Shadowhouse Fall

Shadowhouse Fall (2017) Daniel José Older

This is the second book in the Shadowshaper Cypher series.

Sierra is coming to terms with being the Lucera and leading a team of Shadowshapers. She’s also learning that all of this is going to be far more dangerous that they could have guessed, because The Sorrows–the House of Light–wants to bring them down.

As with the previous books, I do love the humor.

“If that dog gonna roll with us,” Izzy said, “we gotta call him something cooler than Nutsack.”

Sierra let the wave of sorrow pass over her — Manny had named him Cojones, knowing that the other old guys at the Junklot would yell it as a curse and inadvertently summon the overenthusiastic guard dog.

Sierra was drawing elaborate skulls when her mom knocked on the door and poked her head in without waiting for an answer. “Sierra? Why are you up so early?”

“Mom!” She turned down Culebra’s thrash. “What if I’d been naked and doing yoga or something?”

“Naked yoga? This is a thing?”

“I’m just saying, why knock if … Bah — never mind.

Which is good, because there are hard things in this book. It’s unflinching about the casual racism teens deal with every day, from metal detectors at the doors of their school to being randomly stopped by police officers just because they are dark skinned and outside at night.

Don’t think that these things are part of an agenda by the author–they are simply part of what young non-white teens would have to go through, which is one reason why I love these books so much. This world is utterly foreign to me, what with being a middle aged white woman in West (by God) Virginia.

It may be fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain the real world.

As with all his other books, these are fantastic stories, and I can’t wait until my nieces and nephews are old enough for them.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Arthur A. Levine Books

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