A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1)

By V. E. Schwab

Tags: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Bisexual

"Addictive and immersive, this series is a must-read." —Entertainment Weekly

Enter #1 New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s beloved Shades of Magic trilogy—a dazzling world of parallel Londons where magic thrives, starves, or lies forgotten,
and where power can destroy just as quickly as it can create.

Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.

"Confident prose and marvelous touches-a chameleon coat, a scarlet river of magic, a piratical antiheroine-bring exuberant life to an exhilarating adventure among the worlds."-Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Compulsively readable...her characters make the book."--NPR

"Feels like a priceless object, brought from another, better world of fantasy books...kept me engrossed by its story every bit as much as I was fascinated by its complex, multilayered world."--io9.com

"Has all the hallmarks of a classic work of fantasy...This is a book to treasure." -Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author of The All Souls trilogy