A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
A Novel
Title: A Conjuring of Light
Author: V.E. Schwab
Publisher: Tor
Publication Year: 2017
ISBN: 9780765387479
Rating: 5 stars
The last book left off with Rhy slowly dying at the palace, Kell stuck in White London with his power severed, Lila testing to see if she might be an Antari and able to travel to White London on her own, and Osaron heading for Red London in Holland’s body.
Lila is able to make the jump to White London on her own. She enters the palace to find Kell trapped behind a door guarded to Ojka, an Antari Holland created with Osaron’s magic. Lila fights and kills Ojka to get to Kell, but in the fight, Ojka manages to crack Lila’s glass eye. Lila is able to get Kell and get him back to Red London, but not before Rhy dies a second time. However, when Kell’s magic is restored, Rhy himself is brought back to life again.
Shortly after the prince’s miraculous recovery and Kell’s return home, Osaron arrives at the Red Palace as Kell briefs the king, the guards, and the priests on his power. He arrives in the middle of the Essen Tasch’s closing night ball and kills one of the magicians. Multiple people try to fight Osaron, but they are only able to capture Holland’s body before Osaron frees himself and goes out to infect London. The priests are able to erect wards around the palace to protect those inside—the royal family, some guards, and various magicians and high ranking guests from Faro and Vesk in town for the Essen Tasch, but Osaron’s magic runs rampant throughout the town.
Those who accept Osaron become senseless puppets to do his bidding and those who resist get a fever and sickness that either burns their bodies to ash or leaves them with silver scars and immune to Osaron’s mind control. Without an Antari, there is no body strong enough to contain Osaron for long and he cannot take over as king without a body. With some people trapped safely in the palace, but most people left in danger on the streets or in their homes, and Osaron’s cloud steadily growing outside of London, our heroes pursue a variety of plans to try to stop him: King Maxim, formerly the Steel Prince, is at work on some secret spell in his study; Master Tieren, the head priest, is working with other priests on a sleeping spell to put everyone outside the palace to sleep—it’s a risky spell, but with no one awake, Osaron has no one to do his bidding; and Kell and Holland concoct a plan to try to capture Osaron back in Holland’s body and destroy him that way. This plan doesn’t work and it will still be days before the sleeping spell or King Maxim’s plan can be put into play, so they need to come up with a Plan B.
With his life tethered to Kell’s, Rhy seems to be immune to Osaron as well, so Rhy continues to scour the city for the “silvers” or those who survived refusing Osaron. Out of other options, Lila, Kell, Holland, and Alucard set off via ship for Is Feras Stras, a ship that deals in illegal buying and selling. Alucard had previously traded an Inheritor—a device used to trap magic—to Maris, the owner of the market, years prior, and the Inheritor now seems like the best chance they have of containing Osaron. They expect the trip there and back to take four days, and Kell makes Rhy promise to stay out of trouble until then.
Naturally, the trip to Is Feras Stras is eventful. They run into massive trouble on the way and Lila is almost killed and Holland saves her life, something that displeases her because she still hates him. Kell and Lila also seal the deal on the trip…if you get my drift…
In order to gain entrance to the market, Lila has to give Maris her pocket watch from Grey London, to her a symbol of her old life and the people she lost there, and Kell has to give Maris his coin from Grey London, which was a gift from George III, who he liked a lot. However, their trip is successful, with Alucard finding a magic mirror that he has been looking for, Kell finding an Antari ring that he doesn’t yet understand, and Lila getting the Inheritor. Before they leave, Maris tells Kell privately that she is the one who bought him from his parents and sold him to the royal family and that she is willing to tell him information about his past because she feels she owes him. She also tells him that the forgetting spell she put on him probably would have worn off if he really wanted it to, so he takes the information from her, but decides to destroy it instead of reading it. In addition to the Inheritor, Maris gives Lila a black glass Antari eye to replace her broken glass eye. While she charged Alucard and Kell by demanding years of their lives, she gives Lila the eye in exchange for a favor to be called in at some point in the future.
Back on the boat and headed back to London, they experiment with Kell’s ring and discover that it is an Antari binding ring that can be turned from one ring into three. When Kell, Lila, and Holland all wear the ring, it binds their powers together and allows any of them to use their collective power. They hope that the ring and the Inheritor will be the tools they need to defeat Osaron and trap his power, and that the trip back to London will give them enough time to learn how to use them both without killing themselves or Rhy.
Meanwhile in London, Tieren has managed to place the sleeping spell over the city, which has greatly reduced Osaron’s power. Just when the people in the palace think they might get a reprieve, Princess Cora and Prince Col of Vesk, who had come to London for the Essen Tasch decide to make a play for the Arnesian throne. Princess Cora tries to assassinate King Maxim with a poisoned sword, but the contingent from Faro is able to stop her before she succeeds. Prince Col goes after Queen Emira, but Rhy throws himself in front of his mother since he cannot die and manages to kill Col. Too late, he realizes that the sword went all the way through him and still managed to kill Emira.
Frustrated by the sleeping spell, Osaron comes to the palace to challenge King Maxim himself. This is what Maxim has been preparing his secret spell for. Despite Rhy’s desperate protests, Maxim and an army of steel soldiers made of magic go out to meet Osaron. Maxim allows Osaron into his body and then commands his army to attack him with their swords that cut off magic. The plan is not fully successful as Osaron is able to get away, but he is much weakened, so Maxim’s sacrifice was effective. Rhy, crushed by grief and feeling completely alone, is now king since both of his parents are dead. Despite his losses, Rhy must try to get the Veskan situation under control and stop the envoys of Veskan soldiers the Prince and Princess sent for before they come into London and become more bodies for Osaron to control. Once he plays his card and Kell hasn’t returned on time, Rhy goes to try to fight Osaron himself while the latter is weakened.
Back on the seas, the captain of the ship they borrowed to get to Is Feras Stras has double crossed our crew and they are attacked by pirates. They are able to take the ship back over and kill the pirates and captain, but not before they lose time and suffer heavy losses.
When the ship is nearly back to London, they find that they cannot reach land because of a blockade of Veskan ships. Kell has felt Rhy’s pain from the stabbing and from his encounters with Osaron, but he doesn’t know the cause. He is determined to get back to London as quickly as possible, but Alucard, now captaining the ship, knows the four of them can’t take on that many soldiers. Alucard conjures up a mist to hide them and Kell, Lila, and Holland make a break for land outside of the blockade to get back to the palace. Alucard stands with the ship and prepares himself to try to stop the Veskan ships from moving toward London by any means necessary. Luckily, thanks to Rhy’s intervention, the ships slowly turn and go back to Vesk without Alucard needing to do anything.
The three Antari arrive back at the palace to find the bodies of the king and queen and for Isra to tell them that Rhy has left to take on Osaron. Kell can feel that Rhy is in immense pain, so they all rush to Osaron’s lair. Meanwhile, Osaron has compelled Ojka’s body to come to him in Red London so he can once again have a vessel, which makes him all the more difficult to defeat. After a hard fought battle, they are able to get Osaron into the Inheritor, but not without Holland also having to sacrifice his magical ability and some of Kell’s with it. They have won, but the cost has been extremely high.
As Red London tries to get back to a new normal, Rhy is now king. He is diplomatically trying to handle the situation with Faro and Vesk to try to return the kingdoms to the peace they enjoyed in his father’s reign. Alucard asks for an audience with the new king and shows Rhy with the mirror he bought that only shows the truth how he hadn’t wanted to leave him and break his heart three years prior. Rhy agrees to forgive him and keep him as his personal guard since Kell is going to go traveling for a bit. After taking the Inheritor to a trusted friend in Grey London, cutting the Red Crown’s ties with George IV, and returning Holland to White London (his final wish), Lila is taking over as the captain of the Night Spire and Kell is actually coming with her to finally see something of the world outside of London. It is an ending full of goodbyes for both those who were lost throughout the series and those who are parting ways, but it is also an ending full of hope for better days in the future filled with love and acceptance.
You definitely need to have the tissues ready for this one. The relative lack of loss of beloved characters in the second book lulls you into a false sense of security and then this book stabs you in the heart over and over again. Much like in life, some of the endings are noble and taken on for the greater good, but some feel senseless, and both leave you sad and aching. I do think it’s fitting though. At the end of a series like this, the reader is saying goodbye to tons of beloved characters whether they die or go on to a happily ever after, so the entire book just prepares you for that.
This book also features a lot of flashbacks, especially of Holland’s life that grant a depth to the character that was missing in the previous books. While you are angry at Osaron and what he is doing, given what Holland has been through and his goals, it’s hard to be angry at him for bringing the magic back. However, as I mentioned, many characters still are, especially Lila, so seeing this potentially exculpatory emotional evidence that many of the main characters are not aware of, also shows how even our heroes can sometimes be a little shortsighted and quick to judge.
Kell and Lila also both have emotional growth that does work to speak to some of my previous concerns about their relationship. Being given the ability to find out about his biological family, the threats to Red London, and the thawing of the king and queen under duress, proved to Kell that the royal family is the only family he needs and the fact that his forgetting spell never wore off proves that part of him always knew that. By losing and being afraid to lose so many people during Osaron’s coup, Lila realized that emotional ties aren’t always bad, mostly in regards to her romantic love for Kell, but also in her familial love for Alucard. She still isn’t one to rush to let people in, but she does at least have some people that she loves and who love her back. The sappy part of me is made happy by all this, but the realistic part feels like that is just a little too convenient. I hope that the realistic part is wrong.
I’m about to start The Fragile Threads of Power, and I don’t know much about it yet, but I think Lila is still in it and I think Maris calls in the favor Lila owes her. I also know other than Lila, it’s mostly about new characters. I hope I will get to see a little of our favorite old characters and that the happily ever after that they seemingly found at the end of this book extended for them, at least for a while.