fantasy
In Book of Night, the world in which Charlie Hall lives is an alternate world
to our current one with the main difference being shadow magic. Certain people
have magical shadows which can do things independently of their humans and some
extra powerful shadows can separate and become their own entities. Sounds
intriguing, right?
Unfortunately, Charlie herself doesn’t know enough about
shadow magic to sufficiently make things clear to the reader. Rather, we must
learn along with her and this reader found it frustrating that so much of the
first half of the novel was centered around things which were unclear. Holly Black
gave us the gist of things, perhaps trying to keep the story surprising/interesting/mysterious, but the result was that I was bored and didn’t know enough to really care about
Charlie or her self-admitted stupid behaviors. I didn’t know what I hoped would
happen. The only thing that kept me
reading was the character of Charlie’s boyfriend, Vince. He, obviously, had a mysterious past (which
was, by the way, easily guessed before Charlie figured it out). Finally, halfway through the novel, Charlie
figures part of it out and things begin to get more interesting and we also finally learn more about the shadow world’s parameters.
The second half was definitely better than the first half
and I just decided to swallow my concerns and see how things would turn out for
Charlie and Vince. There was some fun adventure and there were clever discoveries. But
then I got to the end and was bummed I’d bothered to finish the novel. It left me feeling underwhelmed and
dissatisfied.
I had liked Black’s young adult series, The Folk of the Air, and had high hopes for this adult novel. Sadly, it usually felt like a
young adult novel because the characters were immature and aimless for the most
part. Adding sex scenes does not an adult novel make.
I started reading the novel and also spent a good bit of
time listening to the audiobook which was narrated by Sara Amini. She did a good job and had a repertoire of
different voices which mostly worked well with the characters. I will give her an A.
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