A Darker Shade of Magic
Jun. 17th, 2016 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotTime for my traditional "I'm only halfway through this book but I want to talk about it" review.
- Basic setting/plot: there are multiple universes: Grey London (our world, no magic), Red London (the protagonist's home, people use magic), White London (the hardcore, mean world where people go around etching runes into their skin to hold onto magic; sometimes called a starving or dying world), and Black London (people did too much magic and the magic started eating them, so the world got cut off from the rest). Set during the Regency. The protagonist is Kell, an Antari (super-magic person) who travels between worlds as a messenger for the redverse's royal family, with a secondary protagonist, Lila, a thief in Grey London.
- It's also set in the Regency, which was a bit of a letdown because the earliest bits mentioned George III and seemed to describe 18th century coats. Why does nobody write 18th century fantasy? It's not that it's bad that this is Regency, it's just that thus far it being 1810-1820 has made no difference at all to the story and nothing feels particularly of the period. Except for the opening bit where Kell was visiting George III and the Prince Regent, the only stuff that happens in Grey London is thieving. I'm picturing it as taking place in the 1760s and nobody can stop me.
- Lila is the worrrrst. First off, her name is Delilah, which I'm pretty sure women in such a religious time would have found a terrible name for a baby. She has this weird dream of wanting to become ~a pirate~ with all the ~freedom~ she's read about in books, which ... what books are a petty, destitute thief reading in the 1810s that glorify piracy? Her introduction involved a smug "not like other girls" internal monologue. I do not care about her.
- The villains are wonderfully villainous. They're a pair of twins who rule White London and enslave people by carving runes into them. The make their Antari bleed into a goblet so they can drink it. They're massively creepy and I'm enjoying it.
- It's actually starting to feel a bit like an episode of Doctor Who (in neither a good nor a bad way). So Kell gets tricked into going to Black London and gets a piece of solid magic. He's attacked and slips back to Grey London, where he runs into Lila (halfway through the book! she has done nothing relevant before them), who steals the magic from him. He goes after her and she dicks around with the magic for a bit, and then he gets it back from her and leaves. Some of her magic dickery went out the window and is later picked up by a rando who absorbs it and becomes possessed. When the rando catches up with her, Kell appears and says, "Run." I just can't help but be reminded of a Doctor/companion meet cute.
- Basic setting/plot: there are multiple universes: Grey London (our world, no magic), Red London (the protagonist's home, people use magic), White London (the hardcore, mean world where people go around etching runes into their skin to hold onto magic; sometimes called a starving or dying world), and Black London (people did too much magic and the magic started eating them, so the world got cut off from the rest). Set during the Regency. The protagonist is Kell, an Antari (super-magic person) who travels between worlds as a messenger for the redverse's royal family, with a secondary protagonist, Lila, a thief in Grey London.
- It's also set in the Regency, which was a bit of a letdown because the earliest bits mentioned George III and seemed to describe 18th century coats. Why does nobody write 18th century fantasy? It's not that it's bad that this is Regency, it's just that thus far it being 1810-1820 has made no difference at all to the story and nothing feels particularly of the period. Except for the opening bit where Kell was visiting George III and the Prince Regent, the only stuff that happens in Grey London is thieving. I'm picturing it as taking place in the 1760s and nobody can stop me.
- Lila is the worrrrst. First off, her name is Delilah, which I'm pretty sure women in such a religious time would have found a terrible name for a baby. She has this weird dream of wanting to become ~a pirate~ with all the ~freedom~ she's read about in books, which ... what books are a petty, destitute thief reading in the 1810s that glorify piracy? Her introduction involved a smug "not like other girls" internal monologue. I do not care about her.
- The villains are wonderfully villainous. They're a pair of twins who rule White London and enslave people by carving runes into them. The make their Antari bleed into a goblet so they can drink it. They're massively creepy and I'm enjoying it.
- It's actually starting to feel a bit like an episode of Doctor Who (in neither a good nor a bad way). So Kell gets tricked into going to Black London and gets a piece of solid magic. He's attacked and slips back to Grey London, where he runs into Lila (halfway through the book! she has done nothing relevant before them), who steals the magic from him. He goes after her and she dicks around with the magic for a bit, and then he gets it back from her and leaves. Some of her magic dickery went out the window and is later picked up by a rando who absorbs it and becomes possessed. When the rando catches up with her, Kell appears and says, "Run." I just can't help but be reminded of a Doctor/companion meet cute.
