A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2)

by V.E. Schwab

[abookishblether]

A Darker Shade of Magic ★★★★☆
A Gathering of Shadows ★★★☆☆

You might see this rating and think I’m crazy. You might think I hated this book. That isn’t exactly the case, because I found the book incredibly readable and I thoroughly enjoyed every page.

This second book follows on four months from the first, and concerns the triwizard tournament of Red London (which is a basic description of the plot, and is missing the nuances, but will suffice for the review). Lila Bard, who is aboard a vessel with her new captain, travels back to London for the tournament.

Without going into spoilers my issue with this book is that there are no stakes or plot relevance until the last 20%. It all really goes down after the tournament ends. Which means the book could have been condensed and the series made into a duology without loosing plot. I can see why this was a book in and of itself as it builds some new relationships and shows the progression of time over the previous four months for one key character in particular. But that key character only had about 20% of the “screen time” and the relationships were not so complex or explained in such a detailed way that it required an entire 500 page book to discuss it.

Aside from the fact that this book felt like it was entirely filler though, I found the writing to be just as fantastic as last time. I adored every page and if I wasn’t expected a plot filled middle book in a trilogy, I would happily read 5000 pages of filler if it was written by V E Schwab. I gave it three stars because it wasn’t the book I felt it should be, but if I ignored my issues with the lack of plot it would easily be a four or five star book.