Holly Black is a superstar/bestselling/award-winning writer of young adult fantasy novels, she’s something of a brand name. With Book of Night, Mrs. Black makes the leap into adult fiction, an urban fantasy about shadow magic and the criminal element that looks gain control of that world.
Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie.
Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world — all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more.
Charlie Hall is a con-artist and thief who grew up in the small-time criminal world, and has a tendency to push her luck. In this world, magic is shadow-based and its practitioners are gloamists, shadows can be manipulated for a variety of uses, including spying, thieving, and gaining power for a foothold in society. Many of these gloamists employ Charlie for a range of “jobs.” But she’s trying to do better, trying to live a normal life as a bartender. She lives with her boyfriend Vince and her sister Posey. The bar where Charlie slings drinks has many patrons who inhabit the seedier side of life, Charlie is a known entity in that particular world, so she isn’t surprised when she is presented with a job she can’t resist, especially since bartending isn’t the best paying job in the world. Of course, things don’t go swimmingly well. When she takes the job to find a missing person, she’s forced into a side job that seems like a no-win scenario, she is compelled to find a book that contains secrets about the shadow magic many gloamists are trying to find and learn.
Told in alternating chapters of the currently timeline and chapters simply titled “The Past,” Black weaves an extremely intriguing story around Charlie. She builds great tension in the “present” and the Past, despite knowing that Charlie will survive whatever happens to her in “The Past.” She’s had a tough life, to say the least, and her broken family (parents divorced at a young age) are a direct precursor to where she finds herself in the present. What I appreciated most about her character (and how Black handled this aspect) is that Charlie doesn’t whine about it, doesn’t blame her parents entirely for the state of her life, she doesn’t use it as an excuse. Sure, Charlie reflects on her past, but it doesn’t consume her in a way that stunts her growth and forward progression as a person. Charlie’s seen some shit, in other words.
The supporting characters are drawn compellingly, too. Vince has his own checkered past, but he and Charlie complement each other quite well. The main villain of the piece, Lionel Salt, looms over much of the narrative, both past and current timelines. He’s the type of rich, powerful man who wants more power and sees everybody as a speck of dust to be brushed off his shoulder. Lionel Salt is just a great name for a patriarchal asshole villain, too. For some odd reason, I found a bit of resonance to Ben Gazarra’s character Brad Wesley in the classic Patrick Swayze film, Road House. I know that’s an odd comparison, and maybe not an exact comparison, but the smarm and arrogance ooze from both characters.
Black is a fantastic writer, her engaging prose drew me into the story in unexpected ways. By unexpected I mean that I figured that each time I picked up the book, I’d just read a small chapter. Nope, I couldn’t stop at just one chapter. I think that’s the benefit of the way the book is structured, the chapters are relatively short and just when you get hooked, it is almost as if Black is waving a finger at you to say, “Nope, I’m going to switch to a ‘Past’ chapter, you have to wait to see what happens.” I found it to be an incredibly effective storytelling method.
There’s a clear conclusion to the story told in Book of Night, but Black leaves plenty of room for more stories to be told. The world of shadow magic seems to be a verdant field for stories and the character of Charlie is just too damned interesting for her story to end here.
As the pages turned to my enjoyment, I couldn’t help but think that readers who enjoy Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black novels would enjoy Book of Night. Both protagonists are somewhat broken, even if Charlie is a bit less vulgar and not quite as haunted. There’s a down-to-earth grittiness and realness that inhabits both Wendig’s books and characters and Black’s world and characters I found very appealing.
Book of Night is an excellent urban fantasy novel that should appeal to readers who enjoy characters who are a little broken and powerfully driven, and inhabit a world where magic is real and dangerous. I could see this book appeal to horror readers, too. There’s enough darkness with the magic as well as the tone and themes for that crowd.
Highly recommended.
© 2022 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | 304 pages
Tor Books | May 2022
Excerpt: https://www.torforgeblog.com/2022/02/05/excerpt-book-of-night-by-holly-black/
Author Website: https://blackholly.com/
