Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Release Date: May 3, 2022
Publisher: Tor Books
Source: Library
Genre: Occult & Supernatural / Contemporary / Fantasy
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 Hall.
Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past
mistakes, but getting out 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 Charlie's
shadowless, and possibly soulless, boyfriend has been hiding things
from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends
into a maelstrom of murder and lies.
Determined to survive,
she’s up against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires,
gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world—all trying to
steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power.
Book of Night, by author Holly Black, is the first of a two part duology that was confirmed by the author. From the danger of Blights to the protective properties of onyx and fire, Book of Night transports us to a place where security is a rare commodity (while shadows have become a hot commodity). The world of Book of Night is one much like ours, but where shadow magicians, called gloamists, manipulate shadows. Gloamists can fly on shadow wings, send their shadows to smother enemies in their beds, and even possess the unwary.
Not only that, but gloamists can alter the shadows of non-gloamists, imbuing them with minor magic as a result. Politicians can appear taller, daredevils can hover a tiny bit, and actors can carry a particularly striking look onto the red carpet. In this world, 28-year old Charlie Hall is a thief of secrets. She’s an expert at stealing the books in which shadow magicians hide their discoveries from one another. But that’s led her to one disaster after another, burning through countless chances to turn her life around.
She’s finally trying to quit the game by keeping her head down and staying out of trouble by being a bartender at Rapture Bar and Lounge. She's trying to appreciate her shadowless and maybe soulless boyfriend Vince’s ability to pay half the rent by allegedly being a cleaner of murder scenes. She's trying hard not to lose her job a dive bar with a shadow parlor with operating beneath it. Her magic-obsessed sister Posey is interested in something less destructive and follows in the footsteps of their mother with tarot card readings while itching for her own magic.
Charlie was really good at taking things apart from puzzles to people. For 10 years, she stole from one gloamist after another which the author sets the stage for with flashbacks to the past. 20 years ago after the Boxford massacre in Massachusetts, the world became aware of the gloamists and their abilities. Symbolically, our shadow selves are the unacknowledged parts of us, the parts we want to shove down into the dark. Our anger, our shame, our desire. After Charlies stumbles across a man being torn asunder, she finds that she can no longer look the other way.
The most Charlie digs, the less she knows about her boy friend, and his past, or what he's actually been doing since the first met. Her decision to go for one last grift that would expose the one magic everyone wants to keep a secret lands her in the cross-hairs of the most powerful of those that wield magic. There are those from Balthazar, to The Cabal, to Lionel Salt who are looking for the Liber Noctem, or Book of Blights, or Book of Nights if you will. This story is dark and violent, full of people down on their luck, lots of sinister bad guys, sex against the walls, an evil Cabal, and scary shadows.
While this is the first part of the duology, readers can expect that there will be a cliffhanger ending that will hopefully push readers to read the sequel. This is Holly Black's first adult fantasy novel and I could easily have raised by rating on this to 4 Gizmos just for the darkness of the book, and the fact that pretty much nobody can be trusted to be who you think they are. Charlie’s life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent thanks to curious choices she makes towards the end of the book. If you have read Ninth House and The Night Circus you will enjoy this book.
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