Book Review: The Nevernight Chronicles

Hello Dear Readers!

I’m probably a little bit late to the party on this one, but I just finished The Nevernight Chronicles by Jay Kristoff. (Well, by the time this posts it’ll be almost a month ago.) Anyway, I’ve got some thoughts so stick around if you want to hear them.

Spoiler’s ahead:

Some thoughts on the series as a whole:

Let me just start by saying that if you don’t like metaphors don’t read these books. I saw several other reviews that were like “WTF is this shit?” and they complained heavily about the prose and the use of metaphors. I, personally, really enjoyed Kristoff’s style in this series. I honestly think one of my favorite lines in the whole series was about 30 pages into the first book:

“Mia’s smile dragged the propieter’s behind the bar and quietly strangled it. It made very little sound as it died.”

I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but that was the line where I was like, “Well, ok. Guess I’m reading the whole series then.

The narrator also tells up straight off on page one that our main character Mia dies in the end. I have a couple of mixed feelings about this. I’ve read a few other books that have a character looking back in retrospect and telling their own story, or some similar way of giving away the ending right at the start. I can’t say that it’s my favorite story telling tactic because it takes some of the risk out of it. If a character is writing a memoir or telling the story in retrospect, we know they survived. So at least some element of the danger is gone, for them at least. In this case, we know the whole series will be building to a climactic end, where Mia will ultimately die. Which kind of serves to create this sort of train wreck I want to look away but can’t. Your sense of dread should be building throughout the whole series as we get closer and closer to the finale. So I can understand why the author chose to do that in this case, but still.

The first book does get off to a really strange start with a sort of back and forth using the same words but a slightly different perspective. Most of the chapters until about have way through the book start with a sort of flashback story, and then the chapter continues in the present day. This trend continues throughout the series. So you’re kind of getting two or even three books in one. There are also little footnotes scattered throughout the books, which I actually really enjoyed. The narrator is witty with a dry sense of humor and I find little tidbits of history and world building like that kind of fun.

Book One: Nevernight

Anyway, on to specifics about book one.

Mia was the daughter of a general who tried to rise up against the ruling senate and was caught and hanged as a traitor. Ten year old Mia is forced to watch her father hang, and is then kidnapped to be taken off and executed as well. She narrowly escapes and winds up in the care of an old assassin Mercurio who begins training her to take revenge on Consul Julius Scaeva, the most powerful man in the Itreya Republic. The first book details her attempts to join the Red Church to become an assassin.

Kristoff has build a really unique world that reminds me of both Ancient Rome and slightly steampunk Venice, Italy. In this world there are three suns in the sky, all three of which only set every two and a half years or so. If you read the footnotes, our narrator talks about “sleep sickness” and how people try to combat the effects of having to deal with daylight for two and a half years straight, how most wealthy families build homes with basements and such, which I found a really interesting touch. (I like this kind of world building apparently.)

I had to frequently remind myself that when Mia is sneaking out during a nevernight, that she is having to sneak around in essentially broad daylight, which just made me feel anxious. Sneaking is hard enough, sneaking around in broad daylight, even harder. Luckily Mia is “darkin” and has control over the shadows, including her shadow cat sidekick “Mister Kindly”. I’m a sucker for animal sidekicks, made out of shadows or no.

Kristoff was not shy about making this incredibly gorey and detailed when it comes to blood, violence, bodily functions, or swear words. It tends to fit the world, but at times I found it to be a bit much. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate realistic violence and realistic consequences of said violence. However, being able to teleport through a pool of blood to another pool of blood somewhere else in the world is… kind of gross. I understand the whole point of it, and that this series is written to be dark, gritty, and ruthless, but I had a hard time not thinking about all the bloodborne diseases, infections, and just… grossness of it. Not to mention the sheer amount of death needed to fill these gigantic pools with all that blood, and the fact that blood separates, spoils, etc. That particular part of it I had a hard time with suspension of disbelief with and felt a little over the top.

Kristoff is also not shy about killing off characters, or having characters follow their own motives to the point where anyone who gets in their way is fair game. I was absolutely shocked by the betrayal of Ashlinn at the end of book one when she kills Tric. I absolutely did not see that coming and the twist was very well set up. It also made me incredibly paranoid for the rest of the series and I expected betrayal from any character at any turn. It pretty much set the stage for me to question every time anyone helped Mia for the entirety of the next two books. I never felt like she was safe at any moment and found myself feeling anxious and paranoid for her, which I feel like that means Kristoff’s storytelling was damn good and successful at evoking a very strong emotional response. Well done sir.

I give 🦞🦞🦞🦞/5

Book Two: Godsgrave

Book Two finds Mia defying the Red Church and selling herself off into slavery in order to compete in the Gladiator trials in order to win in order to get close to Scaeva and his right hand man Duomo and kill them when he presents her with the winner’s wreath.

She spends the bulk of this book in gladiator training and competing in the arena to win her place at the main event. She continues to master her powers, having picked up a second ‘passenger’ like Mister Kindly from the death of another darkin at the end of the first book. However, with all three suns marching towards truelight Mia finds her show abilities do not work as well in the dayest of all daylights. (or when all three of them are highest in the sky and daylight is brightest. Think the mother of all high noons.) It is always nice to see an author put checks and balances on character’s powers. No one likes an automatic win button.

Mia is a character with a singularly driven focus and that is the death of Scaeva. She is hyperfocused on revenge. And yet…

Unlike her training at the Red Church, where teachers murdered students and hopeful assassins are all competing against each other for a place as a true assassin, in the arena the Gladiators must work together, help each other, and look out for each other. Mia starts to make friends, and feels the pain of their loss. We see Mia continue to wrestle with the implications of her actions. How many people are going to die by her hand until she gets her revenge.

I’m not sure if I should address any of my thoughts on Mia’s romance with Ashlinn. There was some chemistry between them in book one, which was overshadowed by Mia and Tric’s romance. But with Tric dead and Ashlinn available, the two end up hooking up. I feel like Ashlinn probably had feelings for Mia back in book one, as she tries to discourage Mia from completing the trials to become an assassin. In her own way, trying to protect her. I’ve seen a few reviews where people didn’t really understand how to the romance between them sparks. It does start with “I’m probably going to die tomorrow so why not live it up while I can”, but I would wager there is a fair amount of trauma bonding as well. I have no problem with the sapphic love scenes, but I did have a hard time accepting that Mia ended up something of a relationship with her ex’s killer. But you know what they say about there being a fine line between love and hate. It was just not the “enemies to lover’s” arc I was expecting and perhaps didn’t ring quite as true as it could have for me.

Again, we know that Mia makes it through this book, but as the reader we really start to fear for those around her. You begin to wonder how much loss she can take before the end and how far gone she’ll be by the time she faces Scaeva. There is enough here to keep you turning the pages because you’re desperate to know if Mia’s plan works.

I give 🦞🦞🦞🦞/5 .

Book the third, Darkdawn.

Book three picks up pretty much right at the end of book two. Mia has successfully been victorious in the colluseium, killed Duomo, and to her knowledge Scaeva, and rescued her little brother, who she thought was dead for nine years.

Now that truelight has passed we are heading for truedark and Mia’s powers start to increase rapidly. We learn the truth about darkin, we learn that Mercurio has actually been our narrator the whole time (which makes sense once it’s finally revealed, but was a bit of a surprise. However Kristoff works it in in a fun and interesting way, using his own books in his own series.)

We’ve been through the equivalent of the city of Venice, the desert, assassin school, the gladiator arena, so why not throw in some pirates? This book tends to have a fairly nautical theme as Mia needs to do quite a bit of traveling around via ship. Mia is starting to collect quite a few titles for herself, and one of which in this book is pirate queen. Mia is getting veeerry powerful as this book goes on, but Kristoff works hard to keep her power in check by throwing things at her that she can’t fight and endangering those she loves. In this case the goddesses of the Seas and Storms make sailing really miserable and end up sinking Mia’s ship.

Mia resists her destiny, continuing to focus only on how she can kill Scaeva. Turns out she didn’t quite get him, it was a body double. Booo. In some aspects she feels very real in that she is singularly focused on what she wants, which is revenge. She states many times she doesn’t care about gods, goddesses, or destiny, she calls herself a selfish bitch, and has no desire for anything else in life beyond revenge for her familia. Another review I read described her as a great example of a morally-grey anti-hero. And that pretty much fits. She behaves in some very human ways. I don’t think it’s generally the norm for people to want to go sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the world. Especially a world so harsh as Itreya and especially after suffering so much loss, including her lover Ashlinn.

She eventually does obtain the crown of the moon because Scaeva ends up with half of the power of a fallen god, and the only way Mia can defeat him is to travel far into the desert and claim the other half of the power of the same fallen god. This book explores the concept of can you defeat a monster without becoming a monster yourself. Another review I read stated that everything in this book was so epic, that by the time Mia and Scaeva finally face off, it feels a little anti-climatic because we’re sort of exhausted from epic everything else has been up to this point and the stakes being so high. We also know that Mia dies and that the city of Godsgrave is destroyed in the process, which again, takes a bit of suspense out of it. Most of her fight with Scaeva is the two of them knocking the shit out of each other and destroying the whole city, which we have to watch from the view of other characters. The last 1/4 of this book reminds me a lot of Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founder’s Trilogy, which tends to feel like an anime to me: Super powered characters just tearing it up in their fights with each other.

In the very end, Scaeva is defeated, Mia’s little brother restores the balance between day and night, and Mercurio and Jonnen go on to restore the Red Church to what it was originally founded to be.

Mia and Ashlinn come back from the dead and retire to a little cabin on a lake. I have… mixed feelings about this. Mister Kindly explains there was one more tithe to pay to restore the balance of day and night, and I’m not quite sure if it was Mia’s mortality or exactly what her portion of the tithe was. I was a bit unclear on that. (I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.)

Jay Kristoff says in his biography that he does not believe in happy endings, so I spent this entire trilogy preparing for the worst and getting ready to have my heart shattered. An expectation was set. Mia getting to come back and spend eternity with Ashlinn felt… odd. Maybe it left me feeling cheated? I’m not saying it wasn’t deserved. Mia more or less saved the world after all. But I found it falling just a little bit flat for me. Which honestly shocks me. I am very much a happy ending girlie. But something about the ending just felt a little empty. I’ll have to give it some more thought as to why, but for now I’m a little unsure about it.

Even so, despite that, I give it 🦞🦞🦞🦞/5 .

Overall I thought the series was well done, imaginative, with interesting world building and lore. Characters were realistic and so were the consequences of their actions. There were some fantastic twists and turns which I did not see coming as well. And of course, the prose was absolutely fantastic.

There were just a few things that kept the series from being 5/5 with me which I discussed above. I didn’t finish it feeling devastated nor with a massive book hangover like I did the last series I read. But it was still really good and kept me turning pages to find out what happened next.

Let me know your thoughts! Till next time dear reader, go enjoy some books! <3 Tiff