This sequel offers more of the first book’s strengths: dark, desperate magic in a glittering world of wealth and power.Ī fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit. The characters would feel more alive if they ever slowed down enough to have nonportentous thoughts, but the race-against-time, good-against–elite-evil elements are strong enough to keep the story moving and keep readers engaged. Like An Unkindness of Magicians, this novel is fast-paced, slick, and cinematic, packed full of dramatic imagery: Chunks of ruined house move on their own with an “echoing scrape of rock over bone,” whispering trees of bone rise from the soil of Central Park, a woman pulls a sticky thread of magic out of her own shadow. Now Sydney and her allies will have to fight to destroy Shadows once and for all-while magicians from powerful old Houses work to reestablish the spell that allows the blood and pain of a few sacrifices to pay the price of magic for everyone. Meanwhile, Laurent Beauchamps, who won the right to establish a new magical House in the last Turning, is reaching out to outsider magicians like Mia Rodriguez, who can sometimes make things move with her mind and who’s desperate to know if she can do more. And what’s worse, there are some in the Unseen World who want it back-some who believe the world was better when magic was easier, even if it meant anonymous magicians had to suffer and die in the House of Shadows to pay the price. Sydney sacrificed her magic to destroy it in the last Turning, but it’s coming back. In this sequel to An Unkindness of Magicians (2017), the House of Shadows is rebuilding itself. (Sept.A darkly glamorous tale about the price of magic-and who has to pay. When Howard slows down, both the characters and the Unseen World flourish in her gorgeous prose, but these moments are too few. The other characters treat events that should be devastating without prolonged concern, thus discouraging the reader from getting emotionally involved. The plot is very rushed, and readers will find Sydney difficult to connect with any obstacles or sources of tension are no match for her magic. The houses in power plan to eliminate her if she survives the Turning. Now, with each magical duel she wins, her abilities grow and the reservoir of stolen magic shrinks. As a child, Sydney was a captive of the House of Shadows, who siphoned some of her magic to strengthen the abilities of other magicians, but she won her partial freedom after challenging the house. Magic isn’t an ability magicians have unlimited access to, but rather a resource that can be bottled and transferred from magician to magician.
Sydney is a magician in an alternate modern-day New York who’s hired to represent House Beauchamps in the Turning, a magical competition that determines the hierarchy of houses in the magical community called the Unseen World. Howard’s sophomore novel (after Roses and Rot) is zippy at the expense of character development.
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