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3.23 AVERAGE
3.23 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Minor: Drug abuse
poorly written. The story makes leaps that aren't clear, and some things are inconsistent.
Overall I ended up enjoying the book. I did feel a little lost at times - I didn’t understand the timeline for some things and I also felt like the story was often pushed along instead of fleshed out. Sometimes I would be reading and going, but there was only 2 sentences about that earlier but now it’s a huge deal. The concept is very interesting and I enjoyed that aspect of the story the most.
"Sin-beasts are shadows, beasts made of night. And an aki is like a ray of sunlight that comes down from the sky and shatters the sin, kills the shadows."
Taj is the most talented sin-eater in the walled city of Kos where aki--sin-eaters--can vanquish a person's sins for a price. Reviled by society and at the mercy of mages who control them, aki have a precarious existence within Kos society.
Taj is cocky and desperate to support his family. He knows it's only a matter of time before he runs out of skin to cover in sin beasts he has killed--physical tattoos that manifest on his skin and transfer the guilt of the sin to the sin-eater--but Taj has no other options to support himself or survive.
When Taj is hired to eat a royal sin he is drawn into a web of intrigue and danger where the future of the entire city--and every sin-eater in Kos--is at stake in Beasts Made of Night (2017) by Tochi Onyebuchi.
Beasts Made of Night is Onyebuchi's debut novel and inspired by Nigerian culture and folklore.
This book is wonderfully written and set in a fantastically evocative and well-realized world where sins can be summoned as physical beasts and danger is everywhere. Taj is a fast-talking character with a lot of charm, wit, and not enough caution.
Erratic pacing and a meandering plot make this a richly detailed but sometimes unsatisfying novel. While the city of Kos is detailed enough to be a character itself some of the internal logic for the magic in the novel--especially as it pertains to sin eating--is vague and poorly explained. Taj's honest narration and winning personality, however, will quickly eclipse any gaps in the story's world building.
Beasts Made of Night is a great story filled with action, memorable characters, and a fascinating world. While most of Taj's story is resolved in this volume, fans will hope that this book is the start of a series.
Possible Pairings: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Frostblood by Elly Blake, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch, The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury, Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration at BookExpo 2017*
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print
Taj is the most talented sin-eater in the walled city of Kos where aki--sin-eaters--can vanquish a person's sins for a price. Reviled by society and at the mercy of mages who control them, aki have a precarious existence within Kos society.
Taj is cocky and desperate to support his family. He knows it's only a matter of time before he runs out of skin to cover in sin beasts he has killed--physical tattoos that manifest on his skin and transfer the guilt of the sin to the sin-eater--but Taj has no other options to support himself or survive.
When Taj is hired to eat a royal sin he is drawn into a web of intrigue and danger where the future of the entire city--and every sin-eater in Kos--is at stake in Beasts Made of Night (2017) by Tochi Onyebuchi.
Beasts Made of Night is Onyebuchi's debut novel and inspired by Nigerian culture and folklore.
This book is wonderfully written and set in a fantastically evocative and well-realized world where sins can be summoned as physical beasts and danger is everywhere. Taj is a fast-talking character with a lot of charm, wit, and not enough caution.
Erratic pacing and a meandering plot make this a richly detailed but sometimes unsatisfying novel. While the city of Kos is detailed enough to be a character itself some of the internal logic for the magic in the novel--especially as it pertains to sin eating--is vague and poorly explained. Taj's honest narration and winning personality, however, will quickly eclipse any gaps in the story's world building.
Beasts Made of Night is a great story filled with action, memorable characters, and a fascinating world. While most of Taj's story is resolved in this volume, fans will hope that this book is the start of a series.
Possible Pairings: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Frostblood by Elly Blake, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch, The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury, Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration at BookExpo 2017*
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Okay... this book. I was so disappointed. It started, and the narrator had such a captivating voice and the concept was so interesting, so I was sucked in for the first quarter of the book. People's sins get expelled from their bodies in the forms of beasts, and the bigger the beast, the bigger the sin essentially. The Sin Eater's fight the beasts, and then eat them, taking them on as their own sins as tattoos on their skin. The main character learns he is able to dispell them from his body and control the beasts instead of needing to fight them It was incredibly interesting.... and then I feel like they didn't do anything with it. It took so long to get to any semblance of moving forward in the plot, and by the time it did, the book had maybe a half hour left in it.
As a personal preference, I also didn't enjoy the main character.
As a personal preference, I also didn't enjoy the main character.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book could have been a fairly run of the mill YA fantasy. It's got the protagonist from a special group in his society that is somehow even more special than his contemporaries. It's got a corrupt goverment benefitting from supressing certain classes. It's got a love triangle. But 2 things really stop it from being just a fine YA, one good and one bad.
To start with the bad, this story doesn't really start until 2/3 or more into the book. Nothing really happens in the majority of this book; there are no stakes, and out MC is just kind of living his life. Something that felt like an inciting incident early in the book had very little actual impact. There's a super important prophesy that we don't even hear about until the last 10%. The final conflict isn't set up until it's just about to happen. There's a bunch of twists and reveals in the end that had no foreshadowing at all. This made the last section of the book feel very contrived.
On the other hand, the one thing this book does incredibly well is the world-building. I didn't reall mind that lack of story while I read because I was just enjoying the world we were in and learning more about it.
To start with the bad, this story doesn't really start until 2/3 or more into the book. Nothing really happens in the majority of this book; there are no stakes, and out MC is just kind of living his life. Something that felt like an inciting incident early in the book had very little actual impact. There's a super important prophesy that we don't even hear about until the last 10%. The final conflict isn't set up until it's just about to happen. There's a bunch of twists and reveals in the end that had no foreshadowing at all. This made the last section of the book feel very contrived.
On the other hand, the one thing this book does incredibly well is the world-building. I didn't reall mind that lack of story while I read because I was just enjoying the world we were in and learning more about it.