A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic is the first science fiction book in the A Darker Shade of Magic series by author V. E. Schwab. Kell is one of the last Travelers – magicians with the ability to travel across the universe. Dirty Gray London with no magic is ruled by the mad king George.

Kell is officially Red Traveler, the personal ambassador and adopted prince of Red London, conducting monthly correspondence between the royal family in London.

Here are the top 3 reviews and comments that readers love about this fascinating book.

Review 1: A Darker Shade of Magic audiobook by Sara

Don’t do that, male narrators

Dear male narrators,

You know that urge so many of you get when reading a female character? That urge to make your voice high pitched and a little whiny, thereby flattening out the character and irritating the crap out of your audience?

Don’t do that.

Otherwise, a good performance.

Review 2: A Darker Shade of Magic audiobook by R. J. Schultz

How does this have such good reviews?!

This book just is not good. It started to become really apparent by hour 5, but I kept pushing through it, convinced it must get better. It doesn’t. People say it has great characters and world building. It doesn’t.

Every character is shallow. Their motivations are simplistic. Their shades of grey are non existent. The closest thing to moral conundrums are simple, impulsive choices with no impactful consequence.

There is all this evil magic in the world that is outlawed, but apparently no one to enforce it. There is no mages guild. No magic police. There are mentions of punishments and blocks, but no one is ever hiding the dark magic, yet no one notices it either. In fact, dark magicians encsorcel an entire royal family with ease and there is no royal cabal to catch this out or try to stop it? That’s not world building.

The girl in the story has gone her entire life not knowing magic exists. She just accepts it out of nowhere, then makes all these wild guesses about it, and is right, EVERY SINGLE TIME. There’s never so much as a mage character saying, “you’d think that, but no. It’s actually like this.” Nope. She’s just intuitively right about everything. That’s just lazy writing.

This book is not worth reading. It’s not an awful book. But it’s not a good one.

Review 3: A Darker Shade of Magic audiobook by withherownwings

social commentary magical high fantasy

I very much enjoyed this book, and not just because I got it free via the Ford Audiobook Club. It’s very well written and well-paced, and was an interesting take on the old high fantasy trope. I loved the alternate dimension Londons and how they reflected different emphasis on aspects of humans and their interaction with magic. Kell’s story and Lila’s were both compelling and richly resonant with the themes of the books: entitlement, responsibility, the search for identity, self-reliance, social commentary, etc. I loved their banter and thought they worked very well as foils for each other. I appreciated that the romance is kept to a minimum, more a loyalty than a swooning uncertainty.

The “feel” of this book in pseudo-high fantasy historical setting, atmosphere , and writing style reminded me of Michael Sullivan’s Riyria series, but Schwab put her own stamp on them. Very enjoyable.

The narration by Stephen Crossley was well done, particularly for Kell. I’d have liked a second narrator for Lila, but Crossley did fine for a single person narration.

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