A review by aliciaw
Book of Night by Holly Black

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

The volume of telling, not showing especially in the first half of the book was too much. I wasn't rooting for Charlie and her character development felt pretty flat. Perhaps in part it was that app name dropping happened without any necessity: Facebook, YouTube, Patreon, Slack, Zoom.. all of these could have been written in a way that won't require the reader to be aware of the apps. It dates the book and requires the reader to be aware of these things as they are now regardless of when they pick up the book or any familiarity with them. Urban Fantasy with a robust magic system and morally ambiguous characters can be made without need to change things in any reprints due to the rate of change in technology. The premise was good, but the execution could have been tightened up and more time spent on the magic system. It needed a better ratio of showing over telling. I had to push myself to keep reading it because if this had been my introduction to the author, I would have dnf'd it by around the 20% mark. I don't know if I'll pick up anything else in the series but this was a miss for me. 
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