Book Thoughts: A Darker Shade of Magic
This one's a bit odd as I usually carefully pick my audiobook choices. Instead, I got A Darker Shade of Magic as the second half of a two-for-one deal.
It's a light fantasy read without much umph to it. It was nice enough; the narrator was good and gave the main characters a lot of British cheek that matched the setting. The overlapped Londons of varying magical capacity was a fantastic idea, but the world-building was poorly executed.
Light spoilers ahead.
-For one, the different Londons felt tiny. Each truly felt like it was inhabited by maybe tem people, even in scenes that contain whole crowds. While each London had character, very little time was spent in fleshing the cities out; a shame, as the concept is great! I wish there had either been more Londons, or a hell of a lot more going on in the ones we got.
The characters in the book and their individual developments were also small. Both protagonists were fairly common archetypes that didn't stray far from expectation: The cheeky tough-presenting thief girl and the warm-hearted magic noble with a troublemaking streak. Don't bother getting attached to any of other side-characters in the story as the author clearly takes offense to inn and shop proprietors and kills them off almost as fast as they're introduced. A shame, as each London could really use a healthier population of fleshed-out individuals.
I'll give points to the antagonists of the story, as they weren't horrible.
I felt Lila Bard was set up to be the real focal point of the whole story here, even if the more magically inclined Kell ate up a lot of "screen time". Clearly the author has plans for Lila in future stories, but I'd be a little worried about the power-scaling based on what I saw in this first book. Lila goes from fleeing a handful of punks to single-handedly fighting a bunch of men in the street and even soloing magic-users in what... a couple of days? It honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm sure by book 3 we have Super Saiyan 4 Lila flattening entire Londons with a cheeky fart.
I've got a lot of complaints here, but I didn't hate my time with the book. It felt like a loose D&D campaign with some pals -- the rules are made up, everyone gets too powerful too quickly, and half the game is improvised with only 2 or 3 NPCs with any thought put into them. It was still fun, but it was pure junk food.
I wish I'd spent the time listening to something that inspired me or made me think.