I can’t even put into words how much I detest Lila so I’m going to focus on Rhy. The characters were either incredibly boring (Kell), uncomfortable stereotypes (Rhy) and just plain hateful and annoying (Lila). I wished more people gave trigger/content warnings when they recommend this book so enthusiastically. Lula barely even thinks about such a traumatic thing or feels remorse at killing someone! This not only made me uncomfortable by how it was handled but it made Lila unrelatable. The story starts with Lila almost being raped by her landlord and her killing him! Yet it is brushed off and never comes up again. I found this so problematic, because not only were they often simply plot points or to show how “strong” the protagonist was, or how evil the antagonists were, the trauma and any emotional repercussion were ignored and the whole experience was trivialised. There was a lot of dark concepts, like abuse, mind control and assault in this story that was mostly glossed over. There were so many good ideas and so much potential but Schwab didn’t explore, develope and handle them well enough. I get wanting to use flowery writing, and I don’t dislike flowery writing but if your metaphors make it harder for me to visualise what you are talking about you’ve messed up.

Schwab would also go on and on about how black and dark things were, which on top of often being redundant they were sometimes so hyperbolic they made no sense. A smile isn’t a sound and the first sound one would associate with a smile is laughing. Now read that line and really think about how much nonsense it is. I distinctly remember a line that went along the lines of, “Holland made a sound, half way between a laugh and a smile.” Not to mention a lot of the times the metaphors and similies made no sense. It was passable and even beautiful at time but it felt like she was using flowery language to add a whimsical, magic atmosphere to her story to distract from the poor world building and nothing plot. The writing was the least bad thing but it still bothered me. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.Ī darker shade of magic was painful, if I hadn’t read children of blood and bone it would have been the worst book I read so far this year.Įverything about this book from the writing, to the characters, to the plot, to the world was such a massive disappointment. There are some books so bad you wish you could scrub from your memory.

Cw: mention of abuse, assault, sexual violence, self harm

A darker shade of magic book 1