Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Book of Night

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Book of Night by Holly Black

36 reviews

seekinglucidity's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

jatitmus's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

2.0

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

What THE FUCK did I just read? Dear lord this book started out surprisingly strong and then just proceeded to fumble at every given opportunity before dragging itself in a heap by one arm over the finish line. I'll readily admit that although I liked the Folk of the Air trilogy, I enjoyed them more akin to a blockbuster movie than anything Black's diehard fans enjoy.

There are a few things I liked, hence the two stars:

As I said, a great strong start and introduction to the world. I really liked Rapture as a location and was sad to see it appear less as the book went on, and I really wish the entire book was set at the bar to be honest.
Although I have criticisms concerning the flashbacks, I found the content of them to be more engaging than the main story. It also briefly made me think Black should just do a book where she ditches the supernatural stuff and make a heist novel. Given the rest of the book, however, I'm not entirely sure I still believe she should but who knows - it might be a fun novelty if she made it a one-off.
The big twist
that Vincent was actually his shadow the entire time was one of those twists that's very obvious in hindsight, but still works really well.

However, I also have a laundry list of complaints (get comfy, we'll be here for a while):

So, the flashbacks. Great in isolation, awful in the fact that they disrupt the already chaotic pace of the book. I don't see why the book couldn't have been written in chronological order to have all the information in the flashbacks first to set the scene and then have the book focused purely on Charlie's Big Score instead of us dithering around with so much pointless crap.
Although I praised Rapture as being really strong as a location, this is where my love for the world ends because it is so uninteresting outside of it. This is definitely the result of me not being from the USA but until I used Google Maps to get a feel for Massachusetts I had no idea what I was supposed to be imagining. Hell, I didn't even know it was set in Massachusetts (and I'm still not 100% sure if it is) and was imagining New York City. It felt like Black was being lazy when it came to the mundane side of world building as if to say "oh it's America, everyone knows what America is like".
The magic system is extremely underdevelloped. I don't really have much to say about it other than it's just kind of there. Things are explained to us but it feels like we're missing half of the context and Black just expects us to magically (heh) get it. There was also an instance where I got confused due to the naming conventions she chose, which could have easily been avoided if someone told Black to come up with another title for a character.

One of the antagonists is titled The Hierophant, and is described as a magician. This doesn't sound bad in isolation. The problem is when a side character named Posey, Charlie's sister, is a tarot reader and does several readings for Charlie over the course of the book. In fact at one point she draws The Hierophant and The Magician, another card, in a spread for Charlie. These two major arcana cards have different meanings, and due to Black's often confusing writing in this book, it felt like she was accidentally conflating The Hierophant and The Magician cards as one and the same.

Charlie is frustrating but not entirely for the reasons you might think. I didn't mind her being a constant fuck-up initially because her backstory made it clear how she ended up the way she did. I say initially because later plot points conflicted with the idea that she was supposed to be someone who did jobs other people weren't willing to do/willing to get their hands dirty for. I know it's cliché to say she's talked up to being badass but falling short, but it's true. It would be one thing if Charlie realised she'd gotten into something way to big for her (which is meant to be the point), but due to her being unable to resist making bad decisions (to the point the narrative has to spell it out for us like we're toddlers!) it makes me wonder how the hell she made it this far without dying. She comes so close to being a strong character and then Black, much like her protagonist, can't resist making bad decisions when it comes to her writing.
I have no idea why the antagonists are supposed to be evil other than the fact they're just a bunch of rich people who like collecting allegedly evil books. Making someone evil purely because they're rich is yet more lazy writing, and belies extreme political ignorance as to why billionnaires and the like are criticised to begin with (hint: it's to do with how they got their money). Salt is the most egregious example of this, and is written with the same cartoon villainy I'd expect from a children's tv show and not an adult novel. I'm willing to guess if he comes back in the upcoming sequel, there's going to be a one off line saying he voted for a Trump-expy and/or he'll say a single slur (real or made up for the story).

There's also the fact that Black used an antisemetic word to describe her super evil council of super evil rich people™. The word itself has ties to the conspiracy theory of Jews secretly controlling the world through Kabbalah (which is seen as evil in this context). For a bit of further context read here: https://wiisagi-maiingan.tumblr.com/post/769364916759052288/ive-seen-some-tags-on-this-post-that-seem-to
The plot feels more as if it is happening to Charlie, rather than her actively going to affect the plot. One could argue this kind of plot necessitates characters reacting instead of acting, but it's bad in this case because the plot couldn't decide what course it wanted to take. It felt like it was setting up to do one thing, only for Charlie in the next chapter to take a sharp turn and do something entirely different. Some people said this book reads closer to a first draft than a finished novel and I couldn't agree more for this reason in particular.

This with a combination of Charlie going "uwu I can't resist making bad choices!" made me skim read towards the end of the book because I was too far in hoping something good would happen to DNF it.
There were a lot of minor nitpicks and lines that completely ruined whatever mood was being established. Some of which made me say "well this is going to age poorly in 5-10 years" out loud. We have Salt describing the effects of his evil plan as a creepypasta! We've got walls being painted cottagecore shades of fern! We have NFTs!

And the biggest offender of them all - a joke that was probably stolen from a meme that's funnier than anything written in this book; Charlie looking through fake porn folders to find a piece of information, culminating in her looking through a folder named "Geriatric Porn" for said information. This is the most "how do you do fellow kids?" moment I've experienced in such a long time it's embarrassing.
There was a weird section where Black had her dominatrix character, Odette, ramble about kink literally out of nowhere and I think was only put in the book to make it seem more "mature" than it was. Black has been good about having non-heterosexual characters who incidentally happen to not be straight in the past, but with her being cishet - as far as I'm aware - I don't entirely trust her to be able to interrogate kink in the same way a queer author would. Again it feels like she copypasta'd something half remembered from a tumblr post than any genuine opinions on kinks.

This is also especially weird considering
there was randomly incest thrown in there, presumably to spice things up (Black and Cassie Clare are thick as thieves after all) instead of being treated with the gravitas it deserved.