Review: A Conjuring of Light, V.E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab’s A Conjuring of Light builds upon two excellent predecessors and surpasses them in every single way, ending this trilogy on a high note.
Every once in a while, after you finish something, be it book or movie or album, you just need to sit there for a bit and process what just happened. That’s not because the work in question was bad, but that it was so good that you don’t even know where to begin. This is about where I’m at with V.E. Schwab’s A Conjuring of Light.
I’d read and enjoyed both the preceding novels, and looked forward to this one. But I confess I wasn’t prepared for the conclusion to the tale of the four Londons, the Antari who can pass between them, and the looming darkness that threatens them all. I knew it would be good, but endings are hard, after all.
Yet here I am, happily giving A Conjuring of Light 5/5 stars and quite confident it’ll be one of the best books I read all year. Let’s break it down.
The Good
Schwab’s writing is wonderful. Conjuring doesn’t demand your attention with rhetorical flourishes or anything of the like. It doesn’t have to. Instead, it draws you in, weaving around you (quite like her descriptions of magic) and lulling you into reading far more than you ever planned. Yours truly sat and opened the book, and before she knew it, she was 200 pages in and upset that she had to go do something else. There are brief moments of levity, of romance, even of meditation on things like the nature of myths, and (of course) action, but all flow together.
The narrative deftly juggles multiple perspectives, and doesn’t even need to tell you which character you’re with in big print at the start of each chapter. There’s no sense that you want to skip any chapters, either — and you can’t, because they’re interconnected so well, even when characters are far apart.
As always, the worldbuilding and characterization are also quite impressive, even for the places and people we’ve spent two novels with now. No developments feel rushed, but instead quite natural. New settings fit alongside those we’ve seen before.
I can’t even say I have a favorite character among the main cast, because all of them feel so well-developed. If I’m pushed, I might confess that there’s a special place in my heart for Alucard Emery, even if his name isn’t meant to be a reference to Castlevania or even Dracula, but it’s with great reluctance, and I’ll probably change my mind in five minutes.
Finally, the ending is absolutely perfect. No spoilers here, of course, but just know that it works really well.
The Not-So-Good
This is so minor a quibble as to be practically non-existent, but here it is: Conjuring picks up effectively immediately after the ending of the previous book, A Gathering of Shadows. Normally, this isn’t a bad thing, but with such a complex and rich world, it could be that a reader forgets a few things here and there. You may want to quickly refresh your memory by either re-reading a summary or just re-reading the whole series before diving into this one.
The Recommendation
If you haven’t picked up the Shades of Magic series before, do so. A Darker Shade of Magic is good; A Gathering of Shadows is better; A Conjuring of Light blows them both away and could probably do it with one hand behind its spine if books had hands and fought with each other like that. Don’t start with Conjuring, though, unless you want to be very, very confused.
Next: The Nebula Award Nominees are Here
You can find A Conjuring of Light at your bookseller of choice.