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qog's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
wibblywobblyangel's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
ashlyncherie's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Definitely the worst book in the trilogy. The plot was slow. Mia’s motivations weren’t fully developed. The end was predictable. The only part of this book that got me feeling any type of way was the million character deaths that started to annoy more than sadden me. I kind of thought it was cheeky how he broke the fourth wall, and I didn’t hate that part, but I know many do. All in all, the series was worth reading, just a disappointing end compared to the first two.
akiikomori's review against another edition
5.0
OMG! I can't even.
Guys just read it.
Just. Read. This. Series.
This was the best female protagonist fantasy series I've read in SUCH a long time.
And yeah you've got your ACOTAR and your TOG and Sarah J Maas and Fourth Wing BLAH BLAH BLAH
BUT THIS!
WRITTEN BY A MAN!
Is a billion times more impressive.
BOOKS. DON'T. NEED. ALL. THOSE. SMUT. SCENES. and romance.
Like it's nice, don't get me wrong it's nice, and I read a TON of books in the early 2010s and they were all contemporary romance and I loved them. And I get that Romantasy is the new thing.
But this. THIS IS BADASS!
This is a movie. This is an epic. This is legendary.
If you're tired of all the romance and smut in fantasy, PICK THIS UP PLEASE.
Again my problem is their ages but whatever, let's pretend they're older than they actually are.
If you want a badass female protag, who smokes, swears, murders, drinks, is flawed, determined, feels HUMAN, this is for you.
Please, please, please pick this up!
I am so excited to "eventually" sorry Jay, move onto Empire of the Vampire series - I'm waiting until the next or all books are out - this is the problem, I don't know when the series is finished...
And it was nice enough for Jay to include a refresher of what happened in the last book (characters and what happened to them in previous books) why doesn't everyone do this? Why doesn't Sarah J Maas do this? -___-
So. So. So. So good. Thank you to Heather for pushing me to just read this series!
I have so many other series to read but there's so many dang books!
(also it helped that I had physical copies of this because reading is so much faster than listening so I finished it in 12-13 days when I loaned it from the library for 21 days and it was a 22h audiobook).
Guys just read it.
Just. Read. This. Series.
This was the best female protagonist fantasy series I've read in SUCH a long time.
And yeah you've got your ACOTAR and your TOG and Sarah J Maas and Fourth Wing BLAH BLAH BLAH
BUT THIS!
WRITTEN BY A MAN!
Is a billion times more impressive.
BOOKS. DON'T. NEED. ALL. THOSE. SMUT. SCENES. and romance.
Like it's nice, don't get me wrong it's nice, and I read a TON of books in the early 2010s and they were all contemporary romance and I loved them. And I get that Romantasy is the new thing.
But this. THIS IS BADASS!
This is a movie. This is an epic. This is legendary.
If you're tired of all the romance and smut in fantasy, PICK THIS UP PLEASE.
Again my problem is their ages but whatever, let's pretend they're older than they actually are.
If you want a badass female protag, who smokes, swears, murders, drinks, is flawed, determined, feels HUMAN, this is for you.
Please, please, please pick this up!
I am so excited to "eventually" sorry Jay, move onto Empire of the Vampire series - I'm waiting until the next or all books are out - this is the problem, I don't know when the series is finished...
And it was nice enough for Jay to include a refresher of what happened in the last book (characters and what happened to them in previous books) why doesn't everyone do this? Why doesn't Sarah J Maas do this? -___-
So. So. So. So good. Thank you to Heather for pushing me to just read this series!
I have so many other series to read but there's so many dang books!
(also it helped that I had physical copies of this because reading is so much faster than listening so I finished it in 12-13 days when I loaned it from the library for 21 days and it was a 22h audiobook).
xo__dahlia's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
catbag's review against another edition
3.0
Darkdawn ✵ Jay Kristoff
So. It was fine.
My biggest beef is the ending.
Everything from here on out will be spoilers. Be warned, it’s mostly mean.
I’m so pissed about the lack of emotional payoff. Darkdawn had some of the best badass scenes of the series, like when Mia killed the pirate king or when she shadow jumped across the ocean, but they really weren’t accompanied by much else. Again, more later.
It felt like right here, at the end of this series, Kristoff decided to try to add emotional weight to the story. It kind of worked in regards to the gladii squad as well as Ash and Tric, but these moments felt out of place and lost in a sea of a vastly different tone. His attempts at hitting an actual emotional chord with the narrative were also in the wrong place. Surprise, surprise, I'm talking about the ending. You’d think that at the end of the end of your trilogy that you wrote to be a dark, angsty murder story, you’d want to emphasize the dark angsty death of your main character, but I guess that’s dumb. More later!
It was both annoying and standoffish to include not only the Inception version of the trilogy, but cheeky commentary on it. Was that supposed to be funny and ‘woke’? It wasn’t. Any attempts at self-awareness felt stupid and pointless. Why didn’t a single person in the process point out how much of a waste of everyone’s time this entire bit was? There was no narrative purpose to including the Inception trilogy.
Along those lines, I’m of the opinion that this entire trilogy could be several hundred pages shorter if anyone had remembered for a single moment that you’re allowed to cut things instead of add them.
In every book in this series I’ve had several points where I desperately wanted to stop reading and Darkdawn was the worst yet. Somehow the plot moves forward agonizingly slowly and yet glazes over what should be emotional or action-packed events. It doesn't make sense.
NOW, the ending. The conclusion of this review is shit, but it’s not as shit as the conclusion of the Nevernight trilogy.
I start this conclusion with a question: is Darkdawn a DC movie? Because the ending certainly made it feel like one. I’m honestly impressed that Kristoff managed to make a scene made of words printed in a book feel like it was made of shitty CGI with the contrast slammed to 100. Maybe that’s why he got paid so well. There were three LONG books of buildup to a third-person perspective fight with no stakes or any emotional weight. We all knew Mia would win, sure. That doesn’t mean you can gloss over the climax of your trilogy. I swear, he spent more time on his stupid footnotes than on his protagonist’s long-awaited and over-hyped death. Seriously, ‘disappointed’ doesn't even begin to cover my reaction at the end of Darkdawn. Angry is a better word.
Some final questions:
1. What’s the point of the footnotes? Is there one? Because I stopped reading them about 70 pages into this one in order to be able to force myself to finish it. If they were really important they should’ve been written into the narrative itself. And with that thought, I’ve decided that at least 30% of every one of these books should be put into the footnotes and then deleted.
2. Why did Tric become more flesh-like as Truedark approached? What was the point of that? Nothing happened because of that. A waste of words.
3. Why is Mia that young? What is she, 17? 18? Whatever it is it doesn’t make sense. Nothing, nothing, about her character would be negatively impacted if she were a decade older. Her being this young comes off as icky, gross, awful, weird, and gross (again).
4. Why were the shards of Anais women, and why was there “a howl spilling from their virgin throats” ????? (pages 465-466)
5. Why is there a shard of Anais in Jonnen? Wasn’t Mia supposed to collect all the shards? Didn’t she? Are there others out there who were darkin and now have new powers? I don’t actually believe Cleo, a single person, had all of them because that’s too goddamn convenient for a series that has about a million pages, so I’m going to assume there are others out there who were darken and are now… lighten?
6. Why. is. Mia. alive. JUST LEAVE HER DEAD. Now she’s just sitting in the middle of nowhere, with another person who should’ve stayed dead, for the rest of time, and for no reason at all, other than because Kristoff didn’t want to commit to killing off his favorite little 17 year old assassin slash ? chosen one?
Does that mean he doesn’t believe in good happy endings? Because that checks out.
So. It was fine.
My biggest beef is the ending.
Everything from here on out will be spoilers. Be warned, it’s mostly mean.
Spoiler
First off, I absolutely do not understand why Mia couldn’t have stayed dead. Kristoff told us from book one that she would die, and yet her death was so stupid it cheapened the entire series for me. More on this later.I’m so pissed about the lack of emotional payoff. Darkdawn had some of the best badass scenes of the series, like when Mia killed the pirate king or when she shadow jumped across the ocean, but they really weren’t accompanied by much else. Again, more later.
It felt like right here, at the end of this series, Kristoff decided to try to add emotional weight to the story. It kind of worked in regards to the gladii squad as well as Ash and Tric, but these moments felt out of place and lost in a sea of a vastly different tone. His attempts at hitting an actual emotional chord with the narrative were also in the wrong place. Surprise, surprise, I'm talking about the ending. You’d think that at the end of the end of your trilogy that you wrote to be a dark, angsty murder story, you’d want to emphasize the dark angsty death of your main character, but I guess that’s dumb. More later!
It was both annoying and standoffish to include not only the Inception version of the trilogy, but cheeky commentary on it. Was that supposed to be funny and ‘woke’? It wasn’t. Any attempts at self-awareness felt stupid and pointless. Why didn’t a single person in the process point out how much of a waste of everyone’s time this entire bit was? There was no narrative purpose to including the Inception trilogy.
Along those lines, I’m of the opinion that this entire trilogy could be several hundred pages shorter if anyone had remembered for a single moment that you’re allowed to cut things instead of add them.
In every book in this series I’ve had several points where I desperately wanted to stop reading and Darkdawn was the worst yet. Somehow the plot moves forward agonizingly slowly and yet glazes over what should be emotional or action-packed events. It doesn't make sense.
NOW, the ending. The conclusion of this review is shit, but it’s not as shit as the conclusion of the Nevernight trilogy.
I start this conclusion with a question: is Darkdawn a DC movie? Because the ending certainly made it feel like one. I’m honestly impressed that Kristoff managed to make a scene made of words printed in a book feel like it was made of shitty CGI with the contrast slammed to 100. Maybe that’s why he got paid so well. There were three LONG books of buildup to a third-person perspective fight with no stakes or any emotional weight. We all knew Mia would win, sure. That doesn’t mean you can gloss over the climax of your trilogy. I swear, he spent more time on his stupid footnotes than on his protagonist’s long-awaited and over-hyped death. Seriously, ‘disappointed’ doesn't even begin to cover my reaction at the end of Darkdawn. Angry is a better word.
Some final questions:
1. What’s the point of the footnotes? Is there one? Because I stopped reading them about 70 pages into this one in order to be able to force myself to finish it. If they were really important they should’ve been written into the narrative itself. And with that thought, I’ve decided that at least 30% of every one of these books should be put into the footnotes and then deleted.
2. Why did Tric become more flesh-like as Truedark approached? What was the point of that? Nothing happened because of that. A waste of words.
3. Why is Mia that young? What is she, 17? 18? Whatever it is it doesn’t make sense. Nothing, nothing, about her character would be negatively impacted if she were a decade older. Her being this young comes off as icky, gross, awful, weird, and gross (again).
4. Why were the shards of Anais women, and why was there “a howl spilling from their virgin throats” ????? (pages 465-466)
5. Why is there a shard of Anais in Jonnen? Wasn’t Mia supposed to collect all the shards? Didn’t she? Are there others out there who were darkin and now have new powers? I don’t actually believe Cleo, a single person, had all of them because that’s too goddamn convenient for a series that has about a million pages, so I’m going to assume there are others out there who were darken and are now… lighten?
6. Why. is. Mia. alive. JUST LEAVE HER DEAD. Now she’s just sitting in the middle of nowhere, with another person who should’ve stayed dead, for the rest of time, and for no reason at all, other than because Kristoff didn’t want to commit to killing off his favorite little 17 year old assassin slash ? chosen one?
“He does not believe in happy endings”
Does that mean he doesn’t believe in good happy endings? Because that checks out.
chanceofbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
koniako's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.5
This one was a little hard to rate as, for me, it flip flopped from me loving it to it being a slog. In the end I decided to go with the first reaction when I think of the book.
My only issue is a sudden new plot point thrown in half way into the book that we should care about, and it almost felt like a different book. I understand magic and god's were in the world but it was never a focus and for that to change was a little off. When taking a step back it doesn't cover that much of the book so it didn't hinder the book too much for me.
My only issue is a sudden new plot point thrown in half way into the book that we should care about, and it almost felt like a different book. I understand magic and god's were in the world but it was never a focus and for that to change was a little off. When taking a step back it doesn't cover that much of the book so it didn't hinder the book too much for me.
littlebees_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Well Gentlefriends, that was a rollercoaster.
swaye's review against another edition
5.0
"I'm going to be with you forever," Mia whispered.
"Just forever?" Ashlinn murmured.
Mia smiled in the silver light.
"Forever and ever."
This is the best book I've ever read in my entire life. My most cherished among my favourites. It's perfect and brilliant and beautiful from beginning to end.
I love Mia and Ashlinn. Their story is burned in my memory, and will live in my heart forever. ❤️
"Just forever?" Ashlinn murmured.
Mia smiled in the silver light.
"Forever and ever."
This is the best book I've ever read in my entire life. My most cherished among my favourites. It's perfect and brilliant and beautiful from beginning to end.
I love Mia and Ashlinn. Their story is burned in my memory, and will live in my heart forever. ❤️