A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab book review
A Conjuring of Light #3 by V.E. Schwab
Genre: Fantasy, YA Fantasy
Published Feb 2017; 624 pages
First Sentence: "Delilah Bard - always a thief, recently a magician, and one day, hopefully, a pirate - was running as fast as she could."
PLOT
Hmmmm - in reading the GR blurb for a way to summarize the plot, it says next to nothing. Lots of words but really no clue about the story. So, my attempt. Picking up right where A Gathering of Shadows left off, Lila and Alucard are on their way to London to participate in a grand magic tournament. Alucard has been teaching Lila the basics of magic and how to tap into her power, but, as usual, she's got more confidence and moxie than skill. Prince Rhy has organized the tournament and concocted a scheme to allow Kell to participate.
Through a series of events, the character Holland is drawn back into the story and makes a brooding villain with a good-ish heart. As Lila's powers and control increase, she approaches the abilities of the elite Antari magicians. Then the castle and capital are attacked by an evil, powerful, magical being. All the Antari have to set aside their dislikes, distrust, and differences and work together to overcome the attack.
MY THOUGHTS
I'm glad I read #3 shortly after finishing #2, while all the characters and events were fresh in my mind. The characters all continue to evolve though I found Prince Rhy the most interesting and complex. Lila is one badass heroine that holds her own against all those posturing men and might be my fave character. Her propensity for knife throwing, for attacking-first-ask-questions-later, is entertaining but in this installment she develops a slightly softer side as her relationship with Kell develops. It was good to see her fail a time or two - who wants a perfect heroine?!
There are battles, betrayals, love stories, magic, thievery, plots and counterplots. I'm always in awe of an author that can plot such complete characters, take them through all this action and strife, and have the story hold together and make sense through 600 pages!
All in all, I found this a rollicking good time series with plenty of action, tons of magic, good characters you can root for, a huge, evil opponent that is a worthy bad guy, and with a touch of a couple of love stories. I just have to say, the two love stories- one between Rhy and Alucard, the other between Kell and Lila - are just about the perfect amount of love story to me. It's a reasonable background part of the story, but it doesn't pull the main story off track and doesn't become boring (to me) by dwelling on lingering looks and passionate embraces. For those of you who enjoy looks and embraces, there's not a lot of it in the series, but there's lots of other things to recommend it.
Challenges tagged:
Mt. TBR -library: 6/24
Library Love: 15/65+
COYER 1st semester: 25 books read
