And there was no better pilferer of grimoires than Charlie Hall.Ĭharlie tries to keep her life together, living with her sister Posey and boyfriend Vince, who seems reluctant to reveal much about his past. Because of the proliferation of information, the only real way for gloamists to know they have genuine magical knowledge is to possess the original, often stealing from other gloamists.

In the depths of online chat rooms and message boards, people can share what they know about becoming gloamists.

In Charlie’s day, gloamists are well-known, used to decoratively alter the shadows of celebrities or for more nefarious purposes like spying and shadow-stealing. Until grimoires and magical texts started circulating online, the gloamists were relatively secret, hiding their work for centuries. Shadow magic only recently became common knowledge, because, of course, the internet. She bartends at a seedy club, but her old life still lingers in the periphery-she is never far from the world of the gloamists, magicians with sentient shadows that can do their bidding. Twenty years later (which feels fantasy-level surreal to say), I got to delve back into the world of magic and mundane with Black’s first adult novel, Book of Night.Ĭharlie Hall has a talent for trouble she is a skilled thief and con-artist, but a string of bad decisions and terrible relationships have led her to leave her life of crime. It was my first foray into urban fantasy. The story of a changeling girl living in modern suburban New Jersey and rediscovering the world of fairies that she came from sucked me in, and I have never forgotten the feeling of grit and teen angst and dark magic.

I was 13 years old when I first read Tithe, Holly Black’s first novel. In our Book of Night book review, we venture into a world of shadows and murder with a gutsy con-artist.

Book of night holly black