And look, I sort of get why some elitist speculative fiction fans might wrinkle their noses. The blurb is from his perspective we start the story in his point-of-view it’s his world that we’re living in. That Lila is our hero comes at a sort of crossroads as to how the story is told to us. Instead, Schwab writes Lila Bard as something Lila may never have expected herself to become: a goddamn hero. She could have relegated Lila to the role of damsel-in-distress (not that Lila would have ever allowed such a thing), or had her act as the scrappy sidekick who always comes through. Schwab could have easily set up Kell to take those moments, written a story about Kell discovering his powers, about Kell saving the day, about Kell’s bildungsroman. That Lila Bard gets the plot arc and story moments most often associated with the male heroes of traditional fantasy stories can’t be an accident on Schwab’s part. Our hero in Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy is not Kell. The hero “seizes the sword,” so to speak, and rises to whatever challenges face them when they’re least expecting it. The hero realizes they must learn to master whatever power they’ve been gifted. The hero crosses into this new world and begins some sort of quest. Everybody who reads this site is probably intimately familiar with the hero’s journey, but for the sake of my sanity, we’ll break it down into its main arcs: hero leaves home at the suggestion of or with the help of a mentor.
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