Shades of Magic

Turn your coat. In this world there is not one London but four, laid over the same point on the map like cards palmed in a cheat's hand: Grey London, dull and magicless; Red London, where power runs bright and warm as blood; White London, starving and cruel; and Black London, which magic devoured whole before the others sealed the doors against it. Between the worlds walk the Antari — blood-magicians rare as they are dangerous, the only souls who can open a way from one London into the next, and pay for every crossing. Victoria (V. E.) Schwab's cycle opens with the Shades of Magic trilogy — A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, A Conjuring of Light — following Kell, an Antari courier bound to Red London's crown, and Delilah Bard, a Grey London cutpurse with a thief's fingers and a pirate's ambitions. The sequel series, Threads of Power, returns to the same four cities a handful of years on, beginning with The Fragile Threads of Power. Expect elegant menace: high-collared coats and coronations, princes and pickpockets, a magic that is lovely and hungry in the same breath. Begin with A Darker Shade of Magic and read forward in publication order — the trilogy first, then Threads of Power. The doors only open one way.