The Fragile Threads of Power, V.E. Schwab

Book Title: The Fragile Threads of Power

Author: V.E. Schwab

Series: Threads of Power #1

Date Started: March 17th  2026

Date Completed: May 26th 2026

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I, unfortunately, skim-read this book from 200 pages in (once those first 200 pages had taken me over a month to get through). If it wasn't V.E. Schwab, I would've given up entirely.

This book seems to set out with the intention of telling a new story, with an enormous amount of new characters (that I couldn't keep track of), but it just cannot let go of the references, guest appearances and nostalgia of the original trilogy. And it absolutely holds back what this story could have been. At some point, it feels like a continuation but at others it seems to completely forget the central story and goes on a complete tangent for seemingly no payoff.

The structuring in general was strange. We jump between now and 7 years ago (and I still don't see the need), sticking with one character for ages and then forgetting they exist for the rest of the book. I had no sense of how all their stories tied together, and my only assumption is that it's laying groundwork for the rest of the series, but it made this book a really confusing experience.

Overall, you could've cut at least 150 pages; there's so much description, reliving essentially the same scenes, really driving home the protagonists' tortured hero narrative. Less is more is something I thought over and over again reading this book, as we fell into this swirling repetition of prose, prose, prose for the sake of prose. Yes, we love this series for its worldbuilding, but if we're coming back for a sequel series, we'd appreciate a little more plot that isn't just the protagonists' angst. Nothing happened in the first 200 pages!

I'm honestly super disappointed. A Darker Shade of Magic is one of my favourite books and while I've not always gotten along with some of Schwab's other work, I was hoping this step back into the familiar would pay off, but alas. I've still given it three stars because, if you're more attached to the original, you may get more out of it. If this is what Red London is now, I think I'm ready to move on.