Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.23 AVERAGE
3.23 AVERAGE
Honestly I zoned out halfway through and didn't care enough to tune back in.
An incredible debut. Fresh, original, thrilling with compelling characters and relationships. I'm lucky to call the author a friend & to have received an ARC for review, and I can't wait for everyone else to be able to read Taj's story this fall.
I normally don't write book reviews. Mostly I use Goodreads as a personal log for my reading, and I use the star rating less as any kind of metric of worth and more as a record of how much I enjoyed the book/the book appealed to my personal reading tastes. I am making an exception for this book because I know for a lot of people a two-star review means the reviewer thought the book was bad. To be clear, I don't think this was a bad book. I thought the characters were well-drawn and compelling. I thoroughly liked Taj - I thought he was a great protagonist and loved spending time in his head. I thought the world created here was interesting, dynamic, and vibrant. I especially loved Onyebuchi's use of created slang to build out his world. I find myself wanting to use "ruby-licker" in real life. Also, a lot of YA (or at least the YA that I read) is female-focused, which is in no way a problem, but it was nonetheless refreshing to read a book that felt so grounded in the male perspective, that also didn't use that male perspective to justify misogyny. I wanted to give this book three stars, which to me, means a good time book, a book that I read and am glad I read and that I enjoyed reading. However, I had to give it two stars because, for all its many attributes, I spent the majority of my time with this novel frustrated by its pacing and plot, which - to me - felt disorienting and inexplicable. Also, while the worldbuilding was impressive and extensive, it also felt contradictory and confusing in places, which added to my overall feelings of "what is HAPPENING?" These factors ultimately forced me to concede that this book is simply not for me. Hence the two stars.
I kept wavering between three and four stars as I was reading this, but by the end I think I feel like it was just fine. The world-building is definitely engaging, and the characters are set in all the right places for an engaging plot, but there were a few things that kept this from feeling quite right. I wasn't really able to understand Taj's behavior as he transitioned from his life in the dahia to life in the palace nor, eventually, to his role in the forest. I'm not sure I ever got a sense of agency from him.
I dunno, I'm bad at writing reviews, but this combined with how rushed the ending felt means this one takes two stars. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I dunno, I'm bad at writing reviews, but this combined with how rushed the ending felt means this one takes two stars. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Trigger warnings: death of a friend, violence, death, exploitation of minority groups by the elite, vomit.
I bought this book when it came out last year and then promptly declared myself to not be in the mood for fantasy books. So I put off reading it for literally months and months and months. And then when I finally did pick it up, I was hooked from chapter 1.
The concept was fabulous, world was great, the characters were compelling, and I enjoyed the writing and the magic system. That said, the second half of the story got...slightly convoluted? The pace slowed down a lot for me in the second half of the story and I found it dragged a little towards the end. Still, the actual ending to the story was enjoyable and made me want to immediately preorder the second book. So.
I bought this book when it came out last year and then promptly declared myself to not be in the mood for fantasy books. So I put off reading it for literally months and months and months. And then when I finally did pick it up, I was hooked from chapter 1.
The concept was fabulous, world was great, the characters were compelling, and I enjoyed the writing and the magic system. That said, the second half of the story got...slightly convoluted? The pace slowed down a lot for me in the second half of the story and I found it dragged a little towards the end. Still, the actual ending to the story was enjoyable and made me want to immediately preorder the second book. So.
I loved the concepts and the book overall, but I wished that there had been some sort of indication of a timeline. Did these events/this story all happen in a week? Over the course of a year? I couldn't tell.
Taj is known among his people as the Sky-Fist, the LightBringer, because he is the most powerful aki in the city of Kos. Aki are recognized by the white pupils of their eyes, which show up in childhood, and the sin spots that cover their skin. They have the ability to eat the sins of other people, to bear the weight of guilt for them so that other people can walk light and free from their sins. Instead of being revered for this task, however, they are reviled, pariahs in their own cities. People use their services because they have to or else they may fall ill with the weight of their guilt, but they are always sure to shortchange the aki as much as they can. The wealthiest and most powerful people in the city seem to be the guiltiest. Taj is often called upon to eat the sins of the royal family.
Eating sin involves a mage summoning a corporeal beast made of black ink from the sinner's body that takes on the shape of an animal. The aki must then fight it and cut it with a special blade, and the ink then pours into their mouth and appears as a tattoo on their body. But inevitably one day there is a beast that defeats you. Or you run out of skin for more sin spots. When that happens, your soul leaves your body, causing you to pass over and become an empty husk.
Taj knows he is destined for a short and violent life, and tries to make the most of the time he has by flirting, spending time with his friends, and training young aki. But one day he is summoned to eat the sin of the king and gets pulled into a world of palace intrigue, plots, and betrayal.
A very interesting premise and well-executed plot with great pacing. My one issue is the flatness of some of the female characters, namely Princess Karima, whose main personality trait seems to be being beautifully pure and soft spoken, although this may be the flawed perspective of our POV character who is enamored with her rather than of the author. Other women are more developed, including the palace bodyguard Arzu and the idealistic mage Aliya.
I'm not quite sure if I am sucked in enough to continue the series.
Eating sin involves a mage summoning a corporeal beast made of black ink from the sinner's body that takes on the shape of an animal. The aki must then fight it and cut it with a special blade, and the ink then pours into their mouth and appears as a tattoo on their body. But inevitably one day there is a beast that defeats you. Or you run out of skin for more sin spots. When that happens, your soul leaves your body, causing you to pass over and become an empty husk.
Taj knows he is destined for a short and violent life, and tries to make the most of the time he has by flirting, spending time with his friends, and training young aki. But one day he is summoned to eat the sin of the king and gets pulled into a world of palace intrigue, plots, and betrayal.
A very interesting premise and well-executed plot with great pacing. My one issue is the flatness of some of the female characters, namely Princess Karima, whose main personality trait seems to be being beautifully pure and soft spoken, although this may be the flawed perspective of our POV character who is enamored with her rather than of the author. Other women are more developed, including the palace bodyguard Arzu and the idealistic mage Aliya.
I'm not quite sure if I am sucked in enough to continue the series.
Seventeen-year-old Taj is unusual even among the aki—the young sin-eaters who are hired to consume the sins of the wealthy. Mages call the sins out in the form of inky black beasts that then appear as tattoos on the sin-eaters’ bodies. For all of the other aki, these sin-spots fade with time, though the guilt builds up and often drives them mad before they reach adulthood. Taj’s tattoos, however, never fade and he excels at tamping down the feelings of guilt by refusing to think about the sins or those who committed them. But he may need to question this strategy of detachment when he is called to eat several unusually large sins for two members of the city’s royal family. What sins are these royals hiding? The future of Kos hangs in the balance, and Taj will need to unravel a conspiracy among the city’s most powerful that could destroy everything he loves about his home.
See my full review: https://www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-beasts-made-of-night/
See my full review: https://www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-beasts-made-of-night/
When I finished reading this book my first thoughts were "Uhhh.... okay." It was just such a nothing book that, had it been structured/edited differently, could have been SO cool! It sets up a world in each people can "remove" their sins from their bodies (or something) and warriors called aki fight the sin-beasts and take the sins into their own bodies. In the city of Kos, akis are very disrespected. Cool premise, huh?
Well, the novel spends the first 3/4 meandering through with no discernible plot-point. Taj (our main character) is a really good sin-beast fighter, then he gets called to kill the sin-beast of a member of the royal family, then he lives in the palace for some unknown reason and some unknown amount of time (?), then he gets "called upon" to leave the walls of the city to train future aki, and THEN something like a plot pops up - but by this point the book is 3/4 of the way down. I did not care about Taj at all, attempts to make tertiary characters secondary were fruitless because they were in it for such a little time (and his infatuation or whatever with the princess was very weird and not bulked out enough), and again, BOOKS SHOULD NOT HAVE A PLOT START WHEN THE BOOK IS ALMOST OVER!
As you can see... I was not a big fan. I only finished it because it is my book-club book; otherwise, I would have put it down. Extra star for the cool concept and imagery, but again - a good editor could have really reorganized this and made it something special
Well, the novel spends the first 3/4 meandering through with no discernible plot-point. Taj (our main character) is a really good sin-beast fighter, then he gets called to kill the sin-beast of a member of the royal family, then he lives in the palace for some unknown reason and some unknown amount of time (?), then he gets "called upon" to leave the walls of the city to train future aki, and THEN something like a plot pops up - but by this point the book is 3/4 of the way down. I did not care about Taj at all, attempts to make tertiary characters secondary were fruitless because they were in it for such a little time (and his infatuation or whatever with the princess was very weird and not bulked out enough), and again, BOOKS SHOULD NOT HAVE A PLOT START WHEN THE BOOK IS ALMOST OVER!
As you can see... I was not a big fan. I only finished it because it is my book-club book; otherwise, I would have put it down. Extra star for the cool concept and imagery, but again - a good editor could have really reorganized this and made it something special
I really can't remember a thing about this. That's how insubstantial it is. There were characters. I knew their names, but not their personalities. the world must be the best thing about this, but there were a lot of things that were never explained. Look, I like the idea. I just think this is a mess. Reading it was actually pleasant, but that is literally the only thing I can say about this book. It was a breeze that took a few hours and I have no memory of them.