This is a great first two-thirds of a novel. I don't know how else to describe what's happened in this novel. 

I really liked most of the lead up to this novel's conclusion. It's one of the rare times that when I got to the end of the story I realized that the author and I were no longer on the same page about what the story was about. So that when the author ended the novel, I was way more interested in what turns out to be the series story and not the story of this novel. 

It's a good problem to have, probably. It at least got me to read the second book in the series. The problem is that I didn't get that there were two stories until the end. Or rather it's probably better said that I didn't see that the two stories that were present in the novel weren't going to connect at the end. I'm not sure if that was a mistake or not on the author's part, but it definitely dampened my enjoyment at the end. 

The story, well stories, are both really fun. It's a great magical world that has a lot of depth and fun characters. There's a bit a foggy magic system that is a bit more hand wavy then I usually prefer, but it's used to great visual effect in action scenes that really made for a fast read.

The problem being that when I got to the end of the story, I still felt disappointed because the events of the primary story didn't seem to connect to the series story and left a lot of other elements still hanging and disconnected from the conclusion. A Darker Shade of Magic gets three stars out of five.