#i should go read some stiefvater next because her prose and characters are incredible incredible INCREDIBLE

[rithmeres]

long rant abt sh.ades of m.agic under the cut sorry

i’m 150 pages into the last book and honestly.............. this trilogy not that good lmao. maybe some my complaints will be resolved by the end of the series but seeing how things have gone so far i really doubt it. the premise and worldbuilding were so promising and i really like the whole concept of the four londons, i like kell’s character design and coat, and i like the way blood is used for magic but that’s where the good stuff ends. it’s a shame that the plot and cast can’t hold up to the core concept. lila is SO annoying and the way that the only major female character in these books has a hUGE ‘im not like other girls’ complex and actively derides other women and anything feminine and it’s presented as girl power is so bad and cringe. she walks around doing whatever illegal or self-entitled things she wants with no regard for the consequences and she never faces any consequences, from the law or from the narrative or from the people who care about her. her relationship with kell is weird too like they met and barely interacted before she kissed him and they suddenly start acting like their whole world revolves around the other. she’s sooooooooo mary-sue gifted like kell has trained his whole life to do magic so of course he’s amazing but lila has two (2) lessons with some annoying pirate and suddenly she can go toe to toe with kell and do insanely difficult magic without even knowing what she’s doing. it’s bad writing brent.

i do like kell though, even if he is a little boring, and i like the tight bond he has with his brother. i think kell is the only person with any common sense in this book and he’s a breath of fresh air. but DO NOT GET ME STARTED on the blatant favoritism the king and queen show for their biological son. the way they treat kell as inferior leaves such a bad taste in my mouth like it’s bad enough that you would have a blatant favorite but on top of it kell saved rhy’s life three different times and they can’t even say thank you or acknowledge his sacrifice?? they’re so cold to him and for what. kell basically died to save his brother and the parents respond by essentially grounding their adult son and it’s gross. and then rhy is every pretty flirty privileged boy stereotype rolled into one and he grates on my nerves and what’s really bad is that he has the EXACT same personality as his love interest which makes reading these books SUPER WEIRD because the two of them look physically similar and have become literally interchangeable in my mind. adding alucard (i hate that name so much omfg) to the cast was just adding a second rhy to the mix and he seems to have very little bearing on the plot. would it kill authors to not make every bisexual character a flirts-with-anything-that-moves stereotype. you should be ashamed of yourself.

also literally nothing of importance happened in the second book until the very end and there was actually no point to that entire tournament and most of the stuff could have been cut. holland is the only mf in this city i respect and the only one with nuance and a compelling character. i feel so bad for him bc he just cannot catch a break and everyone hates him so much even though he was being controlled against his will, and the other characters know this but they still abuse him. and there r a bunch of unexplained issues with the magic system (like how did athos dane summon a big snake???) and the power scaling (or maybe it’s just all thrown off because of lila’s supernatural gifting).

it feels to me like schwab was just like ‘uhhhhhhh what do people like these days ... people like boys with mysterious backstories so i’m uhhhhhhhh literally never gonna explain how my main character got his powers or where he came from. people like uhhhhhhhhhh strong female characters so my one and only female character of importance is gonna hate everything about being a woman. people like diversity so im gonna give them uhhhhhhhhh two horny bisexual poc men who are nigh indistinguishable from each other’ and hoped the story would write itself

#for a moment i thought maybe im just getting old and jaded and ive outgrown ya but then i remembered THIS IS ADULT FICTION #this is shelved alongside gaiman and pratchett and sanderson and le guin so like. step it up miss schwab #i really liked vicious #like A LOT #vengeful didnt do it for me tho #so i had hoped that i would like schwab's more recent stuff even if i didnt like vengeful #but nah #i should go read some stiefvater next because her prose and characters are incredible incredible INCREDIBLE #some of schwab's stuff reads kinda fic-ish #and not the tightly wrought fics that blow your socks off #it's like...... common phrases and conventions that i p much only see in amateur online spaces when describing characters or writing romance #i don't really know how to explain it i need to just go to bed