This month I finally started reading Nevernight, the first in the Nevernight chronicles and I am so glad I did. It was part of a monthly buddy read with a group of other readers, some who had read the book before and some who were reading for the first time. I guess I was inbetween as I’d had the audio book for a while and had heard the epilogue so I knew what was coming but that made the journey getting there so much more interesting.
The book has an unusual format which I’ve not come across before but I really liked it. Part one was full of back and fourth chapters explaining the past and present, with our protagonist Mia on her way to the red church to train to be a blade; an assassin (my kind of book for sure!). The flashbacks paved the way for the the journey to the church. The book also includes lots of footnotes, some quite lengthy and some short, snarky and snappy which I loved. The footnotes provided an interesting way of getting extra lore across in this new world in a way that is more natural to the storytelling because it didn’t make sense for the character to have to explain in the book. The book is narratted, (I suspect by Mr Kindly maybe?) and the footnotes kind of carry that across better than the third-person style text does.
Mia is such a badass character. She’s smart, interesting and confident, sometimes overly so due to her abilities as Darkin and having her shadowcat drink her fear. I mean that would be a pretty cool thing, right? To be able to drink ones fear away. I imagine I’d get a lot more stuff done if I wasn’t held back by certain fears and anxieties. The book is brutal, def one for mature eyes and has sex, a lot of blood (a lot) and violence throughout. There are moments of real laugh out loud humour too, which I loved.
I’m excited to read the next book, Godsgrave and finish the trilogy with Darkdawn because I have no idea where Mia will go next. I can’t wait to follow her journey though. You can buy Nevernight below using my affiliate link.
