What... was... THIS BOOK??? I am SCREAMING. (Internally.)
Rating: 5 stars
Mia Corvere has begun to execute her life mission: the assassinations of the men who killed her father, mother, and her baby brother. Now a fully fledged assassin, she is on her way to gaining the skills necessary to completing the task. But the plan goes slightly awry when she finds out that the people she's placed her trust in have ulterior motives. Mia finds herself a self-delivered slave, proving her worth and fighting for her life in the bloodiest brawls in the Republic. Mia must decide what parts of herself she is willing to sacrifice for her promise of vengeance.
There is beauty in knowing all things end, Mia. The brightest flames burn out the fastest. But in them, there is a warmth that can last a lifetime.
So like, I'm used to fantasy novels dropping a bombshell in the last couple of chapters. Something that has been foreshadowed is revealed, or a crazy plot twist happens. But I did not expect THREE bombshells in the ending. THREE different crazy things, and only one of them (maybe two, but that's from my own speculations and not from foreshadowing) was expected. I am absolutely floored.
I don't quite know how to evaluate Mia's character development. Clearly, she's different than she was in the first book, but I can't figure out what it is. She's not more driven, or more or less compassionate. I think that she is more conniving, possibly; she has more cunning. She figured out that there is a way to get her vengeance without bending to her masters' knees. It makes the plot much more clever, and the book was much more compelling for it.
One selling point of this book is the range of characters, in addition to their depth. There were a lot of interesting, unique characters in the first book, and that definitely continued with a new cast in this one. I love the depth of Sidonious, Leona and Leonides, Arkades, Furian, Wavewaker, and Bladesinger to name a few. They have dark and twisty pasts that show in their motives and demeanors, and I've always thought that learning characters' backstories is as or more interesting than the actual plot.
I understand that there are two plotlines going on in the story, both of which will assumedly be resolved in the next and last book. First: we have the vengeance plotline. Mia is trying to kill the people who killed her family. This has always been a clearly stated goal in the story. Second: we have the darkin storyline. Mia is a darkin, meaning she is marked by the goddess of night, Niah, and can control certain aspects of darkness, shadows, and daemons.
Speaking of: I want to talk a little bit about Mia's passengers (another term for the daemons that assist and advise Mia, as well as "drinking her fear"). This book contains one chapter that is only between Mister Kindly and Eclipse, Mia's two passengers, and there is a bit of talk about how passengers are reflections of their masters, and how all of this might tie into "the empire's destruction" and "the Crown of the Moon". All of the talk about darkness and moons and darkin is very cryptic, and we didn't really get anything concrete about it out of this book. I was hoping we'd learn about darkin at least a little, but it is mostly the characters' speculation at this point. We do get to see what happens when two darkin are near each other: feeling each other's pain, fears, desires. So that was a nice addition, but still I feel like we don't know enough about darkin at this point. I'm only worried because I fear that all of it will be thrown into the next book on top of the other plotline, and everything will be too crammed, too messy, and too complicated.
I must mention some things that did not work for me in this book. It's mostly superficial stuff, which is why I still give this book five stars. I didn't like Mia's obsession over certain things that shouldn't have mattered at all, from her perspective. She gets her face ripped open by a human spider, and she CONTINUOUSLY (as in, more than once) is like "Oh no but what will __[romantic interest]__ think about my scar" (don't want to spoil it). Like girl??? You are way above worrying about scars and your image. Maybe that was intentional, like the author was showing that Mia's still a teenage girl even with all the blood on her hands. But it annoyed the heck out of me. I also didn't appreciate how much Mia obsesses over "What am I?", in reference to being darkin, considering that they never ended up telling us what she is. If there was some reveal about darkin in the end of the book it would have been okay, but without it the persistent identity crises were also annoying. The reason I list these issues is because I don't think Mia was as annoying in this sense in the first book. I don't want to say she was less focused on her overall goal in Godsgrave, obviously she took a lot of risks and made sacrifices for it in this book, but she definitely seemed more insecure, which is not a trait I love in female leads.
Also, small note: anyone else bothered by the unclear pronouns? I couldn't tell who was speaking in some of the dialogue because it just said "he said" or "she said" after a sentence referring to both characters. It wouldn't have been a problem except it happened so often that I took notice of it as a pattern. Perhaps it's nit-picky, but I feel like expecting exemplary grammar from a writer isn't an odd request.
Even with my criticisms, I give this book five stars because of the plot twists and the betrayals and the emotion throughout. It was just so INTERESTING and despite all the killing so FUN and the cliffhanger... it got me. I will be picking up Darkdawn, the third Nevernight installment, on the day it comes out, undoubtedly. If you love stories about assassins and shadow bending and gladiatorial type fighting... READ THIS SERIES.
No comments:
Post a Comment