I've been really struggling with my reading the last couple of months and I can't figure out exactly what's gone wrong. Initially I thought the problem was too much - I read over 100 books last year; always had an audiobook going in the car or on a walk and my nose near an e-reader the rest of the time. I had set aside all of my own thoughts because I wasn't happy enough with them. Replaced them with something a little less painful.

I still think that's a part of what's wrong with my reading. But maybe a larger part is the quality of the writing and the lack of innovation. I want to read something that doesn't remind me of anything I've read before and it's so frustrating to be unable to find it. It leads me to unhappy literature and non-fiction. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," according to Tolstoy. And that fits my literary quandary, too. Light lit is all alike; dark lit provides the only opportunity for something original. (I know that's severely overstated - or hope it is, anyway.) So I get stuck with the bad divorces, the drug-addled philanderers, and the rapists and murderers of modern fiction or the light mystery that's the same as the last with a different setting and characterization.

So, I'm trying to find the good in the light, starting with A Darker Shade of Magic. Even though it includes two of my least favorite words on the cover: "Book One".

Like every other fantasy novel it has a couple of magical dudes and a dark object of power that needs to be destroyed. It has the character required for the adventure that doesn't seem like an ideal candidate but is probably made of stronger stuff than it appears. There are warring kingdoms and the requisite intrigue and pawns. There is an extremely weak attempt to create some logically constructed fictional languages.

It has lines something like "she heard distant screaming and took several moments to discover it was coming from her own mouth."

It has multiple Londons in multiple worlds for no reason whatsoever. There's nothing about any of the Londons that seem like London. There's no placing this setting on a timeline or any attempt to do so.

This novel has two attributes to recommend it: it moves quickly and wraps itself up sufficiently enough that if you aren't inclined to continue the series you'll have no nagging questions if you ever remember these characters in the future.

I'm trying here, people.