A review by mariya_g8
Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This book shattered my heart into million pieces. There were so many plot twists that I could not predict and the writing is full of metaphors.

 I loved how the first two chapters are built. In them a parallel between love and death is drawn an I loved how the words in the love scenes and the death ones are almost the same. There are even whole sentences from the one scene that are repeated in the other but convey two opposite feeling - lust and horror. 

There is not a single character that is the perfect hero. All of them have their dark secrets soaked in blood. However, I couldn't help it but fell in love with couple of the characters as well as I hated others from the bottom of my heart. And that's the reason why my hear was broken several times. 

Moreover, I am a huge fan of the literary devices so it worked perfectly for me how something that may be said with 5 simple words was described with a lot more than that. Also, I loved how some of the sentences contained rhymes and rhythm. Despite my love for words, I did have hard time understanding some of the sentences. English is not my first language, therefore I do have unfamiliar words. Some of them I had to check up, the others - I figured out while reading. And despite these words, the book left its print on my soul. There were sever scenes after which I was staring in the wall for a couple of minutes, trying to comprehend what had just happened. 

Although the narrator is the typical omnipotent one, they mainly intervene the narration by using footnotes. This was something I've never encountered before. In this way, the author builds the world in which the narration is set without technically breaking the pace of the scene. One can always skip the footnote, read till the end of the scene and then come back for the skipped part. 

I did predict some of the outcomes but I feel that the writer wants us to do so.
When Mia was trying to solve Spiderkiler's riddle, I was sure throughout the whole time that she was going to nail it. Also, as Mia's group of friends were 5, but the Blade's places were only 4, I knew that someone would die and it came as no surprise that Carlotta was killed. Furthermore, during the final duel between Trick and Mia, I knew that she wanted to be defeated and all the awful words she threw to Trick were mere to make him mad and kill all the softness he might express during the fight. 

Despite these little scenes, I could not predict what was going to happen next in the book. It was a huge surprise that Hush was not responsible for the death of the two acolytes as well as I did not expect the siblings' betrayal. Also, the scene in which Trick 'breaks up' with Mia made me almost cry but as there were 100 more pages to the end and 2 more books, I had hope they'd get back together. Up until he was killed as well. 

And as it was mentioned several times in the book - the Mother of the Night keeps what she finds usefull or something like that - I have a tiny hope that Trick will somehow magically come back to life. Furthermore, by the end of the first book they have not found his body anywhere which enkindle my hope even more.

 
Overall, I see why some people may not like the book. It has a lot of descriptions but I find this normal as the author should build imaginary universe and explain how everything works. Moreover, at places the language used is nothing like the way we speak in our daily life and it took me a while to get used to it. However, I loved it and cannot wait to read the next book.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings