Point of View

V. E. Schwab tells her novel A Gathering of Shadows from the third-person omniscient point of view. This is done for two primary reasons. First, a single, third-person narrator unifies a wide array of characters with diverse backgrounds, histories, and motives. The characters are part of competing subplots occurring over the course of empires and between alternate dimensional worlds. The narrator is the strand that unites them all in a familiar, constant voice. Readers easily shift between Lila on the Night Spire, Holland in White London, and Kell in the Red London palace with ease. Second, Schwab’s intention is to increase the level of drama in her novel. Since the third-person narrator explains everything going on in all places among all characters at all times, the reader knows things before all of the characters do. For example, at the end of the novel, the...