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p_j_sanderson 's review for:
Nevernight
by Jay Kristoff
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
I found Nevernight to be engaging and interesting. I want to read the next books in the series. However, I'd hesitate to recommend it to other people, it is a 'hear me out book'. The caveats being, it is quite graphic in both violence and sex. The prose and the humour is interesting but layered and a ironic in a way a lot of people would find unappealing. These traits I really enjoyed are polarising and not for everyone. The core story is compelling if a bit cliche.
I think Nevernight falls in this unfortunate middle ground of not being a chewy epic fantasy purely for the enjoyment of epic fantasy readers, while also not being a softer entry level fantasy for people who read more contemporary fiction. The way it is recommended and talked about does it a disservice. Nevernight is really for a specific audience and it does not necessarily reach that audience.
It is good at is good at what it is. enjoyable and worth while if that is what you are after. It is a medium chewy fantasy with on screen sex and violence, a compling story that is what it says on the tin and a potent characteristic humour.
I really enjoyed the footnotes, I found the break in tone and the world building coments to expand my experience of the book beyond the limits of the voice and perspective of the main text. I also found them witty and funny, but I think the humour is very Australian, built up on a layer of understated irony that would be unfunny and off putting to people from outside the Austrialian social context. It can be especially blind siding because the world building does seem to be based on Australia. Without the context of Jay Kristoff being Australian, it falls into the cultural cringe uncanny Valley effect for many Americans.
The character work is interesting, not badly done but also nothing the write home about.
TLDR: interesting and fun for the context it is in, but falls apart outside of it.
I think Nevernight falls in this unfortunate middle ground of not being a chewy epic fantasy purely for the enjoyment of epic fantasy readers, while also not being a softer entry level fantasy for people who read more contemporary fiction. The way it is recommended and talked about does it a disservice. Nevernight is really for a specific audience and it does not necessarily reach that audience.
It is good at is good at what it is. enjoyable and worth while if that is what you are after. It is a medium chewy fantasy with on screen sex and violence, a compling story that is what it says on the tin and a potent characteristic humour.
I really enjoyed the footnotes, I found the break in tone and the world building coments to expand my experience of the book beyond the limits of the voice and perspective of the main text. I also found them witty and funny, but I think the humour is very Australian, built up on a layer of understated irony that would be unfunny and off putting to people from outside the Austrialian social context. It can be especially blind siding because the world building does seem to be based on Australia. Without the context of Jay Kristoff being Australian, it falls into the cultural cringe uncanny Valley effect for many Americans.
The character work is interesting, not badly done but also nothing the write home about.
TLDR: interesting and fun for the context it is in, but falls apart outside of it.