Nevernight (#1) - Jay Kristoff

"In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?"


I have mixed feelings on this book. It has both unique pros and clichéd cons. 

First of all, to get it out the way, I didn't really mind the extremely floral writing style. At times it was beautiful, at others I just kind of frowned and moved on. I can see that it would frustrate other readers but lucky it didn't drag me to much out of the story. 

I loved the three suns and the world building in this story. I think it was stellar and I felt the world was unique and complete. Mia lives in a world with three rotating suns (hence Nevernight) and the author did a fabulous job of incorporating that in the book. I also really enjoyed all of the little details he includes - like the sand creatures or the odd customs from the other characters.  The lore from their religion really helped ground such a fantastical world. Also, I enjoyed that the Gods weren't imaginary - that they were real and they did influence the human world. The notion of melding the cultures of Venice and Rome together in unusual and surprisingly pays off. I enjoyed the footnotes from a purely world building perspective, however if you don't enjoy reading them you don't lose anything in the story by skipping them. 

I liked the characters, Tric was my favourite followed closely by Spiderkiller. Mia wasn't too bad but was occasionally a bit pretentious. It was occasionally very obvious it was written by a man with all the references to her "bow lips" and such. The humour was vicious and funny and I really enjoyed it.  

Now onto the cons. 

I was wanting more murder and death, but I am left with a boarding school type scenario with mostly cliched secondary characters. However The Red Church is such an incredible setting. It’s painted beautifully vivid, and it’s full of so many mysteries that, no matter how much I learned about it, I constantly felt that I was barely scratching the surface of what it had to offer.

Also what is it with blood magic in current YA fantasy novels? Like three books in a row has had some kind of blood magic involved. It is gross and I don't like it. 

Something else that surprised me is that I will say that I personally feel like this is an adult fantasy novel, not a YA fantasy novel, despite the characters age. There is sex, a lot of sex, and violence, a whole lot of violence, and gore, don’t forget all of the gore! So please go into this book knowing this, and knowing that this is a very mature book in general. The sex scenes I happily skipped so I cannot really comment on them. 

Over all, definitely give it a go. It is an acquired taste and some may really not enjoy it. It is a fun read, nothing to change the world but a fun solid fantasy novel. 

Age Rating 16+. Explicit sex scenes, gore and violence. Also some swearing.