5 Stars
Reader, I just had to see what all the buzz was about. I’m in a fair number of bookish Facebook groups and one happens to have a focus on YA books and that group has just been absolutely abuzz about Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae Files and Nevernight series. A good friend of mine vouches for Illuminae, so I plan to pick that one up from the library in the near future, but my library hold for Nevernight came first, which is convenient since the second book in the series, Godsgrave just hit shelves earlier in September.
I have no idea how or why, but my library is circulating a signed first edition of Nevernight.
So, what is Nevernight about? Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads:
In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.
Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.
Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?
Kristoff has built an interesting new universe – one where the Light is dark and the Dark is darker. This universe of his feels like he threw Leigh Bardugo’s Ketterdam (from Six of Crows), the Roman Empire and Renaissance Italy into a blender. It’s dark, unforgiving, classist, full of subterfuge and betrayal, with a dash of occasional kindness and finished with more than a few hard knocks.
Kristoff opens Nevernight with gorgeously lyrical prose and an interesting use of parallel storytelling. He uses this device throughout the book, to an interesting effect. He adds backstory and context through flashbacks and repetition as though Nevernight were an epic poem being recited to an audience, rather than a novel being read silently. This makes me curious about the audiobook; I wonder if that experience is as lovely as reading the book.
The novel itself is peppered with footnotes galore. While I did enjoy the asides and additional backstory and worldbuilding the footnotes offered, I found they broke up the flow of the story quite distractingly. Some of the asides were very funny, but others were basically history lessons that I’d have preferred woven into the actual story itself better.
Kristoff’s Nevernight universe is built well as are his characters. All of the main cast, except for the villains of the series, are multi-dimensional. They’re crafted to have strengths, flaws, backstories, and mysteries of their own. When any of the main cast die (and of course they die, it’s a book about a school for assassins) their deaths hit like a punch to the gut (or in some cases are cause for audible shouting of “YES!”).
I didn’t blow through Nevernight as quickly as I have other, similar novels from Leigh Bardugo and Sarah J Maas, but I really enjoyed the journey and definitely understand what all that buzz has been about. Kristoff has built an interesting universe and set his characters up with a hard road ahead.
I’m very much looking forward to picking up Godsgrave when my hold comes in at the library.
Nevernight was released August 9, 2016 and the next in the series Godsgrave was released on September 5, 2017.
Alex Can Read 