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Summary
Summary
"Magnificent." -- Holly Black, New York Times Book Review Come to the crossroads, to the crossroads come Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears . . . Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on. Where the powers converge and become one With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one -- and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for herself and generations to come.Full of a joyful, defiant spirit and writing as luscious as a Brooklyn summer night, Shadowshaper introduces a fantasy heroine and magic unlike any you've ever seen before, and marks the YA debut of a brilliant new storyteller.
Author Notes
Daniel José Older is an American. He writes fantasy and young adult fiction. His debut novel was Half-Resurrection Blues which is the first book in his urban fantasy series, Bone Street Rumba. His other books include Salsa Nocturna and Shadowshaper. His short stories and essays have appeared in various print and online media. He is co-editor of the anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. He also facilitates workshops on storytelling. Formerly he worked as an emergency medical technician in New York City. He is a musician and member of the soul quartet Ghost Star.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Older's (Half-Resurrection Blues) YA debut, Sierra Santiago is from Bedford-Stuyvesant, parties in Park Slope, and crashes Columbia University with ease. Sierra's roots in her neighborhood are three generations deep, but no part of the city is alien to her. She loves art, and painting a mural on an abandoned building is the focus of her summer. Abruptly, her stroke-disoriented grandfather urges her to hurry the project-and then she is attacked by what looks like a walking corpse. What follows is a well-executed plot of the exceptional child with a mysterious history standing forth to save her world, aided by a similarly gifted romantic interest. What makes Older's story exceptional is the way Sierra belongs in her world, grounded in family, friends, and an awareness of both history and change. Her goal is to go deeper into that history and, by so doing, effect change of her own. Sierra's masterful adaptability is most apparent in her language, which moves among English and Spanish, salsa and rap, formality and familiarity with an effortlessness that simultaneously demonstrates Older's mastery of his medium. Ages 14-up. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary Agency. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
When her grandpa Lazaro--bedridden and primarily mute because of a stroke--blurts out an incomprehensible warning, artist Sierra is plunged into a completely different New York: one with the reanimated dead, spirits, and shadowshapers. Sierra's Puerto Rican family, lively Brooklyn neighborhood, and Haitian (possible) love interest make for a vibrant and uncommon, diversely populated fantasy that speaks to the urban teen experience. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When Sierra's grandfather warns her to finish her mural because the paintings are fading, she is puzzled, but the only person willing to help her find answers is talented artist Robbie, and even he is reticent. Determined, Sierra finally learns the truth: her grandfather was a powerful shadowshaper, able to animate art with the spirit of a departed soul, and now an interloper, anthropologist Dr. Wick, is trying to steal these powers for himself. As Sierra investigates the shadowshapers, she discovers her own shockingly powerful role in the disappearing community. Apart from being an awesome power, shadowshaping becomes a resonant metaphor for the importance of cultural heritage, as Puerto Rican Sierra and Haitian Robbie draw on and amplify their ancestors' spirits, and their primary concern is keeping their honorable tradition alive in their community. Older's world building echoes that, too, weaving in timely commentary on gentrification, cultural appropriation, and even the shifting social mores of immigrant communities (especially evident in Sierra chafing against her grandfather's machismo). Even if readers don't recognize Older's crafty commentary, they will find plenty to like in the unique fantasy elements, entertainingly well-wrought characters, and cinematic pacing. Smart writing with a powerful message that never overwhelms the terrific storytelling.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN THE BEST urban fantasy, the city is not just a backdrop, but functions as a character in its own right, offering up parallels between personal histories and histories of place. That is certainly true in Daniel José Older's magnificent "Shadowshaper," which gives us a Brooklyn that is vital, authentic and under attack. The book opens with Sierra Santiago painting an enormous mural of a dragon on the side of a building. "We hate the Tower," Manny the Domino King tells her, explaining why her mural is important. "We spit on the Tower. Your paint is our nasty loogie, hocked upon the stupidity that is the Tower." The building is a perfect metaphor for the threat posed to Sierra's Brooklyn. It's a "five-story concrete monstrosity" built by developers who never bothered to finish it. Now it blocks Sierra's view, towering over the brownstones around it, useless and imposing. It's also a good metaphor for the book's villain, who appropriates what he doesn't understand and can't use, nearly destroying a community because of his own hollowness. It turns out that Sierra's mural is important for another reason. Sierra comes from a long line of shadowshapers - magicians who channel friendly spirits into art. Given form, those spirits are able to defend the community. Her discovery of her own ability and the family history that comes with it is part dynastic intrigue and part cultural awakening. The story is messy, the people in it behave imperfectly and Sierra is heir to all the bad stuff as well as the good. Sierra herself is a compelling, refreshing hero, with a "fro stretched magnificently around her in a fabulous, unbothered halo." Along with her brother Juan, a guitar player in a salsa-thrash band; the enigmatic Robbie, who draws so compulsively that his art covers "every surface of his clothes, his backpack, his desk"; her trickster figure of an uncle; and a collection of clever and funny friends, she has to discover who is murdering her abuelo's associates and why other murals all over her neighborhood are fading. Some of Older's most joyful prose describes Sierra and her friends being out in the world: "Tee cheered her girlfriend from the crowd. Bennie joined the circle, laughing along with each line. Izzy wrapped up with a triumphant and brutal verse rhyming 'spastic,' 'sarcastic' and 'less than fantastic,' and the crowd erupted in thunderous applause." This is the Brooklyn that stands to be lost. The Brooklyn that is under threat from various directions, not all of them magical. "Vincent had been killed by the cops three years back," Sierra tells us, identifying the young man in a portrait on a cement wall. In that elegantly understated line, Older establishes police violence as an almost environmental threat, unpredictable and inevitable as a storm. Gentrification is another source of danger. When Sierra walks a few blocks to see her friend Bennie, she gets "funny stares from all sides - as if she was the out-of-place one, she thought. And then, sadly, she realized she was the out-of-place one." While her friend Izzy might enjoy sitting in the new, expensive coffee shops and writing poetry, the threat inherent in the shifting cultural landscape is highlighted when Sierra is chased through the streets by spirits bound into an enormous malevolent shadow: None of the white people in that neighborhood will help her. Their assumptions about who she is could get her killed. In urban fantasy, the city often takes the role of the dark forest of fairy tales, the place where magic can be found, often alongside great danger. The city is where the witches and the wolves live. In the city, we triumph or we get chewed up and spit back out. Not so, here. Older's Brooklyn is a village, a community harassed by outsiders who want to rob from it, corrupt it or erase it. Menace lurks at the periphery - academics wanting to steal culture, policemen intending to steal lives and real estate agents pushing out residents. As Sierra and Robbie are able to channel spirits into their art, so Older is able to infuse "Shadowshaper" with the spirit of Brooklyn in the summer, where the possibility of magic hangs shimmering in the air. This is a world that readers cannot help wanting to live in and, as with all great urban fantasies, harboring a suspicion that perhaps we already do. HOLLY BLACK'S most recent novel is "The Darkest Part of the Forest."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-The 2015 SLJ Best Book follows Afro-Latina Sierra Santiago as she discovers that she's part of a long line of shadowshapers, people with the ability to infuse magic into their art in order to fight off demons. The Brooklyn teen embraces her Blackness and defends it against the critique of her family members-a powerful statement in YA lit. Fresh dialogue and exceptional world-building will have readers anticipating further adventures in the upcoming Shadowhouse Fall slated for September 2017. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When walking corpsesand worseshow up in the city, a teen discovers family secrets and ancestral powers.Sierra's summer plan is to paint an enormous mural on an abandoned, unfinished five-story building. On an older mural nearby, unnervingly, a painted face changes expression and weeps a tear that glistens and drops. Grandpa Lzaro, mostly speechless from a stroke, grasps a lucid moment to warn Sierra, "They are coming for us.the shadowshapers." Abuelo can't or won't explain further, and Sierra has no idea what shadowshapers are. Her regular world explodes into a "mystical Brooklyn labyrinth" shimmering with beauty but deadly dangerous. Walking corpses with icy grips and foul smells chase her, and a throng hainta shadowy phantom with mouths all overalmost kills her. In Bed-Stuy, Prospect Park, and Coney Island in the middle of the night, Sierra fights to stay alive and to decipher her role in this chaos. This story about ancestors, ghosts, power, and community has art and music at its core; Sierra's drawing and painting turn out to be tools for spirit work. Sierra's Puerto Rican with African and Tano ancestors; her community is black and brown, young and old, Latin and Caribbean and American. Sometimes funny and sometimes striking, Older's comfortable prose seamlessly blends English and Spanish. Warm, strong, vernacular, dynamica must. (Urban fantasy. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From Shadowshaper : "It's salsa!" Sierra laughed, her feet stepping naturally in time with Robbie's. "Not exactly, but close enough." The music swirled around them, moved with them, for them. Sierra saw little old couples tear it up, putting some of the awkward younger folks to shame. Two eight- or nine-year-olds spun happily past. The song surged as the crowd swelled, or was it the other way around? Sierra couldn't tell anymore. Didn't even care. Something in a far corner caught Sierra's eye and she swung Robbie around to get a better look. The vast murals churned and swayed in time with the music. The elegant soldier leapt from his peak into the sky and found himself a pretty angel to swing with. The classy fellow and his death bride spun wild circles from one wall to the next. The pretty black mermaids formed a dancing ring around one of the dragons, who appeared to be showing off a sultry two-step. Sierra closed her eyes and let the other dancers, the swirling paintings, the whole spinning city around her fade into a colorful blur. Excerpted from Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
