The Federation of Belligerent Mages

[bloodygranuaile]

I enjoyed A Darker Shade of Magic because it was fun tropey nonsense, so I picked up the sequel, A Gathering of Shadows, which is even more fun tropey nonsense.

 

The central bit of tropey nonsense in here is that it is a Tournament Book, which is always a fun time. It deviates from the usual expectations a bit in that not one, but two characters enter illegally, and a bit more in that (spoilers) neither of them win. Also, the tournament is structured a little weird. But it is still a magic tournament, and people still wear a lot of fabulous coats.

 

Granted, not all the tropes are fun. Lila has been Spunky Fighter Girl Who Hates Dresses! for a while, which has been done but is fine, but at some point early in the book she literally pulls out a "I'm not like other girls," which is why I was so pleased that she also turned out to be Not Like Other Protagonists and didn't win the tournament. (I am knocking an entire star off my Goodreads rating for this book just for those five words in a 500-page book. I am not fucking around; there is no excuse for anyone to write or type that in earnest ever again. This is basic shit by now.) It was telegraphed pretty heavily in the last book that Lila's an Antari but that doesn't save her ass because it turns out she can't just attitude her way through all the laws of magic, and while a bit of "the rules don't apply to me" can be part of the power fantasy in fantasy books (wouldn't it be nice to have the rules not apply to you?), it's even more satisfying to see someone get a bit of comeuppance when they're all like "I don't have any fucking idea what the rules are; I'm just sure they don't apply to me!"

 

The book also doubles the number of Handsome Rich Flirty Bros by introducing Alucard (yes, ALUCARD) Emery, the captain of the privateer ship Lila steals away on to learn pirating because she's never been on a boat before which is a liability if your dream is to be a pirate, so we have to put up with his overbearingly charming ass in addition to Rhy, the crown prince, who is actually starting to grow up a little and is even more insufferable because of it. This double whammy of Handsome Rich Flirty Bros ought to be a thousand percent insufferable but is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they are gay for each other, which ends up making Kell mad even though they are clearly perfect for each other since they are basically the same person.

 

Kell spends most of this book going through angst like he's trying to win a tournament of angsting (which Rhy would probably win actually). Neither he nor Rhy are dealing well with having to share a life-force; it's apparently very invasive, and they can feel each other's physical pain, which means they each spend way too much time and brainspace fretting over how much they'll hurt the other one if they stub their toe. It's all very heartwarming.

 

Anyway, while everyone is busy being permanently unhappy about everything over in the Red London universe, the White London universe is slowly coming back to life, thanks to its new king: Holland, the Antari who was killed and stuffed into Black London at the end of last book. Yay for White London! Except that while this seems good it is actually Bad, because the Thing that ate Black London is insatiable and is quite hellbent on overdoing things in every London. Holland has also picked up a slightly culty knife-dancing follower with red hair that he's been able to impart magic to and he sends her on some sort of mission to Red London to kidnap Kell. There's a lot of fighting and running through secret corridors and stuff.

 

The Obligatory Romantic Subplot between Kell and Lila that's been telegraphed since the very first second they met finally blooms into existence sometime near the end of this book, so that's out of the way finally. I was not especially rooting for or against this; every human in this book is so massively emotionally damaged that I can't imagine their romantic relationships being in any way healing or functional, but I'm also not sure they can screw them up any more than they already are.

 

In short: Magic tournament, angst, fighting, running through secret corridors, more fabulous coats, disguises, hijinks, capers, rich assholes, boats, moar angst, evil hungry magic threatening to corrupt/take over the world. In other words: tropey but fun.