I’ve been hooked on Holly Black since I first read her Young Adult fantasy series in 2002. That’s when Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale was published. She followed that up with Valiant in 2005 and completed the trilogy with Ironside in 2007. If you’ve never read these stories, I suggest you do.
Holly Black and her friend, Cassandra Clare are the Empresses of Urban Fantasy. Clare beta-reads Black’s manuscripts and, I assume, Black returns the favour. How cool is that?
After writing YA and middle grade stories for the past twenty years, Black is now venturing in the realm of adult books. This is her debut Adult fiction. I don’t really know the difference. In Book of Night the sex is not explicit, and there’s minimal profanity and violence only when warranted. It’s certainly nothing that would surprise teens and I’m sure they’ll be all over this book. Perhaps, it’s because her protagonist, Charlie Hall AKA The Charlatan, tends bar at Rapture and seems to be in her early twenties.
Black is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and Book of Night will illustrate why. Her concepts are original, her descriptions electrifying, her characters unique and relatable (even in their weirdness). I inhaled this book as if possessed. Here’s the blurb:
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.
http://blackholly.com
The cover is brilliant! Simple but striking, the font one of my favourites. I actually just used it on my romantic suspense novel Lure. It’s called Cinzel Decorative.
Twisted and gritty with a dash of kink, Book of Night will keep you flipping pages despite burning eyes and sagging lids. Why?
Lyrical language with strokes of hilarity. A to-die-for original premise. Intricate world building. A strong sympathetic protagonist who loses track of her lover, Vince, early on, and must face these dark, deceiving villains on her own. Charlie Hall is intelligent, witty, fearless, and skilled, though flawed by her past.
Black moves between past and present as they are intimately connected; something that really connects the reader with the character. If you can let go of this book, you will want more.
With all the hallmarks of urban fantasy—part-mystery, part-thriller, a dash of delicious fantasy, and a sprinkling of sexy—it’s perfect.
*****
P.S. For the most part I read books for review. When I get a chance to choose my own staycation adventure, I go to my favourite authors. Hence, Holly Black.
In August, I reviewed Book 1 in The Daughters of Dark Root series. I liked the book so much, I threatened to buy the box set of four. Well, I did. And I just finished reading Book 2: The Magick of Dark Root.
This is Maggie Mae’s book. In book 1, Maggie came home to the small Oregon town of Dark Root to join her sisters in caring for their ailing mother. Sasha Shantay, the matriarch of this witchy clan, is aging fast. Now Maggie has officially left Michael, because of his affair with Leah, and is falling for Shane Doler, a handsome cowboy/restaurateur who has a few magick powers of his own. She’s also brought home another surprise.
The quest for a strong wand—hopefully from the Lightning Willow as was her mother’s—and the management of her power are focuses for Magdalene in this book. “The willow cannot only heal people, but extend their lives, indefinitely, perhaps” says Larinda. Though she’s one of the antagonists in this series and not to be trusted, Maggie wants to believe a lightning willow wand will bring her mother back from the dead.
Necromancy is one of the themes in this book. Birth and Life meander through this story in many guises. While Maggie is carrying new life, she discovers she has the power to take life. This deathtouch is something she believes she inherited from her powerful, rebellious father, Armand.
I’ll confess. This was one of the creepiest parts of this story and I had a hard time with it. One night, Eve and Maggie go out to a local bar to make some cash hustling pool. Eve (like her biblical man-wasting counterpart) is dressed in a “tight, black, knit number that sat low in the cleavage and high on the thigh.” She’s also wearing a dash of her mankiller scent. She targets a middle-aged man who’s sitting alone and pours on her charm. Then her pool hustle begins. “Last game. Winner takes all,” Eve says, promising more than cash. All the while, Maggie is watching and managing the shots with her witchcraft. The man, who is now “drunk on alcohol, drunk on desire” starts moving in on Eve and the women get frightened. When Eve tries to leave, he objects and comes after her. Aggressively. Triggered by her own bad experiences with men, Maggie charges at the man, her power running full throttle and kills him. Shades of Thelma and Louise?
“For every spell there was an anti-spell. For every power, an opposing power. If I had the deathtouch, then someone out there had the lifetouch.“
This is not what creeps me out. It’s when they resurrect him and he rises as this giant zombiesque man-baby that they have to care for while they figure things out, that I start feeling yucky. The creepiest part for me is that Maggie suddenly becomes his mother. She treats him like an infant and tells him she loves him. It’s like some strange rehearsal for when her own baby is born. Except he’s not her baby. He’s a creepy guy that would have raped Eve if he had the chance and now he’s not even a guy.
But that’s just me. See what you think.
What will eventually happen to the resurrected Leo? Read to find out.
There are three books left in this series. Will I keep reading? You bet.
I bought the paperback edition of In Restless Dreams from Wren Handman in March 2020. We read together at an Author Reading in B.C. and she was so funny and entertaining, I had to buy her book. (Mini-spoiler: Wren read the part where Sylvia eats “the brownie” at a party—an act that shows her hero’s innocence.)
Written in casual first person, we spend the whole book in Sylvia’s head. She’s a normal teen with some extraordinary problems. Her parents are separated, so after her mother almost commits suicide, Sylvia and her thirteen-year-old brother, Eric, are sent to live with her rich attorney father in the Upper East Side, New York. Oh, to have such problems—a mansion, a father who doles out credit cards, and a hot chauffeur to shuffle you to and from prep school!
The first half of the book follows Sylvia’s challenges adjusting to the rich privileged, ofttimes, cruel kids at her new rich prep school. About half-way through the book, Sylvia eats “the brownie” and suddenly starts seeing things she shouldn’t—even given the nature of “the brownie.”
The back-half of the book chronicles her adventures as the new Phantasmer—a being who can change Fairy with her thoughts. She’s introduced to The Stranger from the Unseelie Court and the hot, blond green-eyed knight from the Seelie Court, and we are entertained with the history and complications of Fairy.
There’s a thread of Alice in Wonderland running through the text. My favorite quote: “Artists and thinkers imagine so strongly, they warp bits of the world to match their creation. Lewis Carroll dreams of Jabberwocky and somewhere a fae is born who truly hates Vorpal swords.” Sylvia’s entry into Fairy is much like Alice’s into Wonderland, and this is exactly what Handman’s done in this book—dreamed a Phantasmer and so she is born.
Judging by the lengthy set-up, I’m assuming this is a series. Hurray! There’s already a hint of a love triangle between Sylvia, The Stranger, and the Green-Eyed Knight.
