like intricate wooden cutouts: exquisite and carefully wrought, with articulated joints and a range of motion - like shadow puppets that some craftsman put together with a great deal of love. and you can become very fond of them, you might know how they might act in a situation and how they wouldn't - but they're still made of wood. they don't seem to live and breathe, not quite.