Where to Start with V.E. Schwab: A Reading Guide
Where to start with V.E. Schwab — whether to begin with A Darker Shade of Magic, Vicious, or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. A complete reading guide.
V.E. Schwab (born 1987) is the American fantasy novelist who — publishing first as Victoria Schwab (young adult) and V.E. Schwab (adult fiction) — established herself as one of the most consistently inventive fantasy writers of her generation. Her adult fiction includes the Shades of Magic trilogy, the Villains series, and the standalone The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, all characterised by moral complexity, dark aesthetics, and a genuine interest in the relationship between power and the people who pursue it. She is one of the most popular fantasy novelists on BookTok and among the most widely read contemporary fantasy authors.
Where to Start: Vicious (2013)
The essential Schwab — and her most purely excellent work. Victor Vale is brilliant, controlled, and dangerous; Eli Cardale is brilliant, charismatic, and more dangerous. In college they become obsessed with ExtraOrdinary humans — EOs, people with supernatural abilities — and their research into near-death experience as a mechanism for creating abilities leads to an experiment that changes both of them permanently. Ten years later, Victor has just escaped prison. He is looking for Eli.
Schwab constructs the novel in alternating timelines, moving between the college years and the present, so the reader assembles the full picture of what happened while the present-day pursuit develops its own momentum. Both men have done terrible things; Schwab refuses to declare a hero. Victor’s ruthlessness is not endorsed; Eli’s violence is not excused. What makes the novel remarkable is the moral precision of its refusal to assign clear roles — and the quality of its prose, which is darker and more controlled than most commercial fantasy.
A Darker Shade of Magic (2015)
The first book of the Shades of Magic trilogy — and Schwab’s world-building at its most inventive. Four parallel Londons exist in proximity: Grey (our London, magic-dead), Red (magic-thriving), White (magic-dying and brutal), and Black (destroyed, sealed). Kell is one of two Antari who can travel between them. Lila Bard is a pickpocket who wants desperately to escape Grey London for somewhere larger. An artefact from Black London destabilises everything.
The trilogy is more straightforwardly adventurous than Vicious — Kell and Lila are morally simpler protagonists — but the parallel-Londons world-building is genuinely original and the action sequences are excellently paced. Continues in A Gathering of Shadows (Book 2) and A Conjuring of Light (Book 3).
A Conjuring of Light (2017)
The concluding volume of the Shades of Magic trilogy — the most action-dense and the most emotionally conclusive. The threat of Black London’s magic is fully realised; the costs are real; the resolution is satisfying without being easy. Best read directly after A Gathering of Shadows (Book 2).
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020)
Schwab’s most widely read standalone — and her most elegiac novel. Addie LaRue, a young French woman who makes a desperate bargain with a dark power to escape her constrained life, is given immortality and cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Three hundred years later, in contemporary New York, she encounters Henry — and he remembers. Slower in pace than Schwab’s other work, more concerned with beauty and time than with action and moral complexity. The best entry point for readers who want romance alongside the darkness.
Reading V.E. Schwab
Begin with Vicious for the most concentrated and morally serious version of Schwab’s sensibility. Read the Shades of Magic trilogy if you want an extended multi-book fantasy world. Read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue if you want a standalone that is warmer and more romantic in register. All of Schwab’s fiction is characterised by dark aesthetics, morally complex protagonists, and a genuine interest in what power does to the people who possess it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with V.E. Schwab?
Vicious (2013) is the best starting point — Schwab's most purely excellent novel and the clearest expression of her sensibility: dark, morally complex, concerned with the relationship between extraordinary ability and the violence it enables. Two college students discover how to create ExtraOrdinary humans (EOs) and the experiment goes catastrophically wrong; ten years later, one has become a monster and the other is pursuing revenge. A Darker Shade of Magic is the best alternative for readers who prefer multi-book series to standalones, as it opens a trilogy with a richly imagined parallel-Londons world. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is the best standalone choice for readers who want a more romantic and more lyrical register.
What is Vicious about?
Vicious (2013) follows Victor Vale and Eli Cardale, two college roommates who become obsessed with near-death experiences as a method of creating ExtraOrdinary humans — people with supernatural abilities. Their experiment succeeds and fails simultaneously: both survive and gain powers, but the process reveals something in each of them that their friendship cannot survive. The narrative moves between their college years and a present-day story in which Victor has escaped prison and is hunting Eli, who has turned his EO abilities toward a systematic crusade. The novel examines what the pursuit of power does to people who are already morally compromised, and who, if anyone, counts as a villain when everyone in the story has done terrible things.
What is A Darker Shade of Magic about?
A Darker Shade of Magic (2015) is set in a multiverse of parallel Londons: Grey London (ordinary, magic-less), Red London (thriving with magic), White London (brutal and magic-dying), and the destroyed Black London. Kell is one of only two Antari — blood magicians able to travel between the Londons — and works as an ambassador for Red London's king. When a smuggling run goes wrong and he acquires a magical artefact from Black London, he is pursued by agents of White London and finds himself working with Delilah Bard, a thief who has never left Grey London, to return the artefact and prevent catastrophe. The first of three books.
Is The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue a standalone?
Yes — The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020) is a completely standalone novel and represents a different register from Schwab's other work: more romantic, more elegiac, more concerned with time and memory. Addie LaRue, an eighteenth-century French woman desperate to escape a marriage, makes a deal with a dark figure — she will have immortality, but everyone she meets will forget her as soon as she leaves. The novel follows her across three hundred years until, for the first time, she meets someone who remembers. It is Schwab's most commercially successful book and the one most readers encounter first, though it is less morally complex and more straightforwardly romantic than Vicious.
