This frustrated me a lot while reading it but thankfully is only seen in bits and pieces of the book and by the end she is back to her usual self. I love Lila’s character and how well she had been written up until this point but my gosh, she ventures into the ‘I’m not like other girls’ and ‘doesn’t she look good in a dress’ territory that she had avoided up until this point. Her four months in Red London result in her ability to not only perform magic but trick her way into The Element Games. This book heavily focuses on Lila in a way that ADSOM does not. Let them think what they want was a thought that visited him with far less frequency and force than They see you as a monster So let’s make him a bit more interesting or at least a bit more conflicted please! Let’s be real, he’s not a particularly interesting character – he’s all power and angst with a dash of familial love for his brother. Whether it is from the attitude of the royal family not itself to the way Arnesians treat him, this book builds up Kell’s feelings of being othered. Kell’s feelings of being a pawn of the crown and of being an outsider is substantiated in this book. This took up a lot of the space in the book and was pretty well done. O n paper this sounds like an excellent plot but it falls a little flat as the games function more as a device to bring back all of the key players to Red London. Both Kell and Lila, each in disguise, end up participating in the Essen Tasch.

There is some tension in the book: we see tiny glimpses of what is happening in White London and there is the run up to Red London’s equivalent of the Olympics: The Element Games or Essen Tasch, most of the book is spent in character work. Where A Darker Shade of Magic jumped from London to London, cramming plot and action into every page, A Gathering of Shadows merely ambles along in a beautiful but slow attempt to build up the characters. What a useless word, in a world with magic. And soon, the Element Games will begin in Red London. White London remains strangely quiet, as a new power emerges following the death of the Danes. Lila finds her place at sea, learning Arnesian and magic under Captain Alucard. Rhy grapples with the guilt of being tied to Kell’s life and the uncanny feeling that comes with his second chance. Set four months after A Darker Shade of Magic, Kell is more prisoner than prince watched closely by the King and Queen and blamed for the so-called Black Night.

A gathering of shadows