Synopsis
In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.
Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.
Source: Goodreads synopsis
Review
An excellent adult fantasy debut. There were twists and turns that I didn’t expect, particularly near the end, and while some of it was predictable at times, it was still a very enjoyable read. I liked the characters – to me, they seemed the right mix of flawed and sympathetic, though I do wish Holly Black had expanded upon some characters a bit more.
I know that the story focuses on Charlie Hall, but by the end of the book, some of the other main characters, like Vince and Posey, still felt a bit two-dimensional, and others were merely glossed over when they could have been quite interesting.
I found the magic system fascinating, and while I occasionally needed to flick back through the book to remind myself of some of the rules and information we’d been given early on (particularly the differences between what puppeteers, masks and the like did). We didn’t get an overly in-depth explanation as to what masks could do, but I still found it very intriguing, and I liked the way it was slowly revealed to the reader.
Overall, an enjoyable book that has room for improvement in some areas, but is still worth reading.
The Ink Thief 