She’s made mistakes and learned that, more often than not, there are no magical fixes or do-overs, just consequences that run the gamut from the mundane (not being able to afford rent) to the physically painful (a former investigative target holding a potentially violent grudge).īlack is hardly the only successful YA author testing the waters of the adult contemporary fantasy space: Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and Sarah J.
The furthest thing from a starry-eyed ingenue, Charlie is a young woman who feels world-weary in the way that only comes with age and repeated disappointment. Because even though you (probably?) can’t magically control your shadow, well, who among us hasn’t wondered what we were doing with our lives? Or questioned whether we were failing at this whole adulting thing? And that’s honestly a big part of the reason Charlie feels so relatable as a heroine. Because in order to survive, she’ll have to confront every skeleton she was hoping to leave buried in her closet.īlack has spoken before about the ways that shifting to writing an adult novel has allowed her to explore more complex sorts of issues, such as the stagnation of adulthood and the ways we’re less able to adapt and change as we get older than perhaps we once were.
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Having sworn off stealing things for a variety of unsavory gloamists (a fancy name for those who can control shadows and use them for various forms of magic), she’s working as a bartender, trying to convince her sister Posey to go to college, and making the best of things with her very normal if occasionally dull boyfriend Vince.īut when she’s inevitably drawn back into another scheme, her search for a missing object-the infamous Book of Night rumored to be full of the darkest sorts of shadow spells and rituals-will not only take over her life, it will put everything she loves at risk, forcing Charlie to decide who she is, and who she’s willing to become. Heroine Charlie Hall isn’t anyone’s role model-a con woman and a thief who can’t seem to say no to a challenge, she’s no angel, even when she’s at least attempting to be a better person. (Admittedly? Kind of awesome.) Society’s elites, as is their wont, attempt to claim this power for their own, often offering large sums of money to those who can help replace their non-awakened shadows with those of a more magical or powerful variety. This has led to regular folks attempting to alter their shadows to grant new abilities or simply achieve cool cosmetic enhancements like having a shadow in the shape of a cat. Set in a world in which it has only recently been discovered that some people can control and command their own shadows, popular consciousness and culture have become obsessed with so-called shadow magic. From absentee parents and child abuse to toxic living situations and a magical system that involves no small amount of bodily mutilation, this is her messiest, most complicated book yet.
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But something about the contemporary, urban setting seems to free something in Black’s writing, allowing her to really dig into a story that is, at its heart, about trauma. There’s a prickly heroine, a twisty plot, and a central relationship that is something other than what it initially appears to be. (But generally great cheekbones.) And her books are a blast-creative, propulsive narratives populated by an array of memorable characters you’ll either love immediately or love to hate, and the sort of addictive storytelling that means you’ll “accidentally” tear through one in the course of a day or two.īook of Night may be Black’s first adult fantasy novel, but it contains many of the hallmarks that have made her writing so popular for years. A New York Times bestselling writer who is probably best known for her “Folk of the Air” series, Black’s work is richly imagined, lushly written, and usually populated by an assortment of fairy folk with questionable, often sinister intentions. If you’ve read any popular young adult fantasy authors in the last few years, odds are you’ve encountered the work of Holly Black before.
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