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muffinworry · 7 years

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Thoughts on A Darker Shade of Magic

Thoughts on A Darker Shade of Magic (full of spoilers):

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I have such mixed feelings about this book. I tore through it, made about 5 of my friends read it, made my first ever cosplay for it, and, and yet…

It’s hard to think of another book that’s frustrated me quite like this one. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a light, brisk read through an engaging fantasy world. My problem with it, though, is really that it could have been so much more. It’s a case of a beautiful setting and interesting characters, rather let down by rather simplistic writing and /plot.

The setting:

Four separate Londons: Grey (our London, c. 1819), Red (a healthy magic empire), White (starving and corrupt) and Black (lost and long-forgotten). Only the almost-extinct Antari magicians can travel between them. Our hero Kell is a young Antari, adopted into the royal family of Red London, and with no memory of his early years. He carries correspondence between the Grey, Red and White thrones (I’ll come to that in a minute), and has a bad habit of smuggling magical curiosities between the worlds, for a price. He promises his foster brother Rhy that he’ll stop before he gets into trouble, but of course he can’t resist one last delivery, which goes horribly wrong. He crosses paths with Lila, a clever street thief from Grey London, and together they have to make things right before all four worlds are destroyed.

Schwab clearly loves London – our London – and the decision to set the story in the Regency period is a novel one. I can’t remember reading Georgian fantasy before. The image of Mad King George in his royal cell, writing letters to another world that nobody else believes in, is such a compelling one. So why, with that great set-up, does Schwab ditch any further investigation of Regency London? Another review pointed out that our Grey London character, Lila, could come straight from modern America. Her language and thoughts are entirely modern. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for the historical setting, except the costumes and sword fighting. It’s a pity.

Above all, I wanted more politics in the book, and more sense of the worlds we’re travelling through. It feels like such a wasted opportunity. It could have been a sprawling epic. To set the book in Regency London, at a time when England has just lost its American colony, and the French revolution is still fresh in peoples’ minds, at a time when the old order is being overthrown, and the idea of monarchy itself is being questioned, that’s fascinating to me. Why not take that as the backdrop, and contrast it with Prince Rhy, heir to a 1000-year-old empire, now at risk because he happens not to have been born with strong magic.

Let us really feel Rhy’s desperation, his need to prove himself and his fear of letting everyone down, that drives him to accept White London’s dangerous gift in the first place. And White London, where there’s no such thing as a dynasty, where the throne changes hands with violence every few years – show us the innovative ways that its citizens have evolved to make do without magic. Give me a White London that was forced to develop technology at a much faster rate because it couldn’t rely on its scarce magical resources. For that matter, what does religion look like, in a world where every new ruler promises to free the people, to bring back the magic? Where the people are desperate to believe, even though they’ve seen fraud after fraud? Red London abandoned White, centuries ago, and left them to starve, and White is understandably furious and sees themselves as entitled to take reparations in whatever way they can. There’s a lot that could have been written there about colonialism and empire, and the plundering of natural resources that leads to war. The book could have been a meditation on power and politics, and what it means to sit on a throne.

And against this backdrop of worlds in upheaval, you have a story of family and love and sacrifice. This is where the book is stronger.

The characters

Kell is the central character, the one whose point of view anchors the book. As an Antari, his rare magic makes him a target, a threat, or a prize for everybody, from his adoptive parents, to the villains. Kell is fairly well fleshed out: he’s good-hearted, but he has a temper; he can’t resist showing off at times, he’s prone to self-pity, he makes some very questionable decisions, and he can be violent, even cruel. He loves his family but feels trapped and used by them too, with some justification (and what a great scene where Lila scornfully tells him that at least he grew up with a roof over his head).

Prince Rhy, Kell’s brother, seems to be many readers’ favourite, and it’s easy to see why. He’s just immensely appealing; a charming flirt who nevertheless wants to do right by his kingdom, and worries intensely that he may not be up to the job. He wants to Kell to settle down, to stop risking himself, to fit better in into the royal family. At the beginning of the book, Kell is chafing at his family bonds; by the end, he’s longing for them. Rhy and Kell love each other, despite their flaws and it’s written so sincerely, that by the time Rhy is in danger, it’s utterly believable that Kell would sacrifice himself to save his brother.

Delilah (Lila) Bard, the street thief from Grey London, suffers from a case of “I’m not like those other girls.” She scorns dresses and corsets, and yearns to be a pirate. She’s rash and outspoken, confident that she’ll win in every situation, and spends most of the book exasperating everyone she comes into contact with. Rather a cliché. I can see why many readers find her insufferable. Personally, I think she has just enough charm to get away with it, but only just. My biggest problem, like I said above, is that she doesn’t seem at all connected to 1800s London. More worryingly, she’s the only female character given POV chapters, and the book sorely needs more women interacting. As @danceny pointed out in their review, the Queen, Kell’s foster mother, says virtually nothing in the entire series. (For that matter, what’s the role of women, as a whole, in Red and White London societies?)

Lila also responsible for this line that made me grit my teeth:

“Tell me, do you underestimate everyone, or just me? Is it because I’m a girl?”

Note that at the time, Kell is trying to persuade her not to fight Astrid, who is not only female, but also older and much more powerful than Lila. It’s a nonsensical outburst from the streetwise Lila, and feels like an example of Schwab trying to prove how not-sexist her hero Kell is, rather than building a comprehensively egalitarian world.

So Lila reads less like a strong female character and more like a Strong Female Character ™ but I will say that her primary motivation is to get her own ship, and while she undergoes some character growth, she stays focused on her goal, and the book doesn’t derail on a forced romantic plot, for which I’m eternally grateful.

Athos and Astrid Dane, the twin rulers of White London and absolute monsters, whose only redeeming quality is their fierce love for each other. I would have liked more about their relationship, and how it could be contrasted with Kell and Rhy’s.

Disclaimer: I was reading about Les Enfants Terribles right before I read ADSOM, and Kerry Greenwood’s description of Jean and Jeanne Bourgoint as “Doomed, inseparable, morphine-slender and golden" definitely coloured how I saw the Danes. I don’t know if Schwab intended it, but right from the beginning, I assumed that the Dane twins are dying, that the cancerous magic they have to use to hold onto the throne is rotting them from the inside out, and that’s why they’re so desperate to break through to healthy Red London.

It’s a testament to Schwab that she created a pair of villains who drink blood and tile their palace with the bones of their enemies, and still manage to be frightening instead of laughably over the top. I’ll be honest: I love how much fun they have in the book. In every single appearance, they’re having the time of their lives. I love a gleefully unrepentant villain. The scene where they get Kell drunk is horrifying and hilarious.

Holland, the only other Antari (that we know of...), is a servant of the White throne, and we find out later, is actually soul-bound to obey Athos Dane. If the Danes are glorious monsters, Holland is the other kind of villain, the one with the tragic backstory and the possibility of redemption. We get Holland’s history through Kell, and we don’t really know much about Holland’s own thoughts and feelings. He exists to hinder Kell and Lila, and to be a living warning to Kell about the dangers of power and ambition. It’s a another good moment when Kell finally sees himself through Holland’s eyes, and realizes just how young and naïve he must seem to the other Antari.

Magic

Hmmm. I really like the idea of magic as a sentient natural resource that can be compelled, or pleaded with. The scene where Kell has to beg the magic to open a door for him is great (and highlights the importance of the word please). Magic as a dangerous commodity, a bit like nuclear energy, something that has to be handled with great care, something that society is founded on. It makes a great deal of sense in the book, which is why the reveal in Book Two was a bit disappointing to me, but I’ll talk about that in another review.

Plotholes

I’d love it if anyone would like to clarify these, because it’s entirely possible that I missed out on something, but, plotholes that threw me while I was reading:

- The Coup

- Kell in White London

- What was in those letters

The Coup: What exactly is the Danes’ plan? And why doesn’t it have more fallout?

So. The twins find a broken stone from Black London, and realize that they can use it to tear down the doors between the worlds and seize the Red throne. Half of it needs to go to Red London, to do that. They don’t want to send Holland because if he’s caught, it’ll be obvious that it’s their plot, so they trick Kell into carrying it home with him. Fine. So far so good.

But.

Why then, do they immediately send Holland after Kell, to murder and set fire to Red London while he chases Kell in the world’s least subtle chase? Astrid already has Rhy under her control; why send Holland at all?

For that matter, Kell is convinced that it can’t be the Danes who slipped him the stone, because as power-hungry as they are, they’d surely never let go of it, which is a good point, so how are the Danes unaffected by the stone? Kell and Lila are both terribly tempted by it, but the greedy and possessive twins aren’t?

Finally, the coup fails, but not before Astrid compromises the entire royal family and half the nobility at the ball, and the palace guards. Combined with the black magic plague, this should have terrible ramifications for the stability of Red London society and politics. Yet by the end of the book, it seems to have been largely hushed up.

Kell in White London:

The timeline seems off here. Kell is 22(?) or thereabouts? He’s been to White London several times; he met Holland and the old king before the Danes took the throne. But the Danes have been in power for nearly 8 years (in a world where the throne usually changes hands every 1-2 years, per canon). Was Maxim really sending his young teenage son to run his errands in a warzone? And when Astrid sees Kell, she says “let me see how you’ve grown,” which would make sense if she hasn’t seen him for years, but Kell’s been there often enough that the populace knows him, and we know there’s a regular correspondence between White and Red London. It’s a small point, but it brings me to my biggest issue, which is,

The Letters:

What is in that correspondence between the thrones? We’re told that the letters to Grey London are simple formalities, due to George III’s failing health, but the ones between Red and White London are “constant and involved” and leave King Maxim worried and stressed. People (apart from Kell and Holland) can’t travel between the worlds, nor can goods, so what, exactly, is there to talk about? Why does Maxim even bother to correspond with the murderous and borderline insane twins? What do they write about? Inquiring minds want to know.

The Writing

So. Love and sacrifice, freedom vs. safety, and the cost of power, are the themes of the book. They’re never really explored in-depth, though, and the book reads more as older YA than as an adult novel. A more literary book would have strengthened these themes, and shown rather than told us about them. The jumping between characters’ POVs is unsettling because so many minor characters get chapters of their own, and it feels unnecessary, like it’s a crutch to get information to the reader that we should really be inferring through the main characters, Kell and Lila. I’ll also note again that Lila is the only female character to get her own POV (where is my Astrid chapter??). The characters tend to explain their motivations out loud, in simplistic language, and their actions tend to be predictable.

I think, on balance, the characters are just charming enough to get away with this, but others have disagreed, and I understand why.

The writing is lovely at times; at others, it made me grit my teeth in annoyance. There are some subtle bits I enjoyed on second reading (“Rhy” sipping tea while waiting for Kell to wake up, and wearing a mask instead of his usual crown) but for the most part, the language is simplistic and repetitive.

What Schwab does very well is write visual scenes. A few things I can’t wait to see in a tv adaptation:

- The blood-red Thames

- The “stone forest” in White London

- The scene in the Grey London pub, with Kell showing off for Ned

- Lila and Astrid fighting, both in Regency men’s clothes, one in black, one in white

- The soiled cathedral of White London’s castle, all vaulting marble beauty and bloodstains.

- The masquerade scene because I am such a sucker for a masquerade ball

- The costumes, oh my goodness

- Kell’s coat

Anyway. A few scattered thoughts. I didn’t mean to ramble on quite this much. It’s a good book, I have a soft spot for it, and I’m looking forward to reading the third when it comes out in February. I just think that it could have been so much more.

#adsom

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