Review of Red Glove

Red Glove
by Holly Black
Young Adult (Paranormal?) Fiction
Pub date April 2011

I love this series. Love love love it. White Cat was one of those books that I never would have read if certain circumstances had not combined to drop it into my lap, and I'm so glad I read it. Red Glove was even better.

I know that some of you haven't read White Cat yet, so I won't give much of a synopsis because I don't want to spoil the first book. Instead I'll tell you what I love about the series.

First of all, Holly Black's world-building is masterful. In the world of these novels, some people are born with the ability to work curses: luck curses, death curses, memory, emotion, etcetera. Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of curse workers who have chosen to use their powers to work for the mob. At the same time, curse workers' rights are a prominent political issue.

I hate slogging through long paragraphs describing the history of some minor detail that differs from the real world. Instead, Black works crucial details into the narrative so smoothly that they feel natural and obvious. She doesn't use cliches, and when a character says something that sounds too cliched another character is always quick to point it out. The characters are so believable that I expected to see them on the street when I was between chapters.

And, of course, there's a cliffhanger ending that left me jonesing for the next book, Black Heart. Write faster, Holly Black!