Scan barcode
singsthewren's review against another edition
5.0
This book was SO DANG GOOD! really unusual setting with spirits, demons, witches, and an Imperial Court, and one young woman caught up in the middle of all of it. The characters were fantastic, really varied and interesting, and the plot was so unique and wonderful. I never expected the twists and turns but they didn't come out of nowhere, either.
A main character named Nothing was a little challenging for reading comprehension, but I got used to it after a few chapters. I loved how rich the writing is, very detailed and really brought it all to life. And I love a good stand alone book! Can't wait to read more Tessa Gratton.
A main character named Nothing was a little challenging for reading comprehension, but I got used to it after a few chapters. I loved how rich the writing is, very detailed and really brought it all to life. And I love a good stand alone book! Can't wait to read more Tessa Gratton.
hotychan's review against another edition
5.0
After Strange Grace, I'm not surprised with how intensely Tessa Gratton made me feel things. This book is perfection, for sure my first favorite of 2021.
siavahda's review against another edition
5.0
Move over, Wizard Howl; there’s a new eater of hearts in town. And she’s far more swoon-worthy than you ever were.
A big chunk of fantasy readers about my age (and older, and younger, for that matter) will remember Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. Others might know the story from the Studio Ghibli adaption of the book.
I sat up and paid attention way back when all we knew about Night Shine was its pitch: Howl’s Moving Castle, but queer. That was enough to sell me, and Night Shine was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.
It does not disappoint!
Nothing is a young woman who lives in the walls of the palace, an orphan who would have no place if she hadn’t the friendship and favour of Kirin Dark-Smile, the prince and heir. No one knows where she came from, and no one particularly cares, so long as she stays quiet and out of the way and lets people forget about her.
Instead, she does something spectacular, and has to go rescue the prince from a sorceress who only steals girls, not boys – and yet has taken Kirin.
Night Shine is simultaneously a beautifully simple and delightfully intricate novel. On one level, I could lay out the plot for you in a sentence or two, but to do so would be to cut the heart out of this story; you would miss so much! You would miss Gratton’s light, deft hand with her worldbuilding, the way she lets details fall just-so so that their ripples paint the shape of a world as big and real and vital as our own. You would miss all the cunning loopholes Nothing can slip through via gleeful worldplay; you would miss celestial unicorns and river-dragons and most of all – most of all you would miss the arc of a girl called Nothing becoming…Everything.
There’s just so much to love here, I don’t know where to start. Maybe the place to begin is with the way Gratton contrasts the relationships that make up the story: Kirin + Nothing, Kirin + Sky (Kirin’s bodyguard and secret lover), Sky + Nothing – and Nothing + the Sorceress Who Eats Girls. This is very much a book about love, but not the soft, starry-eyed kind; it’s about love as a feral, strange thing, eerie and beautiful, with sharp edges and feathers. Neither of the loves on offer to Nothing – as part of a polyamorous relationship with Kirin and Sky, or the love of the Sorceress – are conventional (to the reader – the set-up Kirin, Sky and Nothing have been planning to enter into for years is perfectly normal within their culture); but still, there’s a very stark (and, I think, deliberate) difference between the relationship of Nothing and Kirin, and Nothing and the Sorceress. It’s one that I found absolutely thrilling; on the one hand is a literal prince, Nothing’s childhood friend and benefactor, the person she has always believed would be her future. And on the other side is this powerful, frightening woman, who takes the hearts of young women for her dark magic.
I mean, it’s not even that most stories would make the decision between the two love interests obvious; in most stories, the sorceress wouldn’t even be an option, and not because she and Nothing happen to share a gender. She’s dark! Scary! She shapeshifts and she kills people and she deals with demons! (More on the demons later). This is not someone who’s supposed to be a love interest! This is someone who’s supposed to be the villain!
So it is just beyond amazing to me that Gratton takes all of that – everything the Sorceress is – and makes her a love interest anyway. Like – screw your ideas of traditional romance; monsters make awesome girlfriends.
(It’s so much more complicated than that. It’s so rich and vital and mutable, refusing to be pinned down and neatly labelled. There’s no box to neatly tuck this into. This isn’t a familiar trope, we don’t recognise this story-pattern, arc-pattern, when we encounter it. We have no map for this. This is uncharted territory, and it’s beautiful.)
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
A big chunk of fantasy readers about my age (and older, and younger, for that matter) will remember Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. Others might know the story from the Studio Ghibli adaption of the book.
I sat up and paid attention way back when all we knew about Night Shine was its pitch: Howl’s Moving Castle, but queer. That was enough to sell me, and Night Shine was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.
It does not disappoint!
Nothing is a young woman who lives in the walls of the palace, an orphan who would have no place if she hadn’t the friendship and favour of Kirin Dark-Smile, the prince and heir. No one knows where she came from, and no one particularly cares, so long as she stays quiet and out of the way and lets people forget about her.
Instead, she does something spectacular, and has to go rescue the prince from a sorceress who only steals girls, not boys – and yet has taken Kirin.
Night Shine is simultaneously a beautifully simple and delightfully intricate novel. On one level, I could lay out the plot for you in a sentence or two, but to do so would be to cut the heart out of this story; you would miss so much! You would miss Gratton’s light, deft hand with her worldbuilding, the way she lets details fall just-so so that their ripples paint the shape of a world as big and real and vital as our own. You would miss all the cunning loopholes Nothing can slip through via gleeful worldplay; you would miss celestial unicorns and river-dragons and most of all – most of all you would miss the arc of a girl called Nothing becoming…Everything.
There’s just so much to love here, I don’t know where to start. Maybe the place to begin is with the way Gratton contrasts the relationships that make up the story: Kirin + Nothing, Kirin + Sky (Kirin’s bodyguard and secret lover), Sky + Nothing – and Nothing + the Sorceress Who Eats Girls. This is very much a book about love, but not the soft, starry-eyed kind; it’s about love as a feral, strange thing, eerie and beautiful, with sharp edges and feathers. Neither of the loves on offer to Nothing – as part of a polyamorous relationship with Kirin and Sky, or the love of the Sorceress – are conventional (to the reader – the set-up Kirin, Sky and Nothing have been planning to enter into for years is perfectly normal within their culture); but still, there’s a very stark (and, I think, deliberate) difference between the relationship of Nothing and Kirin, and Nothing and the Sorceress. It’s one that I found absolutely thrilling; on the one hand is a literal prince, Nothing’s childhood friend and benefactor, the person she has always believed would be her future. And on the other side is this powerful, frightening woman, who takes the hearts of young women for her dark magic.
I mean, it’s not even that most stories would make the decision between the two love interests obvious; in most stories, the sorceress wouldn’t even be an option, and not because she and Nothing happen to share a gender. She’s dark! Scary! She shapeshifts and she kills people and she deals with demons! (More on the demons later). This is not someone who’s supposed to be a love interest! This is someone who’s supposed to be the villain!
So it is just beyond amazing to me that Gratton takes all of that – everything the Sorceress is – and makes her a love interest anyway. Like – screw your ideas of traditional romance; monsters make awesome girlfriends.
(It’s so much more complicated than that. It’s so rich and vital and mutable, refusing to be pinned down and neatly labelled. There’s no box to neatly tuck this into. This isn’t a familiar trope, we don’t recognise this story-pattern, arc-pattern, when we encounter it. We have no map for this. This is uncharted territory, and it’s beautiful.)
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
dananana's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Dysphoria, Murder, and Transphobia
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
spiritedstardust's review against another edition
3.5
Queer studio ghibli with wine drunk writing.
The concept and characters are interesting. The way it is written though takes energy to understand - it’s obscure and proverb-like and probably not appealing to most.
The queerness of everything was great tho.
The concept and characters are interesting. The way it is written though takes energy to understand - it’s obscure and proverb-like and probably not appealing to most.
The queerness of everything was great tho.
booksthatburn's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
NIGHT SHINE is a story about being strange, in-between, and not quite fitting in, in a way that explicitly includes queerness but is not limited to it. It felt a bit muddled because although the Sorceress Who Eats Girls fits this in-between state and doesn’t mess well with society, a significant part of why she doesn’t fit in is that she eats girls (and not just in a fun way). Nothing asks her to not eat/kill girls anymore and the sorceress is willing to do this for her, but I think there should’ve been a higher bar than "please don’t be a murderer anymore". The sorceress keeps bringing up that the girls consented to what happens, but the very first chapter shows one of these instances and I don't think the the girls are agreeing to what the sorceress ends up doing. This also shows up in the way Kirin is portrayed. It slowly becomes clear that he is willing to be manipulative and disregard other people's desires in order to get what he wants. There’s also the implication that Nothing forgives him pretty easily.
The first part of the book is a really cool quest narrative, with vibrant and interesting characters. I like the early dynamic between Nothing, Kirin, and Sky. There's also a lot of fun wordplay with Nothing's name in the first half. I think Sky might actually be my favorite character, he gets more attention in the narrative than Kirin does because he’s present for more of the story. The Sorceress Who Eats Girls is a really compelling villain, but I didn’t totally buy the switch into a love interest for Nothing. There's a huge age gap between Nothing and the Sorceress, but it's not played with as a power differential. Nothing doesn’t really get a chance to decide that she might like something other than being with Kirin or with the sorceress. The ending was somewhat frustrating, but mostly because I wouldn't have made the choices Nothing does and so it was harder to believe the ending. That's not necessarily a problem, but it seemed like the ending prioritized continued friendship over addressing the boundaries which were crossed.
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I think overall, I do recommend it, but I’m not sure what point it’s making in the way that it plays with villainy and otherness. I'm intrigued enough to read the sequel, and I like that this book is unafraid to have messy and imperfect queer characters.
The first part of the book is a really cool quest narrative, with vibrant and interesting characters. I like the early dynamic between Nothing, Kirin, and Sky. There's also a lot of fun wordplay with Nothing's name in the first half. I think Sky might actually be my favorite character, he gets more attention in the narrative than Kirin does because he’s present for more of the story. The Sorceress Who Eats Girls is a really compelling villain, but I didn’t totally buy the switch into a love interest for Nothing. There's a huge age gap between Nothing and the Sorceress, but it's not played with as a power differential. Nothing doesn’t really get a chance to decide that she might like something other than being with Kirin or with the sorceress. The ending was somewhat frustrating, but mostly because I wouldn't have made the choices Nothing does and so it was harder to believe the ending. That's not necessarily a problem, but it seemed like the ending prioritized continued friendship over addressing the boundaries which were crossed.
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I think overall, I do recommend it, but I’m not sure what point it’s making in the way that it plays with villainy and otherness. I'm intrigued enough to read the sequel, and I like that this book is unafraid to have messy and imperfect queer characters.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Dysphoria, Kidnapping, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Violence, Gore, Confinement, Murder, and Death
Minor: Transphobia, Excrement, Sexual content, Self harm, and Child death
faraway84z's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
caseyaboutthroughout's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
amazingracerose's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
- 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
What a fantastic exploration of inbetweenness , and love and betrayal
kayu99's review against another edition
4.0
The writing was gorgeous, the world-building was thorough, and the plot was original. I guess the only thing is that I had trouble connecting with the characters? They were written in a way that made them feel inaccessible. Still, a brilliant story of self-discovery.