Very high expectations
Holly Black’s work is one of the pillars of Booktok, a part of TikTok dedicated to books and YA fantasy. Released in 2018, The Cruel Prince has become a classic of fantasy for many people. Following the trilogy’s international success, fans of the author expected The Book of Night to be similarly captivating. Did the urban fantasy novel live up to high expectations? I was disappointed.
A dark, adult, complicated reality
The main character, Charlie Hall, is a bartender and former thief of rare books sought by uberomancers. She has a knack for getting into trouble, and it’s the only thing that hasn’t let her down in life yet. Charlie is a complex character with a complicated childhood and unusual thief training. She avoids duty, abuses alcohol, and is drawn to the wrong men and situations. Sounds interesting, right? Unfortunately, Charlie doesn’t seem to live up to his reality. The author portrays her heroine as a strong and resourceful woman. However, the woman’s actions do not confirm this at all, she makes worse and worse decisions, cannot cope with emotions and always expects the worst.
Despite his flaws, he is an intriguing character. Childhood traumas resonate very strongly in her adult life, which manifests itself in her relationships with loved ones. She can’t communicate with her sister and doesn’t trust her boyfriend. Vince is surrounded by secrets and Charlie knows next to nothing about his life. I have to admit that this was the most interesting part of the novel for me. We all know this theme. The heroine suspects that her beloved is hiding something from her, tries to find out the truth in many ways, searches his personal belongings and sets traps in conversations. Prosaic problems and solutions in a world full of shadows have far more serious consequences than if they actually happened. The secrets Charlie uncovered took her in a direction that no one – neither she nor the reader – expected. The Book of the Nightallows you to come up with your own theories. Mine were mostly inaccurate, the plot changed course many times and new information appeared. The supporting characters are a real range of personalities coming from all walks of life. It is immediately clear who is a positive character and who is not. I don’t like the binary division of people into bad and good. The main symptom of evil in this book is … a full bank account. That should tell us everything we need to know about the position.
Climate brick
The reader follows Charlie into a fantasy world of shadows, secrets and people willing to kill for profit. The heroine’s everyday family and financial problems are punctuated by murders, conspiracies and forgotten events from the past. The action develops really slowly, the world is built piecemeal. The Book of the Night is complicated. Fantasy is part of reality, and the terms for shadow magic are not explained. The reader sits, reads and guesses what just happened. However, the whole seems to be so coherent that we do not stray to the end. Book of the Nighthas over 500 pages. Normally, I read books of this volume on an electronic reader, but this time I have the Polish edition in my hands. The cover is beautiful. Gold, black and navy blue work very well together. They do not reflect the content or atmosphere of the novel at all.
All’s well that ends well
The ending saved the whole long, dragging read. I didn’t expect to like it so much. Everything was really thought out, connecting threads that previously seemed pointless. The relationship of the characters developed in a surprising direction, the answers obtained only raised more questions. It was hard to read and I had to stop reading many times. The adult life of the characters, which was supposed to be a respite from the dramatic stories of teenagers, turned out to be full of problems and secrets.
