This book. THIS BOOK. I read A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC because my cousin said I had to, and he was right. I liked the first book, but I LOVED the sequel.

Picking up four months after SHADES OF MAGIC, this sequel is all about growth. Kell and Rhy struggle with the overgrowth of life between them, the consequence of Kell bloodying his hands with necromancy. A white and black mirror, Holland is forced to trade his freedom for a overzealous fungus of a magic king. Grey London enthusiast Ned sprouts a surprise of his own. Red London tailor Calla coaxes new fabric creations. And then there is Lila Bard, the star of the book, who blossoms into her own, as one-of-a-kind and unique as only a fully fleshed out character can be. These changing characters are thrust into the crucible of the Element Games, a tournament to see who among the 3 Empires is the strongest magician.

And the result is a little bit beautiful. (By which I mean very beautiful)

Schwab's mastery of wordcraft never shines brighter than here. She creates tension out of every little thing, just GOES THERE with her plots. It's marvelous to witness as a writer, to see how she crafted scenes like a glassblower does a stained glass rose window. Though the stakes were admittedly lower in this book than the last (the world being devoured by magic vs. will Lila beat the snot out of everybody in this tourney), I could not stop devouring it.

If I was cornered and forced to have a quibble, I would say that Queen Emira and King Maxim suffered what a lot of book parents do: they were a bunch of hardasses. They were constant thorns in the other characters' sides, laying down unreasonable rules and generally getting in the way. For me, they stopped being characters: they were more two dimensional, bull-headed hurdles to be leapt over. Kell and Rhy blow off their parents' behavior as that of people still reeling from their sons' brush with death, but that didn't ring true for me. We never hear from Maxim or Emira themselves what is going on in their inconvenient heads, and the book suffers a glancing blow for it.

A say "glancing blow" because everything else is so delightful. The casual diversity in sexual orientation and race are carried over from the first book. The writing style, as I said, is just my glass of champagne. I recommend the SHADES OF MAGIC series to literally any New Adult speculative fiction fan. Trust me, there's something for everyone here. You're going to like it.