What’s Hiding in the Shadows? Holly Black Knows. Penguin Random House South Africa

Holly Black has long been the reigning queen of dark, seductive fantasy
— and Thief of Night, her sequel to Book of Night, proves exactly why.
Returning to a shadow-soaked world where secrets have weight and
magic comes at a price, Black deepens the story of Charlie Hall, a morally
grey thief entangled with forces far beyond her control. In this conversation,
she reflects on the tension between grit and myth, the strange intimacy
of being bound to your own shadow, and what it means to love someone
who no longer remembers you, while revealing the dark heart of her
mythic, contemporary world.

Charlie is a thief, not a hero, yet she keeps getting pulled into situations where the stakes are enormous. How do you balance her gritty, street-smart persona with the more mythic elements of the world?

I think that juxtaposition gets to the heart of what I love about mythic, folkloric contemporary fantasy – the busy street that dead-ends into miles of forests. The Charlatan duology is in Western Massachusetts, which is itself a strange mix of private universities and organic farms and run-down casinos, so a perfect setting for someone who is straddling as many lines as Charlie. But I think some of making the gritty and mythic work is through finding the detail that adds a folkloric texture to grittiness or the detail that puts a little filth in the mythic.

Charlie’s relationship with her own shadow becomes increasingly fraught. What do you think her shadow represents on a psychological level – and how did you decide what agency it would have?

I am not sure I would say that Red is her own shadow, although he’s certainly attached to her! Being bound to him exposes her in ways she doesn’t want to be exposed (you can’t hide from your own shadow) and it tempts her to a kind of relationship in which she cannot be left or betrayed. In terms of his agency, because he was a powerful Blight, I knew that he would have much more independence and power than her own quickened shadow would have. But if you’re talking about her actual shadow, the lack of it certainly represents her making a reckless decision and having to live with the consequences.

The Cabal feels like a sinister cross between a secret society and a magical corporation. What inspired their structure, and what do they represent to you thematically?

Gloamists first discovered one another online, in newsgroups, where they compared clues gleaned from individual experiences and scans of ancient texts connected to shadow magic. Now, as they evolve and expand their power, they are still a disparate group of outsiders. Not all of them are only in it for the knowledge. Not all of them are interested in crime. The Cabals are like a group of very bad book clubs.

“The idea of being tied to someone she can’t hide from becomes doubly horrifying when she loves that person and is no longer loved in return.”

Vince’s transformation into Red, someone who shares his face but none of his memories, is heartbreaking. How did you approach writing a love story where one half of the couple no longer remembers the other?

In some way this is a duology in which the romance is told in reversion. Book of Night is the story of two people already in a relationship who need to discover one another’s secrets. Thief of Night is the story of two people meeting for the first time and deciding how to feel about one another. I am very attracted to the idea that people who love one another would love one another no matter the circumstances; this gave me a way to play that through. Plus, Charlie is someone who has been hiding her true self her whole life, so the idea of being tied to someone she can’t hide from becomes doubly horrifying when she loves that person and is no longer loved in return.

Thief of Night tackles memory, identity, and love in some really unexpected ways. Did you always know where Charlie and Vince’s relationship was headed, or did it evolve as you wrote?

I knew what was going to happen in Book of Night, and when I came to Thief of Night, I figured out the last lines of the ending and that was my guiding light for writing the rest.

Without spoilers, what’s one scene in Thief of Night that you’re especially proud of, either because it was technically challenging or emotionally intense?

The ending, for one. But there are a few moments that have to do with Red and his family that I wrote and rewrote and rewrote to try to get right, both in terms of what they reveal about him and what they show Charlie about herself.

Thief of Night is out now.

THIEF OF NIGHT

by Holly Black