nebrinkley:
Why Lila Bard is the hero of the Shades of Magic series
Look, it’s no secret that I love Schwab’s writing. I’ve gushed about A Darker Shade of Magic
to everybody I come in contact with, be it on Twitter or when they walk
in my bookstore. I’ve shoved her books onto my favorites shelf in my
library of a bedroom, the “I will buy you a copy of your own if you want
to read one of these, they’re that good” shelf. (Her upcoming YA novel This Savage Song,
though radically different from her Shades of Magic series, is just as
fantastic, and the way she flips between her narrator’s voices is one of
the best I’ve seen in a long time.) But A Gathering of Shadows was the second book in the series. I fully expected it to suffer Second Book Syndrome.
Instead, I tore through it and found myself bouncing with joy at the end.But why? Even Leigh Bardugo’s Siege and Storm
– one of the few second books that fail to suffer Second Book Syndrome,
and which I adore and still refer to as the best of the Grisha trilogy –
didn’t leave me bouncing in my seat. What made A Gathering of Shadows so different?
Then I realized: I knew who the hero was. And it wasn’t who I expected. And I loved it.
I’m at Book Riot to talk about why Lila Bard is the real hero of the Shades of Magic series.