Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - A Thousand Steps into Night

A THOUSAND STEPS INTO NIGHT features a girl who begins turning into a demon, abruptly unmooring her from the misogynistic confines of her ordinary life.

I enjoyed Miuko's rapport with the bird spirit, their friendship provided a lot of levity in otherwise stressful moments. The various spirits and demons felt a bit numerous sometimes (especially when I have trouble keeping track of character names), but this felt very accommodating of my inability to keep track of them and I didn't get lost.

The worldbuilding is wonderful, Miuko sometimes pauses to explain something, but it's always right when it's needed. This is generally free of anything resembling infodumps, as the explanations are a natural part of Miuko processing what's happening around her. I enjoyed the audiobook immensely, the narrator did an excellent job and really helped the story flow.

One of my favorite things about this is how it's a story about identity, empowerment, and the difference between an aspect of identity being bad versus it being someone else's excuse to be exploitative or cruel. This is explicitly bound up in how the book approaches gender, but that general idea applies to other aspects as well. Miuko is a cis character (as best as I can tell) who explores her gender presentation a bit with various necessary disguises, and is driven at first to make things safer and better for girls. There's a recurring bit where someone asks what she is and when she says she's a girl they retort that (because she's slowly turning into a demon) she can't be a girl, she must be something else. Early on she thinks there used to be non-cis people but maybe not any more, and when she finds out that the people in power making being trans or third gender difficult socially didn't make them go away, she adjusts her goals to make sure her solution is better for everyone.

The plot flowed and circled back to previously encountered characters in a way that made it easy to follow. I love the kind of reveal midway through the book as to why the plot kicked off in the first place. I don't want to spoil it, but the second half explains why a bunch of things in the first half even happened, and it works very well. I love the ending, it fits the world and the characters and really lets things feel settled.

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meadowlarks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

allisonwonderlandreads's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted fast-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

3.0

This adventure is funny from page one. I'm far more used to ya fantasy relying on angst and despair, etc., so this approach was glittering and exciting for me from the start.

Miuko is a gloriously chaotic protagonist who speaks her mind even when inconvenient (for herself as much as anyone else) and loudly enough for all to hear. When she is cursed to slowly turn into a malevolence demon, Miuko takes up with an even more chaotic magpie shapeshifter spirit, Geiki, who likes shiny things as much as he dislikes superfluous (all of them) rules. Another pleasant departure from genre norms is that this friendship never becomes romantic. Miuko thinks Geiki's handsome, so I think if you want to ship it as a future option, go for it, but during this story's timeline, her feelings are firmly platonic and no less fierce for it. There's no pining, no jealousy, no toxic possessiveness.

In their quest for information on breaking the curse, a library B&E is necessary because women aren't allowed, and their ridiculous escapades valiantly returned all the missing joy from my life. I also appreciated the footnotes, which range from helpful to snarky. My favorites were the swear words, with footnotes assuring us they were too rude to translate while also providing grammatical options for our own usage.

Sexism is a sad reality in this world, but it fuels both plot and humor as Miuko expands her horizons. There's also non-binary and trans representation. While the gender binary is pretty strongly adhered to among humans, non-binary humans can serve as priests, and demons and spirits can do whatever they want because human rules are stupid and limiting. I appreciate the author's message on gender and power. Miuko ponders that yes, she has limited power as a girl, but she also doesn't want to wield power in the way men do. I did find that the resolution of the conversation was pretty simplistic and happy-go-lucky, but it was thoughtful overall.

My only problem while reading was that the humor nearly evaporated in the latter half of the book in conjunction with a plot shift that I didn't fully dislike but was less engaging for me nonetheless. A time travel element didn't fully make sense to my small brain, and a complete changeover to a new set of supporting cast members had a lesser claim on my heart.

This is a solid ya fantasy read, all the more pleasant for the ways that it dodges the expected, tired pitfalls of the genre. It has a lovely approach to gender with a triumph over power structures that assign worth on a strict system according to gender binary. If you're looking for a ya fantasy read with laughs and colorful, snappy world-building, this would be a great read for you.

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