Recent Reads: Book of Night by Holly Black

Book of Night by Holly Black 

Series: Book of Night #1
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication Date:  May 3, 2022

 

Format: Hardback
Source: BOTM add on

Rating:


Goodreads Synopsis: 

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.

Holly Black makes her adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies. 

Review: 

Growing up, I read Holly Black's Modern Faerie Tales series and enjoyed them. I was excited to see that she was writing an adult book and I hopped at the chance to grab it as an add-on in my Book of the Month box a few months back. I finally got around to picking it up, I had saved it because it seemed like a good Autumn read. 

The story follows Charlie Hall a somewhat reformed, but not quite reformed, thief. Her world is pretty much ours except that there is a little bit of magic. Much like that scene in Peter Pan where the shadow escapes, in Charlie's world shadows can be altered, quickened, and be detached and turn to dangerous blights. The plot follows her as she learns of a missing book that can allow shadows to become real people and she has been tasked with finding it for a man that is deadly.

This was an interesting concept for a book but I feel like it missed the mark a bit. I was about 100 pages in and wanted to give up... but pushed, then I was 200 pages in and wanted to throw in the towel.. and pushed and finally finished, but a book really shouldn't make you want to put it down that badly. It took everything I had to get through it and the small twists at those page points were really all that was keeping it alive for me. 

It is writting in past and present, showing how Charlie got to this point in her live, which was interesting but distracting at times. I was over 100 pages in and still didn't fully grasp what a 'quickened shadow' meant and why people needed them. The how of these things was very poorly explained and I was lost through a lot of the plot becuase of it. Then at chapter 18 we get Remy's point of view, which builds the story but I hate when new POVs are added late in books... 

Overall, I just wasn't really impressed with this book and the moer I think about it the more I am like... eh...