Shadowshaper is an urban fantasy young adult novel written by Daniel José Older and originally published in 2015. The first book in the Shadowshaper Cypher series, Shadowshaper follows an Afro-Boricua teenager named Sierra who discovers she has a magical and spiritual family heritage. The book was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015 and was shortlisted for the 2015 Kirkus Prize. This study guide refers the 2015 paperback Scholastic Inc. edition.   

Plot Summary

At the request of Manny, the local junkyard owner, 15-year-old Sierra paints a mural on an abandoned building nicknamed the Tower. To Sierra’s surprise, her Grandpa Lázaro, who has been unable to speak since his recent stroke, urges Sierra to finish the mural as soon as possible. Lázaro tells Sierra she is a shadowshaper, like members of her family before her, and he warns her someone is coming to destroy their kind. Lázaro also tells Sierra she can trust Robbie, a boy from her school, to help her, before advising her to find someone named “Lucera.”

Sierra tries to ask her mother, María, and Manny about what it means to be a shadowshaper, but both are evasive. At a party, Sierra tracks down Robbie, asking him to help her, but they are interrupted by an odd, creepy man who recognizes Sierra and chases her home. Later, Sierra recognizes the man in the newspapers as someone who has gone missing.

With no one willing to give her the answers she needs, Sierra sneaks into the Columbia Library, where she meets Nydia, the head of the anthropology collection. Nydia tells Sierra about an anthropologist named Dr. Jonathan Wick and gives Sierra his journals. Reading them, Sierra discovers that Wick worked with Grandpa Lázaro and the shadowshapers. After studying his journals, Sierra learns that Wick has become a shadowshaper himself, and she realizes that he is behind the attacks on her.

Sierra urges Robbie to teach her what it means to be a shadowshaper and how she can become one herself. With Robbie’s guidance, Sierra learns how to place the spirits of the dead into the artwork that she creates, allowing the spirits a second life. Sierra begins to develop feelings for Robbie, but Wick sends spirit creatures called corpuscules and throng haints to attack them. On one occasion, a group of supernatural beings called the Sorrows rescues Sierra. Sierra also learns that her brother, Juan, knows about the shadowshapers and has learned to use his powers. Sierra feels left out that she alone seems to have been kept in the dark by her family.

Robbie, Juan, and Sierra’s close group of friends—Izzy, Tee, Bennie, and Big Jerome—work to help Sierra find Lucera and stop Wick. Older shadowshapers begin to go missing, including Manny, whom Sierra finds killed shortly before his body becomes possessed and used for Wick’s purposes. Sierra and her friends track down Lucera, and Sierra learns that Lucera is her grandmother who recently died, Mama Carmen. Mama Carmen explains that Lucera is a role, not a person, and Sierra will now become the next Lucera. Mama Carmen gives Sierra her powers and urges Sierra to stop Wick.

Sierra and her friends track down Wick to the Tower at the junkyard lot, where he has been observing her and tracking her progress. Sierra manages to defeat Wick with the help of her friends and the mural she has been painting in the junkyard. After stripping Wick of his powers, Sierra mourns with her friends over those they have lost. Sierra gives her friends the power to shadowshape, starting a new era for the shadowshapers.