A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1)

Today’s book review is another adventure into the fantasy genre with my partner and this time we’re tackling a darker (ha!) story. Having previously read The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by the V.E. Schwab I was decently optimistic as aside from its dubious ending that book left a mostly positive impression. Unfortunately, A Darker Shade of Magic falls short of my expectations and left both my partner and I confused as to what sort of story Schwab intended on telling.

A Darker Shade of Magic begins with Kell, an antari or magician, capable of moving between different worlds each with varying levels of magic. The worlds are each vastly different, with different countries, cities, populations, histories, etc; the one unifiying feature being the existence of London. As one of the only two antari left, Kell acts as a messenger between the regents of each world’s London, and exclusively London. It’s unclear whether the existence of parallel worlds is kept secret outside of London but it struck me as odd that the regents of London were the only ones sharing messages across the multiverse as I’d expect the rulers of other countries to have at least some interst in the existence of a multiverse. This will however never be answered nor explored and so we’re left with Kell, the interdimensional London mail pigeon. This isn’t the most enticing premise as Kell is a nice enough character if a bit flat and boring and so is the beginning of the book as I found myself frequently rocked to sleep whilst going through the early chapters. 

Along the way though we get introduced to the darker aspects of the multiverse and the magic including some fairly disturbing concepts of mind control (the darker shades of magic if you want). However, things only really get started almost a third of the way through when Kell comes into possession of a magical stone that needs to be sent to the magically destroyed Black London. It is at this point that Kell meets Lila, a thief whose dream is to live the grandest of adventures and this character almost single handedly introduces every major issue my partner and I had with the story’s tone.

Lila is a comic relief, happy go lucky and teeters on the edge of being a Mary Sue and a self-insert character. She behaves for all intents and purposes like an invulnerable child which would be fine if she were…but her and Kell are being set up for a romance with the subtlety of a car crash and with Kell being in his twenties, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume the good guy protagonist is not playing at seducing children. The story proceeds to then unfold alternating between the serious and unforgiving world and Lila quipping about. The result gave me a bit of a Marvel movie vibe where Lila is too busy trying so desperately hard to be funny which distracts from the actual plot that might have been interesting if left alone. Unfortunately Lila never learns to be serious and the ending ends up being an underwhelming eye roll.

I’m sure there is an audience for A Darker Shade of Magic but I personally struggled with a story trying to be alternatingly lighthearted, dark, relaxing, and tense. It does not take itself seriously enough to be an adult’s story but it also takes place in a world too grim to be a children’s story, my best guess would be that it might appeal to early to mid teenagers looking to explore more mature themes whilst having the safety of a childhood story structure and that’s not a bad thing. However, for me, it didn’t click and the final result is a perfect example of a 5/10; it is most definitely a story told in a book, but unless you have nothing more appealing to read or the premise of multiple magic London particularly appeals to you I don’t think you’d be missing out on an awful lot by skipping this one.