Book of Night by Holly Black

 

This is a novel that sets itself some easy goals, and then reaches them. It's very much in the same vein as Laurell Hamilton or Kim Harrison, complete with "it's the real world but there's been magic for a while," but it's in third person (better to show you things the main can't possibly know) and the main clearly knows herself better than at least those two authors' mains ever did, that I saw. Also, she's only just on the path to becoming a monster--I presume there will be other novels, and I presume she will become more a monster in them, though I suppose it's possible she'll do so about as intentionally and knowingly as Dresden did; I won't be reading those novels, this book was not good enough to interest me in them.