A Conjuring of Light
This whole trilogy was just amazing. A lot of that is thanks to Lila, one of the best characters I've encountered in years. Bu Schwab really does an amazing job of balancing character and plot and exposition. Of building up to exciting events and paying off her foreshadowing. Of teasing out all the different relationships between her characters. Of not letting anything be easy.
The second book ended on a terrible cliffhanger, and this one wastes no time jumping right back into the action. Schwab expands her points of view to include nearly every character with a stake in the outcome, allowing for all sorts of tension to build up just in the first hundred pages.
And beyond that, the book keeps the excitement up. Old enemies have to find ways to work together. People form new alliances and friendships and fall in love and get way too wrapped up in duty. Schwab really has a gift for giving each of her characters a unique motivation and setting them up to bounce off each other and clash and find common ground in a plethora of interesting ways.
Even more impressive is her ability to use flashbacks to change the reader's understanding of characters. The more I learned about Holland's early life, the more sympathetic I was to him and the more I wondered where his arc would end. Ditto Alucard and the Queen and, well, basically everyone who got their backstory fleshed out in this volume.
The bottom line is that I loved these books. Schwab has earned a place on my list of authors whose catalogs I intend to read in their entirety (it's a good thing she's near the beginning of her career). I can't wait to see what she does next.
The second book ended on a terrible cliffhanger, and this one wastes no time jumping right back into the action. Schwab expands her points of view to include nearly every character with a stake in the outcome, allowing for all sorts of tension to build up just in the first hundred pages.
And beyond that, the book keeps the excitement up. Old enemies have to find ways to work together. People form new alliances and friendships and fall in love and get way too wrapped up in duty. Schwab really has a gift for giving each of her characters a unique motivation and setting them up to bounce off each other and clash and find common ground in a plethora of interesting ways.
Even more impressive is her ability to use flashbacks to change the reader's understanding of characters. The more I learned about Holland's early life, the more sympathetic I was to him and the more I wondered where his arc would end. Ditto Alucard and the Queen and, well, basically everyone who got their backstory fleshed out in this volume.
The bottom line is that I loved these books. Schwab has earned a place on my list of authors whose catalogs I intend to read in their entirety (it's a good thing she's near the beginning of her career). I can't wait to see what she does next.
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