Nevernight

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ...

Wow. This was phenomenal. After reading a few 1 star reviews I was a little worried about the writing style, but honestly, it was awesome. I didnt find it hard to read at all, yes the beginning is a little slow. But I find that is the case with most fantasies.

Mia, the protagonist, is looking for revenge for her fallen family. In the first 2 chapters she murders someone, loses her virginity, and then there is more murder. Yes please! Mia also ends up stabbing someone in the eye when shes 11, so, fun times right? Oh yeah, she has a shadow-cat-not cat-thing, that has a lot of attitude. I like it.

To be honest, I was kind of thinking a lot of this sounded like when Arya was going off to join the many faced god in GoT, but ya know, with actual training in assassin-y type stuff. I also got a HP vibe in the mountain. Edit I think this was jedi mind tricked into my brain when I read JK's review of the book a little bit. Maybe. I dont know.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and if you are feeling skeptical, the worst you can do is borrow it from a library. If you dont like it, dont finish it, but I am glad that the poor reviews that I read didnt scare me off.

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 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.

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.