Book of Night
by Holly Black
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.
A modern dark fantasy tale, Book of Night was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. With such an intriguing synopsis and as Holly Black’s first adult novel, Book of Night felt like a promise of lush writing, strange magic, and darker happenings than any of Black’s young adult novels could conceive of. The move to adult felt like the propping open of a door, the invitation to see what else Black’s mind could dream up when no longer bound by the restrictions of writing for younger audiences. It was irresistible.
Set in an alternate universe where the modern world has relatively recently discovered shadow magic, Book of Night tells the story of Charlie Hall, former con artist for the shadowy figures within the magical crime underworld. She thought she’d left that life behind, but it’s dragging her back into its fold once again. Now she’s playing a dangerous game with powerful people as dark secrets are unearthed and her own life is thrown into chaos. Despite the incredible potential, this novel lacked the style and impact I’d expected from Black. While it’s true I’ve only read The Folk of the Air trilogy by her and knew that this would be a completely different reading experience, I thought some of those fundamental pieces that made that series so compelling—atmosphere, incredibly rich descriptions, characters you can’t look away from—would be present. Instead, I didn’t connect with any element of this novel. In theory, I love the premise of the story, especially the shadow magic. It’s certainly a captivating idea—a world in which shadows can be altered, fed blood, made into something other—yet it fell completely short of not only my expectations for the story, but far short of its own potential. I’d hoped for a story steeped in mystery and curiosity, old texts and dark magic, rife with tension and rich, dripping intrigue that makes the story swell with possibility. The sumptuous atmosphere of secrecy and alluring, if dangerous, magic that this story was ripe for was overrun by the atmosphere more reminiscent of a small-town thriller with no shortage of rundown, less-than-appealing bars and lowlife criminals. Though shot through with the intrigue and allure of shadow magic, every bit of that intrigue was swamped by a mundane, boring, completely uninteresting-to-me atmosphere and tone. Though I disliked the general tone quite a bit, it’s not exactly a failure of the writing. My expectations and tastes for novels with stories like this simply didn’t seem to align with what the story shaped up to be.
Charlie Hall had all the makings of a compelling main character. A past laden with strange, if unfortunate, circumstances that led her to being a con artist and reputed thief of magical books and paraphernalia, Charlie was bold and cunning. Despite displaying some qualities I like in female main characters, I found Charlie quite boring. I didn’t connect with her in the slightest—her actions, her personality, her narrative. Nothing about her was compelling to me, nothing kept me wanting to learn more about her past or rooting for her in the present. I didn’t actively dislike her, but I grew bored of reading about her fairly quickly, unfortunately. The repetitive insistence that she’s Charlie “determined to throw herself into the fire and cause more trouble for herself” Hall was overdone and irritating. She has an interesting past, interesting skills, and was in an interesting situation, but she was not interesting. The circumstances of her life were not enough to make her compelling on the page and I didn’t care nearly enough about her.
Perhaps the oddest part of reading Book of Night was that I was able to recognize that, as the plot unfolded, it should’ve been interesting to me. A decently intriguing story was being told and not necessarily in a bad way, yet I felt completely distanced from the characters, the world, and the plot. Again, almost every element of this story—the magic, the crimes, the basic premise, the revelations along the way—is interesting to me in theory, but everything fell rather flat on the page. I didn’t outright dislike the plot, but nothing held my interest. There were a few moments of surprise, but I was able to guess a few of the bigger plot twists which was disappointing. The general pacing and progression of the story was good, at least as far as I could tell from my detached state of reading. The writing was good, though there was nothing actively enticing and compelling about it. All the ingredients for a decently entertaining story—one with so many elements I should love—were present, yet Book of Night failed to draw me in.
Even after reading it and having a fully-formed opinion of Book of Night, I can’t help but feel that there’s been a mistake. There was so much to enjoy about this novel—those elements I’m still interested in even after being disappointed by their execution on the page—yet nothing was enjoyable about it to me. I didn’t hate it, certainly, but I didn’t find anything close to the lush, immersive modern fantasy story I’d hoped to find within its pages. Though it fell flat for me, I’d still recommend any reader who has even the slightest interest in Book of Night still pick it up. It simply wasn’t my taste.