A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic sells four Londons in an instant; the harder trick is making me care which one Kell gets home to.

I would follow a good fantasy city down almost any alley. V.E. Schwab offers several versions of the same one, each with a different relationship to magic, and then hands the keys to a man who is supposed to be more responsible than he is. Naturally, I went along. I enjoyed this book most when its neat idea became a logistical headache for somebody with a coat full of secrets.

I also wanted more mess beneath the lovely design. The first volume has the confidence of a stage set built by someone with excellent taste. Sometimes I could see the marks where the actors were meant to stand. Then Lila walked in and moved the furniture.

The premise (no spoilers past Kell and Lila's first crossing)

Published in 2015, A Darker Shade of Magic opens the Shades of Magic series. Kell Maresh is an Antari, one of the rare magicians who can travel between parallel Londons. Red London has abundant magic; Grey London has little; White London is dangerous; Black London belongs to the past. Kell serves the Maresh Empire of Red London as an ambassador. He also smuggles objects between worlds, a private indulgence with public consequences.

After a trade goes wrong, Kell escapes to Grey London and meets Delilah Bard, a thief who first robs him and then insists on seeing more than her own world. The publisher's early setup is an adventure with perilous magic and treachery. It is also an excellent way to put a rule bound traveller beside a woman who regards rules as decorative suggestions.

What works

The four Londons are a clean piece of imaginative engineering. Schwab gives each one an immediately graspable condition, then lets travel expose differences in power and possibility. The setting is easy to hold in your head without feeling thin. I never needed a diagram to know where I was, and the shifts have the pleasure of opening a door onto a room you thought you understood. That sense of near familiarity is more effective than a parade of wholly unrelated kingdoms.

Kell's double life is the book's best character mechanism. An official ambassador who cannot resist private trade has made his own flaw part of the plot. He can move through borders, but he is not immune to wanting the small thrill of crossing one for the wrong reason. I like that the trouble begins with a habit rather than a grand prophecy. It makes a vast magical danger feel attached to a recognisable bad decision. Collectors, take note: your little treat may be a constitutional crisis.

Lila gives the book its friction. Her ambition is not to become a better citizen of Grey London; it is to get out. Beside Kell's access, her hunger for movement has an edge. She refuses the role of grateful passenger, and Schwab wisely lets her disrupt the rhythm of his competence. Their exchanges work because neither has the patience to explain the obvious to the other, although both are wrong about what counts as obvious.

The prose is brisk when the danger lands. Schwab can sketch a vivid contrast in a few details and then make the characters move through it. The magic feels visual without requiring a long lecture before each encounter. The adventure has a pleasing snap: a new place, a new constraint, another reason Kell's tidy authority may fail him. I was willing to forgive a fair bit of convenience for that momentum.

What's polarising

The Londons can feel more distinct than the people living in them. Each location arrives with a strong identity, but the wider population sometimes serves that identity instead of surprising it. I wanted more ordinary lives at the edges of the spectacular ones. The book is eager to send its leads onwards, which is exciting and also a little frustrating when a world has just begun to seem inhabited.

Lila will divide readers. I enjoy her appetite for risk, but her refusal to be impressed can become a single repeated note. She has enough nerve to move a plot through a locked door; occasionally I wanted her to notice the hinges. Kell, meanwhile, can spend so long being grave about duty that I was tempted to assign him a holiday by force. Together they are lively. Separately they can resemble their introductions a little too neatly.

If you read for romance first, reset your expectations. The attraction is a current under the adventure, not the destination of every chapter. This is a fantasy about mobility, power, and dangerous magic with a relationship beginning to form inside it. The title promises a shade of magic and delivers several. It makes no comparable promise about dates.

The Kell of it

Kell Maresh has the rare privilege of going where others cannot, and that access is as much a burden as a talent. His job makes him a bridge between rulers. His smuggling makes him a breach in the same system. Schwab gets useful tension from a character who is both authorised and disobedient. I trust his competence, but I do not trust his judgment about when he has earned an exception.

His contrast with Lila is more interesting than a simple careful man meets reckless woman arrangement. Kell has seen other worlds and still belongs, however uneasily, to a court. Lila has almost no sanctioned access and wants the horizon badly enough to grab it. Their disagreement is partly about danger and partly about who gets to decide that danger is worth taking. That is the relationship hook for me. A kiss would be pleasant; an argument over freedom has longer legs.

Spice and heat

Heat: 1 of 5, glimpses and kisses. There is romantic tension, but little on page intimacy. Expect magical violence and menace to occupy far more space than courtship. If you need a romance to carry the plot, you may find this cool. If you want the possibility of attraction to complicate an already busy adventure, the balance works.

Who it's for

You love a portal with rules, a city with several tempers, and a companion who will touch the forbidden object after receiving a very clear warning. You will forgive a few thinly populated corners because the route between them is fun. You prefer chemistry that travels with the quest rather than stopping it for a long discussion of feelings.

If your favourite fantasy spends six chapters on municipal history, this one may seem impatient. I am impatient too, so we got along. I just wanted Schwab to let me linger in a few of those streets before the next door swung shut.

Books like A Darker Shade of Magic

• The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, for another swift journey through alternate worlds with a capable, rule bending traveller.
• The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty, for magic, political danger, and a city whose beauty cannot conceal its divisions.
• The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso, for an underrated fantasy in which magical ability creates an uncomfortable obligation to the state.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Kell Maresh is waiting on Fictora.

Talk to Kell Maresh