Interested in a detailed summary with read-alikes?? Check out my Annotation of this book.
“Charlie had spent so many years in it. Robbing libraries, museums, antiquarian book fairs. Lied and charmed and conned, picked pockets and locks, and even once trapped a Blight in an onyx binding box. She might not have been magic, but she’d cross-pollinated the magical world like a bee.”
REVIEW
Author: Holly Black
Category/Type: Adult Fiction
Genre: Fantasy
Subgenre(s): Urban fantasy
Publication Date: May 3, 2022
Number of Pages: 306 pages of story text including a prologue; plus acknowledgements
Geographical Setting: Alternate suburban and rural Massachusetts (the Berkshire Mountains)
Time Period: present day with some flashbacks to the past
Series (if applicable): This book is not part of a series
Content warnings (may contain SLIGHT SPOILERS): Domestic violence, gore, death of a loved one, sexism, violence.
Summary: In her adult debut, author Holly Black takes us to a gritty alternate New England, reminiscent of the snow dirtied by car exhaust that hasn’t quite melted in early spring. Here shadows can be altered, traded, and even become sentient, for better or worse. Those who seek more powerful magic need to steal knowledge from books and to steal those books, they need a thief…
Charlie Hall used to steal magical books and objects for magicians with questionable motives, but she’s put that life behind her and works at the local dive bar. Now she has a decent, if shadowless boyfriend, and is trying to help her younger sister, who is desperate for magic, stay out of trouble and go college. That is, Charlie’s troubled past would be behind her if she hadn’t seen that creepy shadow hovering over a horribly mutilated corpse on her way home from work the other night, and if her boyfriend hadn’t recently disappeared.
Set in a dark and dangerous world with a cast of morally grey characters, Charlie gets convinced that doing one last job will help her save the people she loves. When she was in the game she was good, the best maybe, but she now might be in over her head dealing with forces and secrets she could never imagine existed.
PERSONAL THOUGHTS
WARNING: May contain spoilers
I didn't realize at the start that this would be more of a crime thriller than a fantasy, but I still enjoyed the reading experience. I was able to predict the ending about halfway through the book so, as someone who doesn't usually read thrillers, I would have liked more of a surprise or cunning plot twist.
It was interesting for the hero to be a criminal and to be able to use her life in crime to defeat evil forces. Characters like this don’t often get portrayed in a relatable, an positive light very often. This defies the usual trope of a protagonist being morally flawed but overall good. Charlie is unapologetically a thief with a messy past. She often purposely makes the wrong decisions even when she has ample opportunity to walk away. As someone who is usually villain averse, I probably wouldn't haven't picked up this book had I know this in advance, but I’m glad I didn’t because I enjoyed connecting with Charlie; Black does a good job of writing her understandably.
The magical system was only lightly developed though a lot of effort was put into making it blend in with the real world. Perhaps more time and description could have been dedicated to fleshing out an engaging or more believable magical system. Still, as a stand alone novel it did well enough and didn't engage me so much that I finished desperately hoping for more books in this world. I won't be disppointed by the lack of a sequel but am also not at all disappointed for having had this reading experience.
This novel is joining a group of books that have magical crime with dire consequences that revolve around the importance of books and artifacts and the sharing of information; V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series comes to mind here. As a bookbinder, I of course love this. I also find it interesting that books remain such a fixation as a repository of the sacred and profane when we have so many other ways to share information now.
While I won’t be rushing out to pick up more of Holly Black’s works, I would recommend this book to others. Ultimately I thought it was a creative blend of genres and characters that make you question who is good, who gets to save the day, and what a happy ending can look like.
“If she was going to get murdered, she’d like to do it in Paris. Or Tokyo.
...
You can’t quit, Balthazar had told her when she informed him she wasn’t taking jobs. You’re too good. This is the only thing you’re good at. Sometimes Charlie worried he was right about that second part.”
Image of the front cover of Book of Night without the dust jacket
Endsheets on the Book of Night
Under the dust jacket
Tor gets kudos once again for the book design under the dust jacket. The foil stamping of the moon, sun, and star elements, mimics an element on the dust jacket and can easily be recognized as a reference to the titular Book of Night. The endsheets are good as well, meant to reflect the cover of the old and coveted magical book the story circles around.
Final resting place: In my personal library between The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor and Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen.
WHAT I’M READING NOW
My annotations and reviews are always running a bit (or more than a bit) behind what I’m actually reading so here’s a little teaser, if you will, for reviews to come.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
“CATALOG NOTE: Sotheby’s does not endorse carrying out any of the rituals in this book and will ask the buyer to sign papers indemnifying Sotheby’s from any and all related damages.
Bidding begins at 520,000 GBP.”