I enjoyed Older’s Half-Resurrection Blues, but adored Shadowshaper. He really brought a magical alternative Brooklyn to life with this tale. Sierra Santiago is a normal teenager excited for her summer break. She’s going to hang out with friends and spend her time painting murals around the city, until a creepy guy crashes the first party of the season and ends up chasing her. Combined with some weird occurrences like a mural weeping and her incapacitated abuelo repeating the same phrase over and over, she knows something bigger is going on in her neighborhood. Something bigger that maybe wants her dead.
After doing some digging, she learns that she descends from a magical order who call themselves shadowshapers. They can basically connect art of all kinds with spirits and then ask them to do their bidding. With the help of a mysterious graffiti artist named Robbie, Sierra starts learning how to shadowshape and figure out what is happening to their neighborhood.
This was such an inventive twist on the urban fantasy genre. I’ve never read about this kind of magic system before because it was fresh and unique. Sierra was a great character and I hope Older writes more about her. Yes, she’s dealing with magic, but she’s also just trying to navigate her tricky familial relationships and figure out who she is.
