We learn how she picked up the tricks of her trade – being a thief. The main character is Charlie Hall and she is a very fleshed out character. It’s set in a contemporary time, in Massachusetts and I love urban fantasy so I was ready to see how the story would play out. + This has been advertised as adult fantasy but this is straight up urban fantasy. I saw the bad reviews but I can’t help myself, I’ve been reading Holly Black since 2002! Yup, I’ve been a fan for twenty years so this is what I thought about her adult urban fantasy book. I finally got to borrow an ebook copy of Book of Night and I downloaded right away because I’ve been wanting to read it for the past 2 months now. Holly Black makes her adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.Ĭontent Warning: abuse, violence, parental neglect, self harm, murder, drug use Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister-all desperate to control the magic of the shadows. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear-and at worst, non-existent. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.Ĭharlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden-a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. You can alter someone’s feelings-and memories-but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences-but also to increase power and influence.

Book of night holly black release date