Author: Jay Kristoff
Format: Paperback
Pages: 463
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: August 9, 2016
Mia Corvere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.
Destined to destroy empires, the child raised in shadows made a promise on the day she lost everything: to avenge herself on those that shattered her world.
But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, and Mia must become a weapon without equal. Before she seeks vengeance, she must seek training among the infamous assassins of the Red Church of Itreya.
Inside the Church’s halls, Mia must prove herself against the deadliest of opponents and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and daemons at the heart of a murder cult.
The Church is no ordinary school. But Mia is no ordinary student.
The Red Church is no ordinary school, but Mia is no ordinary student.
The shadows love her.
And they drink her fear.
Meet Mia Corvere, a 16 year-old determined to avenge her familia – dead by the hands of Consul Julius Scaeva – by becoming an assassin and killing Scaeva herself… until she isn’t. In her quest for vengeance, she must get into the Red Church, a school that boasts of being an assassin’s Hogwarts, with mortality rate higher than Game of Thrones. Along with her fellow murderous teenagers, Mia must learn from and survive the tutelage of the deadliest killers in Itreya, or die trying. After all the Red Church is no ordinary school, but Mia is no ordinary student…
Until she is worse than normal, gentlefriends. Great is my disappointment, O reader! Sure, shadows love her and they drink her fear. But while Kristoff aimed for a morally-conflicted heroine, he ended up with a morally-inconsistent one instead, so much that other characters have to point out (to the reader) that she has high morals amidst killers. Mia would play hopscotch from cold and IDGAF to oh-so-righteous and concerned as hell, from “this is a competition” to “power of friendship and love!”, from would not kill an innocent person to would totally kill an innocent person and back! And for someone who went through hell to get into her dream school, Mia sure as hell does not make much of an effort to keep her assassinating ass enrolled in it.
Kristoff is a killer himself, choking the reader with prose so purple, Barney the Dinosaur paled in comparison. Everything – from sex scenes to wagons breaking – dragged on for forever. And small wonder, when the author loves to talk, instead of telling a story. Footnote after footnote, details that do not necessarily further the story nor the world building, in page after page. While it seems to be contributing to the world building at first glance, it becomes nothing but distraction, diverting the reader’s attention from the already-not-so-engaging main text to a more-often-than-not barely relevant anecdote. The images the figures of speech, aside from being repetitive, conjure makes little to no sense at all! Like:
“…admiring the poem Marielle had made of the girl’s face.”
“Tric gave another half-hearted stab, but the beast had forgotten its quarry entirely, great eyes rolling as it flipped over and over, dragging its bulk back below the sand, howling like a dog who’s just returned home from a hard turn’s work to find another hound in his kennel, smoking his cigarillos and in bed with his wife.”
Nevernight is so wordy, especially the first eight chapters, you barely have enough wits left about you to notice something’s missing…
Oh, the plot!
The interesting premise remained nothing but a premise, taking 300+ pages before pieces start to fall into place for the big plot twist. Which would have been an excellent pace if the reader had some notion that something big is being setup instead of having entire paragraphs repeated to us in flashback form. Entire chunks of pages. All because the plot was barely detectable I didn’t see events building up to any proper direction.
And now to give credit where credit is due. Jay Kristoff writes half of the side characters as more interesting than the main ones, with backstories I would have loved to hear, honestly! They have such intriguing histories – less grand than Mia’s, of course, but sparks the reader’s interest. It’s sad to see Kristoff letting this go to waste, resulting in characters with questionable actions, not because of ambiguous morality, but for shallow, inconsistent, unexplained motivations. The other half are just fodder, just names waiting to drop dead to increase the novel’s body count to justify the R-rating it boasts of. Not that you’ll care they died. You won’t even remember they existed.
The same goes for the villains of the story, Consul Scaeva and friends. We barely hear anything about them aside from the Consul’s greed for power that led to him tearing down Mia’s familia. But if you’re looking for any semblance of socio-political plot, you’re in for disappointment.
Verdict
O reader! Nevernight, with its eye-catching premise and its analogies to its elements with Harry Potter’s and Game of Thrones’, had no right to be the boring brick of a book that it is. The writing is so flowery you’ll wonder if you’re holding a book or a bouquet, its barely detectable plot and poor character development lost behind verbosity. The pace picks up towards the end and those who are patient enough to hang on, will somehow be rewarded with the scheming, action, and excitement you have been expecting from the very beginning.
Nevernight barely touches on the main arc, focusing on the petty rivalries within the Red Church instead, and offering a half-baked scheme for which barely noticeable, unremarkable hints were dropped earlier on.
If you’re into pages long, cringe-worthy sex scenes more elaborate than the plot, footnotes eclipsing the main text, the occasional violence, this book is for you!
If not, gentlefriend, abandon this book!
What to read instead:
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy if you want a badass heroine with a good character development, a government structure you’d want to tear down yourself, and awesome systems of magic.
Or just reread Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire.
Who does the Kraken drown?
Jay Kristoff, for the pain inflicted on my eyes and for the death of countless brain cells.
Characters: ★★★/5
Plot: ★★.5/5
Writing: ★★.5/5 (The 0.5 is for the better written final part)
Total: ★★★/5
★★.5/5
The Booktopus Reads 