The story is sprinkled with scenes from the characters’ pasts, better developing both their personalities and the world. In fact, seeing how Charlie interacted with the people around her was an excellent mirror into the morass of her rather messed-up psyche.
However, the complications lie in the characters themselves, as opposed to their relationship status. Don’t get me wrong as with everything else in her life, Charlie’s relationship with her boyfriend Vince follows the path of most resistance. While Black’s signature twists and turns are present, the relationships are much more established, allowing me to enjoy the nuances of the characters without being distracted by relationship woes.
This is Holly Black’s first foray into adult fantasy, having garnered a huge fanbase in Young Adult fantasy. The entirety of Book of Night is planned pandemonium, and I was hooked. This time the stakes are much higher: Charlie has to find a way to hopefully con her way out of a situation where every solution seems to spell death. In a world such as that, it is inevitable that Charlie would be sucked back into a life of conning and stealing. Ostensibly done with conning and stealing, Charlie nonetheless works in a bar that crime likes to frequent, she dates a man whose day job is cleaning up the messes left by violence, and she has a knack for upsetting the wrong people.
To be fair, she doesn’t do all that much to avoid it. Con artist, thief, barista, and certified disaster, trouble has a habit of finding Charlie. The thing is, Charlie Hall has never seen a bad decision that she isn’t willing to make. That’s a good thing, since she has enough on her plate as it is. It does not grow, act of its own accord, or shift on its own. In a world where “quickened” shadows can be shifted according to the wearer’s mood, Charlie Hall’s shadow is disappointingly ordinary. Featuring one of the most delightfully messed-up main characters I’ve read in a while, Book of Night is both wickedly clever and dangerously entertaining.
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