Fully Booked — Episode 13
Reading is something that used to be great, until life got in the way. But it doesn’t have to be like that — you can have a life and love reading, and we’re here to help. Welcome back to Fully Booked, the series for people who don’t know what to read or where to start.
This week it’s a very confusing piece of urban low fantasy. Confusing how, you may ask? Confusing because the magic system was not as complicated as it was made out to be, and yet I still couldn’t tell you exactly how it worked because I think even the author wasn’t sure about it. The entire work felt rushed and was altogether a bit misleading — this was meant to be the author’s firsty foray into adult fiction and yet this somehow feels even more juvenile than her previous young adult works.
Book of Night — Holly Black
STATS
Borrowed from — my library’s E-resources
Pages — 304
Trigger warnings — self harm; blood use; gore; violence; death; murder; child abuse; toxic living situations; depression; grief depiction; panic attacks; anxiety; gun violence; alcohol use; brief mention of alcoholism; use of drugs. This book focuses a lot on past/current traumas, please be aware of your headspace before reading.
Rating — 2 stars
STOP MAKING BOOKS THAT ARE FAKE STANDALONES, EITHER COMMIT TO WRITING A LONG BOOK OR MAKE IT CLEAR YOU’RE DROPPING A SERIES. Holly Black, you are a coward for this book specifically!!! In case it’s not abundantly clear, this book is the beginning of a series, and I will not be reading the other books out of sheer spite.
Book of Night follows Charlie Hall, ex-con artist and now ill-tempered bartender. Charlie lives a boring but stable life, and while she’s glad for that stability, she can’t seem to shake the urge to live a little more dangerously just one more time. However, the past has a funny way of catching up, and before Charlie knows it, she’s embroiled in a bloody battle for possession over a very valuable stolen item. Despite what everyone thinks, Charlie isn’t the one who stole it — but being an ex-con artist who recently met with the now-deceased owner isn’t exactly helping her case. With her life on the line, Charlie must scramble to steal what’s already been stolen while avoiding a grisly end at the hands of those who would kill for the power Charlie seeks.
This is a book I’d sort of dithered over for rather a long time, purely because I didn’t like the cover or the synopsis — yes I know that’s naughty of me, but also there are only so many chances I’m willing to take and shit books I’m prepared to read. In my defence, I still absolutely stand by this synopsis being utter garbage. It tells me maybe 5% of anything relevant, and absolutely nothing of interest that made me want to read the book. It just describes the magic system????? Please, I’m begging you, everyone needs to learn to bait their synopses better. Anyway, while this book wasn’t completely awful I do still have a heap of criticisms for it.
This whole book just… lacked something. Was it interesting? Yes. Did I like reading it? Sure. Was it a cool concept? Absolutely. But everything was slightly off. The pacing was whack, the complete and utter lack of character development was whack, the world building was lack(ing), the lack of motivation was whack, and of course, the ‘my sister is a plot device’ was whack. At no point reading this was I like “oh boy, I can’t wait to pick this up and keep reading!”. It just lacked an element of story that made me want to actually give a shit about the plot and the characters. At one point I actually said to someone ‘I’ve just started reading this and it’s starting to get good!’ — I was 200 pages in. This is a 350 page book. If you need 200 pages just to set up your world, rules, and characters before you can drop us a shred of plot, then we need to have words.
Also, at one point this almost felt a bit like the trauma olympics. You can have troubled characters that don’t have the world’s shittest upbringing, it’s called “you’re the author of this book, stop dumping trauma on people because you think it’s relatable”. While we’re at it, “Charlie Hall has always made bad decisions and will continue to do so” is not a valid reason for someone’s actions, and also if you tell me that a character is boring and continue to reinforce it for the entire book, then I’m going to believe you. Suddenly making them interesting in the final throes of the book does not a well-laid trail of plot breadcrumbs make.
At the end of the day, yes it was interesting, but this is due only to the final 50 pages containing an entire book’s worth of plot. If Ithis was marketed as a low-urban-fantasy murder mystery book I’d have liked it much more and been far more prepared to go along with the more-than-ample scene setting and corner cutting on characters.
2 stars. Points off for having no pacing to be heard of, badly representing plus-sized characters and sisters, and having no logical reasoning and spineless side characters. Redeemed only because I loved the moniker ‘The Charlatan’ and I think it should have played much more of a role in the book.
