I’m a sucker for a well-developed fictional world. I’ll plow through series that have little in the way of plot or character development just because I want to hear more about the places people are exploring, the history of a kingdom in flux, the unusual flora and fauna that populate the land. The Shades of Magic Series has not too much of the bad stuff, and all of the good stuff in spades.

Imagine a world much like the one you live in right now. You could find your way down the streets, notice landmarks, anchor yourself to the geography. But when you try to find familiar places or faces, you see only strangers. And there’s something different, something dangerous, something powerful lingering in the air… That’s the city of London in this series – or, I should say, the cities of London. There are four, all similar but all very different. There is Red London, a place alive with magic but not so very different from our own world; there is Grey London, our London, a place where magic that has been lost and forgotten; there is White London, a cold place where magic is scarce and where the people are starving for it, freezing without it; and there is Black London, a place that has been destroyed by magic, a dead place, a dark place, a place where no one dares go.

White London wants their magic back.

Unbeknownst to them, to everyone, someone else does, too.

The Shades of Magic series has suspense, intrigue, all the stuff that you put on the back of a book. It also has some marvelous world building, characters that grow from one book to the next, and a whole lot of fun magic in between. The third and final book in the series, “A Conjuring of Light,” is slated to come out in February of 2017, and I’ll be waiting with bated breath. I am, dare I say it, under this series’ spell.