This sequel, more compact and emotionally focused than its predecessor, delves deeper into Sydney's journey without her magic, exploring her trauma and resilience in the face of adversity. While the absence of her powers adds depth to her character, a mid-novel twist slightly detracts from the emotional groundwork laid earlier. Despite this, the novel shines in its exploration of human entitlement and the moral complexities of wielding extraordinary abilities, offering a thought-provoking reflection on sacrifice and privilege in a world where magic exacts a tangible toll. While a broader range of perspectives would have enriched the narrative, 'A Sleight of Shadows' remains a compelling continuation of the series, grappling with themes of power, consequence, and the shades of gray inherent in human nature.

I didn't realize this was a sequel and unfortunately had troubles jumping into this one. Excited to go back and check out the earlier book in the series!

Sigh.

This sequel just does not measure up to the greatness of the first book. It isn't memorable and just felt "underbaked".

I felt like I was reading the author's private first draft. The story just didn't feel full yet.

This sequel is more compact, narratively speaking, than its predecessor, and more focused on Sydney’s emotional journey. To a certain degree, this makes sense, given that its precipitating action is inextricably tied up with the fact that she lost her magic at the end of the first book. As she tries to adjust to a life without the power she’s always relied on, she must find a way to stop the slow return of the House of Shadows without the gift that allowed her to dismantle it in the first place.

The lack of her magic makes Sydney a more interesting heroine—most of the challenges she faced in the first book were simply no match for the sheer scope of her power—and her lingering trauma over both her experiences in the House of Shadow and the things she had to do to fight it provide fertile emotional ground for her character. But a mid-novel twist undoes some of the book’s best work in this regard, and despite a few early surprises, the story largely lacks the propulsive external drive that the Turning competition provided the first novel. There, various representatives from specific magical Houses were regularly required to face off in duels providing not just a reason for regular magical battles to take place but an excuse for many different kinds of characters to be forced to interact with each other.

That…doesn’t happen here, and the story is weaker for it. Because while the return of the House of Shadows is frightening on paper, the building itself isn’t necessarily the book’s major villain—it’s the all-too-human entitlement of the people trying to force someone else to shoulder the burdens of their own choices that proves truly monstrous. Much like An Unkindness of Magicians, A Sleight of Shadows is at its best when it grapples with the cost that these extraordinary abilities carry, and what those who wield them are willing to sacrifice both to keep them and access them more easily.

This is a world in which using magic causes physical blowback to the caster, and the Unseen World’s solution—for each family to make a human sacrifice once a generation to a sort of collective pool that would bear the load of those sacrifices rather than the magicians themselves—is both horrific and…sadly unsurprising. Do I think that rich and/or powerful people, eager to lead consequence-free lives, would turn over an actual human person from their own family if it meant that meant easy, constant, and more importantly pain-free access to the things they crave? If the past few years in the world of public health have taught us anything, it’s how willing people are to be bystanders in systems of oppression, particularly if it doesn’t inconvenience them in any way. So it would have been nice to see more perspectives here than the handful we got, most of which were very diametrically opposed. Surely, none of this would have happened without some shades of gray?

If A Sleight of Shadows is what happens when authors focus on writing comics for a while, then more authors should write comics. Kat Howard, already a highly accomplished novelist and short story writer, has also spent many years co-creating the Books of Magic series, and concision required of comics writers, the efficiency of dialogue and scene, is wonderfully evident in this second entry into the Unseen World books.

When we last left our heroes, the world of magicians was in disarray. The elite Unseen World had been upended during the events of An Unkindness of Magicians, during which protagonist Sydney gave up her magic in order to destroy the system by which magic had been functioning. To be clear, she did not destroy magic itself—although she herself was shorn of her abilities. Instead she broke the House of Shadows, a literal house standing in for a figurative edifice in which, Omelas-like, a miserable few were bled of their magic by torture in order to allow the many to practice magic with ease.

Sydney was one of those abused few, and she had both her revenge and her justice. But she also paid a terrible price, losing her magic and gaining instead a heaping of new trauma on top of the old. Now, a year afterward, the grief lingers and the rage still simmers. She has new friends and allies—Laurent, a new head of House with a bold vision of inclusivity, Verenice, a fellow survivor of Shadows, and Grace Valentine, new head of the Unseen World—but new enemies, too. Including the House of Shadows, which refuses to stay dead.

Full review @ Strange Horizons (forthcoming)

If anything we have learned from the slightly twee world of Harry Potter is that there is a place and readership for the darkest and most painful type of magic for adult readers. Kat Howard's The Unseen World perfectly expresses a dark and complicated story interlaced with an exciting magic system, most recently in Kat Howard's newest release A Sleight of Shadows.

Much like the series' first novel, An Unkindness of Magicians, the title I always found incredibly clever, stars a cast of characters and viewpoints, but mostly our flawed protagonist Sydney. In nature, ravens flock together in something called "unkindness." And while the symbolism of ravens is not overt, calling a group of magicians unkindness resonates and perfectly encapsulates Kat Howard's dark world. Sydney battled and fought hard in book one and made tremendous sacrifices at the end of book two, destroying an integral part of herself to bring down The House of Shadows.

What I missed wholeheartedly was a connection to the characters; I wanted to care desperately about the trials and tribulations they faced. What Sydney and company are confronting is no small thing, so where was the emotion, the rage? In the first book in Spades, Kat Howard wrote words that practically dripped venom in An Unkindness of Magicians. The characters had much less emotional depth, aside from heartbreaking scenes at the story's end.

Mechanically, the story is well-written. The action scenes are well done, as is in any of Howard's novels. The overall ambiance is there as well. When I think of Howard's books, all of her books remind me of a beautiful garden full of roses that want to prick you until you have had blood running down your arms. Beautiful and cruel. And this certainly achieved that feeling.

Also, I got quite a kick out of the new characters. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and the excitement mixed with naivete was endearing. If allowed to do some magic, I would be excited beyond belief.

However, the je ne se quois prevalent in the first book is missing here. Yes, all the pieces are present. We have a great cast of characters. We have necessary complications, such as a new crop of magicians to add new life and new perspectives. We have excellent pacing, as we did in the first novel.

But ground altogether, the story feels flat.

As a reader, if there were another 100 pages of story, characters, and plot, I would no doubtedly be much more enthralled, but as it stands, it did not entirely excite me as much as I wish it had. However, the book has many good things, much like any of Kat Howard's novels, so I suggest giving it a chance, as your mileage may vary.

If you have read Kat Howard in the past, this book lives up! Sleight of Shadows is a mysterious gothic witchy novel that will keep you up until you finish the very last page!

Another book for the “I badly wanted a sequel and then I got the sequel and now I kind of regret it” pile.

I really loved the first book in this series, and this one was…okay I guess, but mostly it made it clear that there really wasn’t any more story to tell after one book. I think this suffered in part because it has been more than five years since the first book came out, and while I liked it very much, it wasn’t exactly memorable with the kind of timelessness and specificity required to hold the interest of a reader after such a long lag between books.

A lot of the problem is that this isn’t really an expansion of the first book into some sort of greater, overarching plot. It was essentially just the same plot as the first book with some tweaks of who plays what role and what the exact circumstances are. And I’m not sure there’s much benefit in a sequel that is just a retelling of its predecessor.

I still love the way Howard writes her magical system, and I’m always up for things written from a house’s perspective in Fantasy. But should An Unkindness of Magicians have stayed a Standalone? Probably.

Howard continues to write some of the most beautiful on page magic in A Sleight of Shadows!

The Unseen world is starting to falter and Sydney, left with little magic, will sacrifice anything to find a way to set things right!

I fell deeply in love with the gritty world of An Unkindness of Magicians and while I felt it worked well as a standalone I did enjoy the opportunity to see some of these characters fleshed out even more! The sequel offers up even more of Howard's insanely beautiful interpretation of a magic system. For my liking that is really the star of both books. The House of Shadows makes for a formidable villain with loads of depth, one that you will easily be horrified and intrigued by. All in all I enjoyed this conclusion but didn't find it a necessity. This will be an easy win for readers who enjoyed the first installment but it's not a MUST read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Such a lovely sequel. I imagine it’s hard to pick a world back up after a few years, but Howard wrote a story like time never passed. If you enjoyed the writing style and character development in the first, the second will live up to your expectations. The Unseen World is both the same, but looked at through a whole new lens that makes it feel like a totally new story. I thought I knew how it would end, but Howard weaves a story that keeps you guessing while never losing your intrigue.

A Sleight of Shadows is incredibly nostalgic. I remember reading An Unkindness of Magicians and falling in love not only with the price of magic, but the ways it is built on exploitation. Rotten to the core. A system which is built upon the sacrifice of unwilling victims. So when I saw A Sleight of Shadows I was so excited. And everything I enjoyed from the first was developed in this sequel.The ways in which we stand by as bystanders in systems of oppression. Or are actively perpetrating these deadly secrets. How just because we can tear the house down without others speaking up, being serious about dismantling that system, we are at risk of bringing it back. Of those who were the ones benefiting, bringing back old habits. A Sleight of Shadows is a story about just that.

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a fan of Kat Howard. I really loved her take on the Tam Lin story with Roses & Rot, and her King Arthur novella in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone is one of my favorite retellings of that legend. But despite my enjoyment of her work, it always leaves me wanting more -- and not in a good way.

It's not that this sequel was poorly written. It picks up after the events of the first novel take place and we're quickly brought up to speed on what's happened since then. And then we rocket right along until the conclusion. It's not a long novel, clocking in at 320 pages -- but I wish it was longer, so that we could get some of the things that I felt were missing. I wanted more description, more emotion, more filling out of a fairly spare narrative. I wanted certain plot events -- like the magic battles -- to be longer and more detailed. There's a lot of dialogue, just like in the previous book, and I wish that same amount of development had been given to other components of the book. Instead, we jump from event to event, without seeing how some really important things unfold. It's that kind of meaty storytelling that I wish Howard used more of. But I think I just need to deal with the fact that her novels will always be more spare than what I prefer. That won't keep me from reading them, since she has great ideas and concepts for her books. I just need to adjust my own expectations.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Publishing a sequel several years after a previous book can be a gamble, especially when that first book worked so well as a stand-alone and is generally well-loved. And while I don’t think Kat Howard reached the same heights of excellence this time around with A Sleight of Shadows, I enjoyed it for what it was.
I liked seeing how each of the returning characters have evolved, given the changing state of things within the world. There are also some new characters that added some new dimensions as well.
The plot is engaging, with the overall tone of the story being darker, exploring themes of rage, fear, and revenge. It took a bit to become reoriented in the story, as it does pick up where the first left off, with only a few hints of where we left off. However, once I got into it, I was once again more or less consistently engaged in the narrative.
This book offered more of the world and characters of The Unseen World in a great way, welcoming readers back to them after several years. If you were a fan of the first book, I recommend checking this out. And if you’re looking for books that straddle the line between urban fantasy in terms of setting, and epic in terms of world building, magic system, and scope, I’d recommend giving these books a try.

Howard is a master wordsmith - the sentences flowed, alternating languid and visceral without ever feeling out of reach. Sydney was much weightier as a character here, with her grief and then anger filling the gaps between words. But that weight took away from other characters (namely Mia) who needed to create balance. It made the book feel quiet and very short even though it wasn’t particularly either of those things.

Sleight also felt like much more of a metaphor than Unkindness, with many more subtle (and not so subtle) nods to the horrors of reality as we know it like how school shootings are the leading cause of death for kids in the US, like how people will almost always seek an easier path even if it hurts someone else.

It was good, but it also didn’t feel like enough.

I read An Unkindness of Magicians years ago when it was new, and there were a lot of details that I didn't remember at first. Luckily, they came back to me pretty quickly once I started this book. A Sleight of Shadows deals with the fallout from Sydney's actions in the first book. The Unseen World is reeling from the loss of the House of Shadows, and of course there are a growing number of people who wonder if its existence was really all that bad. At the same time, the house is trying to rebuild itself. Sydney has to deal with the fact that her sacrifice might not have provided a permanent solution to the problem, and that perhaps she still has something to offer the Unseen World.

As always with Kat Howard the strength her is the writing. Her writing is always beautiful and atmospheric, and some of the images truly stick with you (the bone trees especially). On the other hand, she's not big on describing action or events. Frequently we get what seem like snapshots of characters emotions and intentions before the story glosses over a seemingly huge event and then goes immediately to reactions. There is a lot of subtext and reading between the lines, and there are definitely events that feel like they deserved a bit more attention. On the other hand, I do still like Sydney, and the main plot and resolution to this book were satisfying. The main themes are similar to those in Naomi Novik's Scholomance books, looking at the concept of who sacrifices so that the elite can be more comfortable. If you're looking for a different take on this idea with some beautiful and atmospheric writing, then give this duology a try.

I absolutely LOVED the first book in this series when it came out several years ago. Since then I've been scouring lists for more from Kat Howard. This sequel was a delight to find, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The world building here is brilliant - detailed and descriptive and darkly original. The writing is engaging and the characters are magnificent. They are complex and flawed and wholly human in a way that is so compelling. Pair those things with a plot line that dances between redemption and revenge and the result is a marvelous tale that I found engaging from the opening salvo. I definitely recommend reading the first book (An Unkindness of Magicians) before this one - and if you last read that one a while ago, reread it. This is definitely a continuation of the story and while there are some reminders of what happened previously, you will want to have all that detail fresh in your mind when reading this one to maximize the impact.

"Return to Kat Howard's Alex Award–winning world begun in An Unkindness of Magicians, a secret society of power-hungry magicians in New York City.

After taking down the source of the corruption of the Unseen World, Sydney is left with almost no magical ability. Feeling estranged from herself, she is determined to find a way back to her status as one of the world's most dangerous magicians. Unfortunately, she needs to do this quickly: the House of Shadows, the hell on earth that shaped her into who she was, the place she sacrificed everything to destroy, is rebuilding itself.

"The House of shadows sits on bones. All of the sacrifices, all of the magicians who died in Shadows, they're buried beneath the foundations. Bones hold magic."

The magic of the Unseen World is acting strangely, faltering, bleeding out from the edges. Determined to keep the House of Shadows from returning to power and to defeat the magicians who want nothing more than to have it back, Sydney turns to extremes in a desperate attempt to regain her sacrificed magic. She is forced to decide what she will give up and what she will lose and whether what must be destroyed is not only the House of Shadows, but the Unseen World itself.

World Fantasy Award finalist Kat Howard has written a sequel that asks how you have a happily ever in a world that doesn’t want it, where the cost of that happiness may be too much to bear."

Why do I love evil magic so much?

Hm.

I’m not sure where to start with this one, because while I really loved the general gist of the story, there were some glaring missing pieces of it for me. I love the first book in this duology — An Unkindness of Magicians. I love love love that one. It felt new, original, and fresh when I read it for the first time. When it comes to A Sleight of Shadows, however, it feels like it’s missing something. It’s almost but not quite a whole story, unfortunately.

So what’s it missing? Emotion. There is very little emotional connection in this book. Hardly any of the characters show any other emotion other than rage or fear. Several characters die — I won’t say who — and no one…seems to care? We don’t see anyone really mourning them, we don’t see the loss truly felt on page. It’s just something that happens and suddenly everyone is okay with it and moves on. Now, this might be because The Unseen World is built on death and everyone is used to people just dying, but c’mon. That feels ridiculous. A cop-out answer if there ever was one. Now, how on earth do you write a book where the main character has major, extreme, PTSD about something in her past and never include emotion? How does that even happen?

The meat of the story, the action-y bits were just as good as the first book in this series. The magic used isn’t as spectacular or mind-blowing, but it’s there and it is at the very least interesting. But just like in An Unkindness of Magicians, I’m missing the connection. You want Sydney to succeed in what she’s set out to do, you want her to win, but my god couldn’t we see her feel something? The only loss we see her mourn over is the loss of her magic. How on earth could that be it? There’s a lot of telling going on, and not a lot of showing, unfortunately.

The other characters — especially the villain — are great. The rage and entitlement felt there was nausea inducing. The ending, once again, comes too quick and without much build up. I only knew I was getting close to the book ending by the percentage complete climbing higher towards 100% on my Kindle. Without that, I would have thought I had a lot more book coming. I’m slightly disappointed by this one. It could have been great, it could have been something really unique, but instead we have a half-complete story. Three-and-a-half stars.

I don't know if my tastes have changed since I read the first book or if that one was significantly better. This book was not it for me though, which is a bummer because I was excited when I heard about it.

This book felt like the bare bones of a story. If it had been fleshed out, I think I would have liked it a lot more. But there was a lack of description and emotion. I couldn't feel what the characters were feeling, and so many things were quickly summed up.

There were so many characters whose POVs were introduced at the beginning and who all felt like each other. A big part of this is again the lack of emotion for the reader to connect with.

I also found the writing style confusing as it made use of so many fragments that muddied the meaning of the narrative. It also frequently broke dialogue into new paragraphs when I don't think that was necessary (this also made things hard to follow at times).

The pacing picked up near the end, but this book felt like it was mostly dialogue exploring the world's magic system. It needed so much more.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unkindness of Magicians is one of my favorite books, so I was really looking forward to this book.

Unfortunately I didn't like this book as much as I was hoping I would. I just couldn't connect with the characters or the story the same way. This may very well be a Me thing as I have been in a reading slump and it has been a while since I read the first book. I would still recommend this book, but I think it would be best to read the first and second book right after each other.