Review: A Conjuring of Light

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one was a little low on my current library-haul TBR pile, which has ballooned to a pretty massive size since I'm currently done with school, but thanks to Aimal Farooq's urging, I bumped it up and decided to read it before tackling Star Wars: Aftermath.

I think I made the right choice.

The first two books in this trilogy, I liked them but didn't love them. Compared to The Archived, The Unbound, and Vicious, I thought they were good Schwab books, but not her best. Hell, based on the first parts of this book, I thought A Conjuring of Light would be too long and slow and damaged by hype to properly appreciate.

I was wrong.

600 pages? No problem when you have a book as fast-paced and twisted as this one, with the stakes at their absolute highest. Our five core characters get their shares of time in the spotlight - and that includes Holland, whom I didn't really like before, but now I feel a lot of sympathy for him, especially given what happens in his flashback scenes. There are, in fact, a lot of flashbacks, not just for Holland, but also for Rhy as well, with more information about the development of his and Kell's brotherhood, and his always-tense relationship with Alucard. Only Lila, I feel, gets a less attention than she deserves, which is a shame, but then she's so integral to the story that she really doesn't need any flashbacks anyway.

But while the story does take its time building up to an explosive climax (reminiscent in many ways of Teen Wolf, actually) that's really only in terms of page count. The book flies through its short chapters, allowing it to be devoured in a surprisingly short amount of time. And while it's not perfect, A Conjuring of Light finally, for me, validates me as a passenger on this hype train.

Normally, when I come to the end of a series, I say ave atque vale. But for Schwab's unique four Londons, I'll instead have to say this.

Vas ir...

...anoshe.

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