Nevernight

DNF 3%. I know... really early here but, if I have to read “O,....” I'm going to throw my iPad across the room.
I'm not a fan of poetic or ‘poetic' writing.
I was really looking forward to this book but, I just can't do it...

This might be more of a “I'm not in the mood for this right now” but I'm just not really vibing with it.

DNF at 9%.

Too many books. Too few centuries.

Rien à redire sur ce livre. L'univers construit part Jay Kristoff est dingue et chargé de détails qui existent parfois pour le simple but d'exister, n'apportant rien au récit en lui-même (je comprends pourquoi cela en rebute certain). Cela contribue à la richesse de ce monde dans lequel nous évoluons au côté de Mia et le temps passe alors très vite durant la lecture.

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The universe built by Jay Kristoff is crazy and loaded with details that sometimes exist for the simple purpose of existing, adding nothing to the story itself (I understand why this puts some people off). This contributes to the richness of this world in which we evolve alongside Mia and time passes very quickly during the reading.

I had to claw my way through this book to the point that it's set me back on my reading goal for the year.
I wanted so bad to like this book, I tried so hard to get into it but none of it seemed like it wanted to tell a story more than it wanted to be meaninglessly edgy. It tries so hard to achieve an artistic twist on the grotesque but ends up just being too consumed in that and loses its grasp on anything else it wants to convey, I fear.

Toward the end I started to get into it a bit more but it just didn't seem worth it considering the other 300 pages were such a drag.

I'm not saying it's inherently a terrible book it just really didn't give me anything I wanted and at times feels like a cheap knockoff of a lot of other sci fi and fantasy I've encountered.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while but I kept putting off reading it despite knowing I would enjoy it. I'm glad Destiny finally got me to pick this one up. I admit this one took me a little bit to get into but once I did I was once again hooked on one of his stories. I listened to the audiobook while following along in the book which I think was the right way to go with this one because of the footnotes. Those alone took a while to get used to and honestly I still don't think I was used to them by the time I finished reading the book. I don't necessarily think we needed all of the footnotes because they didn't really add to the story overall but it was a nice addition all the same. This book gave me a little bit of everything. There's a lot of action, gore, some romance, some humor and great worldbuilding. It was just a well rounded book and I look forward to jumping into the next book hopefully soon.

Estamos ante una historia de venganza donde la protagonista está obsesionada con matar a las personas que hicieron trizas a su familia cuando era pequeña. Tras huir de ellos es encontrada por un asesino retirado del culto de la diosa de la noche y es entrenada por él hasta que es lo suficientemente mayor para que ella misma pueda formarse bajo las enseñanzas de la Iglesia Roja, lugar donde el culto forma a sus asesinos.

Los personajes están muy bien escritos, diversos y con personalidades fuertes y bien definidas, sobretodo la protagonista que llegamos a conocer profundamente.

El worldbuilding es muy completo. Existen muchos lugares, criaturas, instituciones, magias, etnias, lore... Se siente vivo. Además, el autor acompaña los capítulos con notas a pie de página que profundizan más sobre el mundo.

Al principio sí que es verdad que me abrumó un poco pero a cada capítulo tenía una imagen más clara de todo el mundo y la forma en la que el autor narra la historia acabó atrapándome.

El ritmo de la trama también al principio me pareció un poco lento pero tras los capítulos iniciales toma buen ritmo y la trama en sí me ha parecido impredecible, me ha sorprendido más de una vez.

Es una historia sangrienta y violenta, tiene muchas escenas de pelea y algunas bastante gore y puede que no sea para todos pero la he disfrutado mucho.

No vi venir el giro que daría comienzo al desenlace de la historia y me ha dejado con varias preguntas y muchas ganas de leer el siguiente.

3.5

Flaming swords and burning spears,

For some random reason I thought this was a YA book but I loved Kristoff's Empire of Vampires so much I was willing to read it anyway. The very first sentence says “People often shit themselves when they die.” Rude awakening there buddy.
I love Fantasy stories involving a school or just training in general, like Harry Potter or The Emperor's Blades. And I definitely love it when it's an assassin story.
This story feels like it could be a spin-off for Arya Stark. A girl of nobility who's family is murdered, she vows to right the wrongs that have been done to her by being trained by assassins who kill for a blood thirsty God. She also has to deal with another student who would love nothing more than to kill her. That's literally Arya Stark...
Her main difference is that she has this power to control shadows and she has this sort of “shadow demon friend” who helps her.
One thing that I hated about this book was there was footnotes throughout the first half of the book that gives background information. Some of it is interesting but most of it was just unnecessary and ruined the pace of the book so I just quit reading them and it made no difference. If you can't flow the information into the book naturally then it's not needed to me.
The second half of the book is a thrill ride of awesomeness and I'm definitely certain that this series is going to be great and he just might be a top 10 author for me.

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish.

3.5

3.5 Stars

GREAT popcorn book. The first 25% was so cringey it was funny but the rest of the book was super enjoyable and a great page turner. Don't wanna read too much into it cuz it was a popcorn book and analysis for those is not worth the loss of enjoyment (TLDR stuff: flourish-y writing + mega edgelord + men writing women stuff + weird smut). I just love fantasy school settings and good worldbuilding clap

16 yr old Mia Corvere is a darkin - someone that has the ability to control shadows, and has a small shadow-cat as her familiar. She sets off on a journey to find assassin hogwarts so that she can train to take revenge on the people that killed her family.

The writing style is supposedly quite polarising but I found I didn't mind it.

There are a lot of footnotes, and I just skipped them. Since I read it on a Kindle, they're all at the end of the chapter (not sure if it's the same for print?) and I couldn't be bothered to stop reading to jump to footnotes each time. So maybe that helped with the experience.

I also skipped over the cringey sex scenes but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Conveniently, as Mia's classmates die one by one, most of the time it's the first time they've even been mentioned. It's only towards the end that actually recognizable characters start dying.The fact that the school gets overrun so easily at the end makes me question the school's strategy to kill off most of their students each year. Doesn't seem like a smart move at all.And the fact that Cassius is supposed to be some super cool dude and he's caught just like that?? What a dummy.

Now that was a goodread. A beautifully crafted world, an extremely relatable protagonist and a simple magic world all rolled into the classic school trope. You would think that this is done multiple times but that's the power of writing. Jay pulls you in and while Mia is top notch, the ensemble with her is also extremely well written. As the first in the series it sets up all that is needed and then some more. Will be interesting to see where Jay takes it from here. Onwards

Absolutely great book! The characters, the plot twists, the action, everything was so good. I can't believe I waited for so long to finally read this book, but better late than never, right ?

I've heard so many things about Mia, but I didn't expect to like her as much as I do. She is an awesome character and I can't wait to see how she grows. From the little girl, frightened by her powers she became a fierce warrior, ready to destroy anything and anyone that comes between her and her biggest desire: to murder the ones who murdered her father.

Oh and Jay Kristoff, I hate you. You know what you did and I. HATE YOU.
After reading Illuminae and Aurora Rising/Burning, I fell in love with Jay's (along with Amie's) writing and Nevernight is another great work of this author's.

I have to admit it took me a while to get into this book but after the first few chapters, I was hooked. In a lot of the reviews, people said they didn't like the writing style but it didn't bother me at all, on the contrary I found I rather liked it. Even the use of footnotes, although strange at first, I grew to like. I've never read a fantasy book that uses footnotes before so it was interesting to have them in this one. I thought the plot was good with some nice twists. The characters were also quite nicely rounded and I understood the motives behind what they did. Whenever I wasn't reading Nevernight I found myself thinking about it and wanting to read it all the time. Maybe it's not for everyone but overall I really enjoyed it.

When the narrator tells you (on page one) that this story isn't going to have a happy ending...reader, you should listen. This book is DARK, and the dark stuff just keeps coming. This book is also full of the purplest of prose, so the reading experience is unusual and takes a bit to adjust to.
But oh reader...this one is worth it. Mia is a protagonist to savor - her journey is exciting and heartbreaking, and she loves and grows and learns within these pages. Knowing her story will undoubtedly end in tragedy makes the time spent sweeter. I can't wait to jump into book two.

I started reading this in English and had to change to Spanish after the first three chapters because it was just too hard for me to know what was happening. But, once I went into the Spanish version, everything got better. I feel like the translator made the book better, so props to them for that. The story is interesting even if there's not a lot of assassin things happening until the last 30% of the book, which was disappointing.

There is a gentle sardonic wit that underlies the rather dark coming of age story that Nevernight is centered around. These type of school based training stories are bread and butter fantasy affairs so a story centered around these type of things really needs an x-factor to grab me, and Nevernight does so in style.

This book takes this coming of age schooling motif and twists it in a suitably dark fashion with a school for assassins, adds in a vicious revenge motivation for the main protagonist and keeps a suitable sense of danger and betrayal throughout. The primary character, Mia, is a likable rogue. Her morals are mixed, but she does have her code that she follows.

The humour in the story largely comes from two sources - the narrator and Mia's shadow not-cat (Mr Kindly). The reliability of the narrator can always be questioned (he tries to paint Mia in a much darker light than her actions really are), but through his footnotes he portrays a vivid world with plenty of humour - you can imagine the footnotes being read in sardonic and world weary voice - like Lemony Snickett in the recent adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Mr Kindly takes a more direct role in the story, often pointing out Mia's follies and contradictions in a highly entertaining way.

The cast of characters are interesting, even if there are some obvious cliches (the mean girl as the enemy at school), but the twists towards the end give ample pay off.

Coming of age stories are 10 a penny, but this one is honestly the best I have read. The balance of wit and humanity, betrayal and camaraderie, give this story an addictive readability that is impossible to ignore. Highly recommended.

I was extremely aware of Jay Kristoff's presence throughout this entire 427 page book. It was like he was standing over my shoulder, watching me read, and stopping me every 3-4 minutes to say, “Omg this part. I wrote that. Don't you think it's clever? Do you get the joke? I made a joke.” It made me so annoyed. Every time I saw a footnote, I'd tense and roll my eyes, knowing a super lame attempt at a joke was incoming. The whole time I could just imagine Kristoff typing out the story on his computer and congratulating himself for being so clever, funny, and edgy. It was so try-hard, and so much of it felt tired and/or forced. I recommend checking out other reviews for examples of the absurd metaphors and similes because some of them were absolutely atrocious. And holy men-writing-women, or rather men-writing-16-year-old-girls.

Despite all those things, I loved the world and enjoyed the plot. I wanted to like all the characters more than I did, but I'm basically neutral on all of them. I think they were very inconsistently written. I predicted almost everything that happened really early on, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment (the writing style overshadowed that). I really want to know what happens next and will likely pick up the second book. I've heard Kristoff improves his writing and characters, and if that's true then I think I'll love it.

When they got to the point about killing the cat, i said fuck it and closed the book.

Not what I expected at all. Very dark, very deep fantasy. Such imagery in the writing, and the character building exquisite. MC is cold, a killer full of dark but at the same time one with feeling and a sense of who she is and where she comes from. This is just the beginning and I cannot wait to see where it next leads ...

It took me a while to read it but I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED every second of this story. Nevernight is AMAZING! Can't wait to read Godsgrave.

i just,,,wow. this was some next level shit. politics? world building? characters and development? writing? conflict? plot twists? all on mfing point. literally a perfect fantasy.