OMG – that cover rocks! Dark, mysterious, bloody and with colors that fit completely. And the fact that you get a hint of how Mia looks, is a plus as well. And when you read the novel, you can see that everything on the cover has its meaning. A book that isn´t only well designed when it comes to its cover: the inside is a real beauty as well. There is only one thing I didn´t like about this edition: what that is you can read in my review below *smile*
Nevernight*
by Jay KristoffThe Nevernight Chronicle #1
Publisher Thomas Dunne Books on September 08, 2016
Genre Fantasy
Pages 448
Format Hardcover
Source Publisher
✶✶✶✶
In a land where suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against 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, a sixteen year old Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic - the Red Church. Treachery and trials await her with the Church´s halls, and to fail is to die. But if she survives to initiation, Mia will be inducted among the chosen of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the only thing she desires. Revenge.
Story
Mia wants revenge. For the death of her family, for her destroyed life and that she never got the chance to see her little brother grow up. With her mother in prison, she flees from the once nice comrades her father had.
Style
As bloody, ice-cold and brutal the story is, she is also written in an elegant and wonderful way. Sure, I didn´t like the many footnotes that were spread across some pages in the German edition – some of them were covering almost an entire page with stuff I wasn´t even interested in – but besides that, the author has one hell of beautiful fantasy. Sure, the plot is dark, the Red Church an ice-cold and cruel place where only the best of the best teach the future assassins how to do what they do. Don´t look for some conscious in them, because there´s none. But the words are well placed, the language is one great melody and with all the brutality in it, Mia is still showing some consciousness and not willing to give up everything she is, only to become the best.
Characters
Mia knows what she wants. In every detail. She is a smart badass heroine without being a smart ass. She loves to read and knows a lot about poison. Her way to see things others don´t give her some advantage. But with Tric stepping into her life and the others who want to become an assassin working for the Red Church, she discovers for the first time in her life that not everyone is on the same page. Except that they all want to become the best.
Conclusion
This book is heavy. Not only by the number of pages it contains (at least the German edition is 701 pages strong) but by its story and characters as well. You will dive into a world where time is a completely different thing from what we´re used to, and where killing and being an assassin is almost a religious thing. Jay Kristoff wrote with Nevernight a great fantasy novel that brings you to the edge and yet shows some feelings and a certain sensitivity. Read!
Happy reading
*I read the German edition new release by Fischer Tor on August 24, 2017.
Jay Kristoff
Jay Kristoff is an internationally bestselling author of The Lotus War, The Illuminae Files and The Nevernight Chronicles. He is the winner of four Aurealis Awards, an ABIA, nominee for the Locus award. David Gemmell Morningstar and Legend awards, named multiple times in the Kirkus and Amazon Best Teen Books list and published in over thirty countries, most of which he has never visited. He is as surprised about all of this as you are. He is 6´7 and has approximately 12,665 days to live. He abides in Melbourne with his secret agent kung-fu assassin wife, and the world´s laziest Jack Russel. He does not believe in happy endings.
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