Shadowshaper

by Daniel José Older

June 30, 2015 · Arthur A. Levine Books

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Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult

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NB: It’s Flashback Friday! Given Sarah’s recent love of Labyrinth Lost, it seemed fitting to resurrect another YA, urban fantasy with a diverse heroine that she happened to enjoy. This review was originally published July 15, 2015.

Shadowshaper is a freaking incredible novel. It’s a bit outside my reading tastes because it’s urban fantasy and it’s for teen readers, a vein of YA I haven’t read much of. But it’s also got a huge portion of my catnip because it includes so many different cultures so fluently, and because so many characters in the story were individuals, with unique voices, and there was plenty of dialogue for them. I could have listened to everyone in this story talking to each other for about 500 more pages.

Sierra has just started summer break from school and she’s working on a mural in her neighborhood. Though I don’t think the book ever reveals who asked her to paint it, her grandfather’s friend Manny is urging her to finish it already. As she’s working on the painting, she notices that the mural on the adjacent wall seems to be fading, that the expression of the man painted on the wall, a man she knew, seems to be changing, growing angry or sad. Then she sees a tear fall from the eye of the man in the mural and she knows something is wrong, and that something is really, really weird.

Sierra lives with her parents and her grandfather, who had a stroke and is in the third floor apartment where she and her mother can take care of him. Her grandfather, Lazáro, hasn’t been able to speak since his stroke, but he has brief, intense moments of lucidity where he talks to Sierra, and tells her to look for someone who was in her classes at school:

Lázaro shook his head. “The boy Robbie will help you. Ask him for help, Sierra. You need help. I can’t … It’s too late.” He nodded his head, eyes closing again. “No puedo, m’ija. No puedo.”

“Robbie from school?” Sierra said. “Abuelo, how do you even know him?” Robbie was a tall Haitian kid with long locks who had shown up midyear with a goofy grin and wild drawings covering every surface of his clothes, his backpack, his desk. If Sierra had been the kind of girl who gave a damn about boys and their cuteness, Robbie the Walking Mural would find himself somewhere on her top-ten list.

There are so many details that make up the world of this story, in both the fantasy sense and in the “no, really, this is really Brooklyn, for real” sense. I keep catching myself typing them out and have to delete because they’re not germane to the review despite being awesome.  For example, the casual bilingualism of the characters, the way Spanish and English flow together in Sierra’s world, and how that blended language is one part of Sierra’s Afro-Latina heritage, which informs so many of her thoughts, her language, her personal style, her art, and her own choices.

The fact that Sierra paints murals is a terrific parallel to how much vividness is in this story. Even without the magic parts – I just realized I haven’t even gotten to them yet – Sierra’s world is so colorful. There are characters from a huge range of cultures, and they all live alongside and above and below one another in their neighborhood apartments.  For example, two of Sierra’s friends are a lesbian couple, one of whom is a ferociously talented spoken word poet and rapper, and Robbie is Haitian, with long locks and incredible artistic talent. Sierra’s Brooklyn (as opposed to many other representations of Brooklyn in popular media) is as colorful as her murals and as Robbie’s backpack.

I mentioned that I loved the way the characters talked to one another, and I could go on and on about the spoken dialogue between Sierra and her friends. I particularly loved her best friend Bennie, who is Sierra’s opposite in fashion and style, but who absolutely has Sierra’s back. When Sierra asks Bennie for help in finding some information about a person she’s just learned of, Bennie’s reply made me laugh. Plus, as you’ll see, the dialogue is also mixed in with other conversations – no one in this book is quiet, except maybe for Robbie:

Bennie sounded excited. “That cat you asked me to check up on? Doctor Wick?”

“Yeah.” Sierra walked quickly to the other side of the scaffolding, cradling the phone with her shoulder.

“¡ Oye!” Manny yelled from the ground, where he was laying down some more primer. “Esafety first, nena! And we’re about to break for lunch, so let me know what you want me to order from Chano’s.”

“Okay, Manny!” Sierra waved at him. “What about him, B?”

“He’s a Columbia professor. Or was.”

“How’d you find out?”

“This amazing thing they have now. It’s a web and it’s mad wide. Like, worldwide.”

If I listed all the challenges and issues this book addresses, this review would be really, really long. The fantasy plot reflects the larger, insidious problems of the real world, too, though I can’t really get into details or analysis without spoiling the book. There’s a LOT that Sierra and her friends deal with on a daily basis, from the gentrification of their Brooklyn neighborhood and the high priced coffee shops taking the place of shops they loved, to the threat of police violence and the casual, deeply established racism of family members. But Sierra and her friends, and Sierra by herself, deal with it and then move on. It’s painful, but it’s not the only thing going on. It’s not like she can dismiss racism as easily as she would push her hair back over her shoulder, but dealing with it is part of her daily life, and she learns how to meet each challenge with strength because the other stuff she’s facing is even bigger. And weirder.

Unfortunately that’s where this book didn’t work as well for me: the world building of Brooklyn and of the cast of characters was incredibly good. The fantasy plot and the events therein weren’t as strong, and the more I thought about the story after I finished it, the less it held together.

For one thing, I think the challenges of the fantasy world that Sierra learns about were surmounted too easily. (I’m trying not to spoil the story so forgive my vagueness.) One of my notes says, “Did she fail or fall down enough?” That may not be a fair question, and I’m still debating myself, but my initial impression was that Sierra figured out the magic of her world and the possibilities of shadowshaping so easily, it was disappointing.

There were characters who were introduced who didn’t do much of anything, like her father, who was in one scene, I think, or her godfather, who only shows up when Sierra needs a ride somewhere in a hurry. I wanted more of her family, though I appreciated that her friends were also her family and therefore as important to her as her mother and brothers. Her brother and mother, in particular, have major roles in the plot, but they sort of show up, do a thing, then fade into the background, then step forward for a moment, then fade again. Sierra’s friends, in contrast, were always vivid, always talking, always a plot in and of themselves, as opposed to the maneuvered pieces that were her family.

Moreover, Sierra’s desire to protect her family is part of what moves her to the final showdown with the big bad element of the story (how’s that for vague, huh?). I couldn’t figure out why it was only her family that was vulnerable. What about her friends’ families? What about Robbie’s family? Where are his family? Where does he live? Where does he go when he’s not showing up to move Sierra forward in the plot, telling her to run away from whatever bad thing has appeared, or explaining things to her so she’ll understand what’s going on? If he was in school with her, he must have been local, but he didn’t seem to be as much as Bennie and the rest of Sierra’s friends were. Robbie just showed up a lot, then disappeared, then showed up again.

Robbie is not as fully developed as a character as Sierra’s friends are, and it seemed to me that his lack of development may be caused by the fact that the fantasy parts on the whole weren’t as strong as the real-world parts. Because Robbie is very much part of the fantasy world, he wasn’t as multi-dimensional as the others.

There was also a LOT of time given for people to explain things to Sierra. The action would go go go and go some more then it was time for someone to explain the details of something, or reveal more information. In one particular plot element, Sierra instantly trusted someone she just met, then became suspicious of them, then trusted them again after a long explanation from that person – and there was no other evidence to suggest that that person was on Sierra’s side except that character saying so repeatedly. Once that person was back on Sierra’s side, and as a character she did undermine one of the tropes of action fantasy in a way that made me smile, the question of “How did they know where I was?” is never addressed. If that character didn’t spill the beans, who did? How was Sierra’s location revealed?

I loved the incredible richness of the world in which Sierra lived. I wanted the fantasy plot to be as vivid, but for me, the more I thought about it, the more the fantasy elements faded like the murals in Sierra’s neighborhood. While the world building of the neighborhood and the characters around Sierra were seamlessly constructed, the plot had holes for me that caused some characters to become more like plot devices, and I noticed it more because of the contrast between them.

But when I was reading this book, I couldn’t put it down, and I devoured it in one afternoon. I found myself re-reading parts when I went to check my notes and highlights for this review, a sign that a re-read might be required.  Despite my disappointment with the construction of the fantasy elements, the rest of the book, especially the characters, the language, the use of food (do NOT read this while hungry, y’all), the depth and complexity of the cultures within Sierra’s world and all the dialogue (all of it. It’s so good.) make this story very, very much worth reading.