Book of Night

   Have you ever been at a picnic on a pleasant summer day, where it's not too hot but the sun is shining and all is right with the world, and you've had a hamburger fresh off the grill that was absolutely edible, completely fine, and nothing more?  At the end of the hamburger, you've realized that the hamburger wasn't great, but you ate it, and you're enjoying the day, so it's fine.  Maybe it wasn't the best hamburger, but it was good enough to eat and didn't detract from the enjoyment of a beautiful day, so you don't regret it, but if the hamburger had been a little better, well that would've been good, too, right?

  That's how I feel about Holly Black's Book of Night.  I read it in a couple of days, so it was clearly good enough that it was hard to put down easily.  It's a fantasy/mystery about a time when some people have learned how to manipulate their shadows, and the plot is engaging, with some twists and turns along the way to resolution.  It's close enough to real that you can almost imagine what it's like, which I think is the sign of a great fantasy book. 

  But I think what holds it back is that there are some technical things about the people who manipulated their shadows that I still don't understand.  By the time I arrived at the end of the book and they were revealing who was what and what they'd done, there were characters that I didn't understand and I wasn't sure who was human and who was kinda human and who was something else.  I felt like I needed a legend or guide that explained some of the terms.  That would've helped.

  Either way, it's interesting to think that some of the malicious shadows were forms that people had pushed all their negative emotions into.  I spent some time thinking about this.  We try and hide so many of our negative emotions.  Sometimes, we're afraid that people will think we don't have our acts together.  Sometimes, maybe we're afraid what they might make us do.  We worry about ourselves, and we worry how people might react to us if they discover that we're weak and vulnerable and afraid and angry.  

  In so many ways, we're all longing for a society where we can be ourselves, where we can be honest.  I hope the church is a place where we can be vulnerable and still be loved.  We are loved as we are, not as we should be, as hard as that can be to accept.  We don't have to push things into the shadows.