The Fragile Threads of Power

Schwab uses color symbolism throughout the novel to distinguish the different Londons from one another, developing both their settings and the novel’s themes. Red London is a healthy world with a deep relationship to magic. The city is marked by the Isle, a river that is a source of magic and glows red. Schwab describes Red London in jewel tones: “[T]he crimson glow of the Isle, and the vaulting palace, doubled gold against the river’s surface in the dark” (39). It is a thriving, bustling city. In contrast to the vitality of Red London, White London is leached of life and joy. After the events of the previous trilogy, Holland brought some life back to the city: “[T]he river began to thaw, and the fog began to thin, and everything in the city got a little brighter, a little warmer. And all at once, the magic began to flow again” (5). However, Kosika finds that the land is starving and must be constantly fed with offerings of blood. The color white represents this barrenness that devours the life-giving red of blood. This symbolism foreshadows the dangerous turn Kosika’s quest to restore the country will take.

Grey London is visited only briefly in this novel, but it is where Lila originated and is a place that no longer has nor believes in magic. When Lila lives there, her eye is removed “as if it had been a poisoned thing, a spreading rot, and not a sign of strength, a marker of extraordinary power, once-in-a-generation magic” (65). When Tes is briefly trapped there, she is disturbed by the gray water of the river: “It made her shiver, to see the Isle stripped of color, a source reduced to a simple stream” (500). Schwab uses gray imagery to emphasize the soot and coal-fueled environs of 19th-century London. Finally, Black London is a smoldering remnant of a city with nothing living left. It is the source of magic but also where Osaron, the villain of the last trilogy, originated. When Kosika visits, she finds it “cold and dry and dead” (386). The black imagery represents the poisoned magic that came from that world and the threat that it might spread to other places.