You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by libraryofavirgo
Book of Night by Holly Black
3.0
As soon as I found out about Holly Black's new book (back when she first announced it) I was excited to see what she can come up with for an adult book. This became one of my highly anticipated reads for 2022. After finishing, I took a quick look at various reviews on Goodreads. Generally, I agree with the average reviews, and here's why…
Book of Night starts out quite slow - there is not that much to take in in terms of the magic system, but it is a relatively complicated one that not even the book characters' understand how everything works, much less the reader. The entire book felt like a big introduction to the world, not going to lie about that. The characters were built, their relationships formed and explored, and the magic world vaguely explained, but with a scope in mind. I stayed for this continuous build-up that gave me the impression that I am reading something that will build and build until the line will snap and everything will fall into place.
In truth, the first half of the story is quite plain. The plot moves ahead slowly, puzzle pieces are set and put on the table, although they seemed at the time to be trivial information and quirky character traits. In the second half the pace of the story increased a bit with the previously set pieces beginning to get scrambled and theories started forming in my head then questions and plot twists dropping in.
The ending was something I did not fully expect. I strongly believe that Holly Black will publish a sequel since that ending may have provided closure for the events of the book, but definitely, there's no closure for the three main characters.
Overall, this was not my favorite read of the year, and will most likely not make top 10. I really wanted to love this book, however, it just didn’t work for me.
Book of Night starts out quite slow - there is not that much to take in in terms of the magic system, but it is a relatively complicated one that not even the book characters' understand how everything works, much less the reader. The entire book felt like a big introduction to the world, not going to lie about that. The characters were built, their relationships formed and explored, and the magic world vaguely explained, but with a scope in mind. I stayed for this continuous build-up that gave me the impression that I am reading something that will build and build until the line will snap and everything will fall into place.
In truth, the first half of the story is quite plain. The plot moves ahead slowly, puzzle pieces are set and put on the table, although they seemed at the time to be trivial information and quirky character traits. In the second half the pace of the story increased a bit with the previously set pieces beginning to get scrambled and theories started forming in my head then questions and plot twists dropping in.
The ending was something I did not fully expect. I strongly believe that Holly Black will publish a sequel since that ending may have provided closure for the events of the book, but definitely, there's no closure for the three main characters.
Overall, this was not my favorite read of the year, and will most likely not make top 10. I really wanted to love this book, however, it just didn’t work for me.