*NEW FAVORITE BOOK ALERT*
Title – A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1)
Author – V.E. Schwab
Publisher – Tor Books
Genre – Young Adult, Fantasy
My Rating – 5/5
Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.
Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.
Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.
After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.
Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive.
While it is rare that I find books that go straight to my “Favorites” shelf, unbelievably I’ve managed to find two in a week, the other being Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Univers by Benjamin Alire Säenz.
A Darker Shade of Magic is the first V. E. Schwab book I’ve read and I’m currently mentally kicking myself for not having gotten to it sooner. I avoided this one because I’ve been obsessed with pretty covers lately and this one just didn’t attract me that much but BOY WAS I WRONG. A Darker Shade of Magic is quite possibly my new favorite book because it literally has everything –
1. Perfect protagonists that I want literally nothing more from because they’re just so FREAKING AMAZING
2. A plot to keep you up all night wanting to know more and more and more
3. A coat that has multiple sides – P.S. I want this coat so bad. It gave me such a childlike
4. Kell. Because Kell is now mine – BACK OFF EVERYONE ELSE
5. Quite possibly the most badass female protagonist I’ve ever seen (Lila=Awesome)
6.Non-cringeworthy love stories (At least I hope that’s how it turns out)
7. Did I mention Kell?
Seriously, I loved the book from the first few pages and I kept waiting for the book to let me down but it just absolutely never did. There are so many tiny little hints about the next book that I picked up from this one and I ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO get to the second book as soon as possible.
I started blogging in January and since before then my favorite book has been The Martian by Andy Weir but I got a new favorite people!
P.S. It is striking me yet again that a trilogy has only three books which means I only have two more books of Kell. *SOBS*
P.P.S. According to every review I’ve read yet, the second book a.k.a. A Gathering of Shadows is EVEN BETTER. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! I NEED TO GET TO IT IMMEDIATELY.
And that’s all for today! Hope you have a great day! Until next time –
