Wednesday, 27 November 2024 02:04 pm
Book Review: Book of Night
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deckardcanineSo far, this is the only adult novel from Holly Black, who may be best known for The Spiderwick Chronicles. From the looks of it, she has a long history of writing dark atmospheres. Now she gets to pepper one with swearing, disturbing violence, and fleeting sex scenes.
In either an alternate present or a near future, the existence of shadow magic has been common knowledge for maybe 20 years. Gloamists, or "glooms," can give a human's shadow solidity and a life of its own so it does various practical things, from espionage to combat. Shadows that get severed from their casters, as by an obsidian blade, are called Blights and tend to go on murder sprees, because consuming blood makes them stronger.
In this world, Charlie "The Charlatan" Hall is a bartender in her late 20s who used to be the greatest sneak thief on behalf of gloamists. She'd rather leave that history behind, but she gets drawn into a hunt for the legendary Liber Noctem, sometimes called the Book of Blights, rarely its literal translation from Latin. Some gloamists, including the man Charlie fears most, think it holds secrets so powerful they're willing to kill for it. Well, Charlie sees her life as a series of foolish mistakes, so...
The second most central character is Vince, Charlie's cohabiting boyfriend. He has no shadow of his own, he never said anything about that, and she never asked. But in the course of the hunt, she learns a lot of troubling things about him. Will their romance survive? Will they?
Nearly half the chapters are titled "The Past" and take place accordingly. Some of those make Vince focal and let us know him better. The rest show how Charlie went from an innocent girl abused by a stepfather to The Charlatan. Her mother tended not to believe her except when she pretended to channel ghosts. Her younger sister takes a serious interest in becoming a gloamist, settling for tarot reading in the meantime.
Shadow magic is never fully explained, partly because it's a young "science." Nonetheless, I get the impression of hard and fast rules. And the system is impressively innovative as fantasy goes.
Man, I so want to read more fantasy mysteries. They may seem unfair by relying on premises we might not understand yet, but the well-written ones give enough hints in advance. I figured out a few points herein ahead of Charlie, tho she's still the better detective.
I may or may not read the sequel after it comes out next year; BoN ends on an unsatisfying note signaling a new phase in the hero's life. But I will definitely read something more from Black. She has skills, and I'm told that her other works include more action.
Now I'm reading Ballad and Dagger by Daniel José Older. Another 2022 urban fantasy, but it looks pretty different.
In either an alternate present or a near future, the existence of shadow magic has been common knowledge for maybe 20 years. Gloamists, or "glooms," can give a human's shadow solidity and a life of its own so it does various practical things, from espionage to combat. Shadows that get severed from their casters, as by an obsidian blade, are called Blights and tend to go on murder sprees, because consuming blood makes them stronger.
In this world, Charlie "The Charlatan" Hall is a bartender in her late 20s who used to be the greatest sneak thief on behalf of gloamists. She'd rather leave that history behind, but she gets drawn into a hunt for the legendary Liber Noctem, sometimes called the Book of Blights, rarely its literal translation from Latin. Some gloamists, including the man Charlie fears most, think it holds secrets so powerful they're willing to kill for it. Well, Charlie sees her life as a series of foolish mistakes, so...
The second most central character is Vince, Charlie's cohabiting boyfriend. He has no shadow of his own, he never said anything about that, and she never asked. But in the course of the hunt, she learns a lot of troubling things about him. Will their romance survive? Will they?
Nearly half the chapters are titled "The Past" and take place accordingly. Some of those make Vince focal and let us know him better. The rest show how Charlie went from an innocent girl abused by a stepfather to The Charlatan. Her mother tended not to believe her except when she pretended to channel ghosts. Her younger sister takes a serious interest in becoming a gloamist, settling for tarot reading in the meantime.
Shadow magic is never fully explained, partly because it's a young "science." Nonetheless, I get the impression of hard and fast rules. And the system is impressively innovative as fantasy goes.
Man, I so want to read more fantasy mysteries. They may seem unfair by relying on premises we might not understand yet, but the well-written ones give enough hints in advance. I figured out a few points herein ahead of Charlie, tho she's still the better detective.
I may or may not read the sequel after it comes out next year; BoN ends on an unsatisfying note signaling a new phase in the hero's life. But I will definitely read something more from Black. She has skills, and I'm told that her other works include more action.
Now I'm reading Ballad and Dagger by Daniel José Older. Another 2022 urban fantasy, but it looks pretty different.