But here is truth, gentlefriends, no matter the number of suns in your sky.
At the heart of it, two kinds of people live in this world or any other:
those who flee, and those who die.
When I first discovered about Nevernight’s existence, I didn’t feel inclined at all to pick it up. Probably because I had heard that Kristoff’s writing was not for everyone, and I always have a hard time with writing styles that are ‘not for everyone’. I still have to figure out what that means, tho.
Then it got translated into Italian, and suddenly my Instagram timeline was f i l l e d with pictures of the upcoming translations, sneak peeks of finished copies – very beautiful ones, might I add -, endless stories, posts, comments. I’m telling you, there was no fucking way of escaping the hype.
And the hype, you know, is a bit like a spider. It patiently weaves its web, sets its trap, and when the fly naively wanders through its domain, it’s doomed.
This, gentlefriends, is how I met Mia Corvere.
The Republic of Itreya
Itreyan coinage was originally referred to as “sovereigns”,
but given the Itreyan’s penchant for brutally murdering their
kings, the term had fallen out of vogue decades past. Coppers
were now sometimes referred to as “beggars” and irons as
“priests,” since those were the people usually found handling
them with the most enthusiasm. There was no commonly accepted
slang for gold coins—anyone rich enough to possess them likely
wasn’t the sort who went in for nicknames. Or handled their own
money.
One very complex thing to achieve when writing fantasy stories is creating a believable world. Anyone can come up with some land with a Lord of the Ring-ish name, but it takes way more than that to create a world that feels real.
Yes, basic outlining might be enough to back up the plot and the characters, especially if they’re interesting enough to catch the attention of the reader entirely. But what’s really going to make the difference is the details and the effort an author puts into their worldbuilding.
It’s true that too many details will probably feel like info-dumping, but it’s also true that too little means carelessness and poor worldbuilding. It’s all a matter of finding the right balance, in the end.
Jay Kristoff went beyond that.
You might have heard about his peculiar way of using footnotes to explain facts that are not directly relevant to the story – I provided an example on the right. You might also have heard people complain about this particular choice, describing it as distracting or even info-dumping.
I disagree.
Au contraire, it’s a very clever choice. All of these details, if added to the actual text, would be utterly superfluous (let’s be honest, I don’t know many people who’d care about the naming of coins), when actually it’s them that shape the world and make it feel alive.
The footnotes are filled with little anecdotes on habits, customs, history, former kings and queens, et cetera, et cetera. You might not give a damn about coins, or stories on how a scholar was eaten by a sand-kraken, true, but they do contribute to making this fictional world feel relatable – at the end of the day, kings and queens are nothing other than people, and if you were to look up the life of Marie Antoinette you’d definitely find some peculiar tale about her life.
So, chapeau, Mr. Kristoff.
Mia Corvere
When all is blood,
blood is all.
A world, however well-built, is nothing without characters. Unless you’re a biology or botanist enthusiast: in that case you might be interested in reading about the evolution of the fauna and flora of said world.
As you might have guessed, I am not, and a good setting without a good enough character always puts me off.
Still, what annoys me the most is a story with a static character.
Everything we see and experience, the people we meet, the places we go, they change us. Even if just a small bit, but they do. Everything leaves a piece of itself inside us, and we shape ourselves around them, constantly learning and growing.
That’s what happens to Mia in Nevernight.
Never flinch. Never fear.
And never, ever forget.
She’s ten years old when her father is murdered and her mother and brother locked away in prison. She’s ten years old when, watching her father being hanged, her mother tells her that very sentence she’s going to obsess over.
From that moment, Mia holds on to this memory and never lets it go. It’s her fuel, her motivation. Ending the lives of those who murdered her family becomes her sole purpose.
But that’s not all she is.
She knows grief, she knows anger, she knows vengeance. But she also knows fear, friendship, compassion, loyalty.
As her journey progresses, she experiences things that make her question those very motives. She’ll never forget her desire of vengeance, that’s for sure, but she starts to weigh things up and wonder what she’s willing to sacrifice to get what she wants.
Not only that, but she’s also forced to deal with her fear, which she’s never really known before, having Mister Kindly, a shadow-cat that quite literally feeds off of her fear, by her side.
She’s in constant development, and that’s the best thing about her character.
There would be many things to say on her character, but I’m going to stop here – for now. I’ll just allow myself to say that if it weren’t for her, Nevernight wouldn’t be half of what it is.
The writing
Jay Kristoff delivers all this to the reader with a unique, captivating writing style.
And not for everyone, I guess.
Starting your book saying “People often shit themselves when they die” is a choice that not many authors would make. You may think it odd, but it actually tells a lot about his writing style, and what the reader can expect.
The whole point of the first paragraph is to tell the reader that the author won’t soften the pill. Like it or not, he’s going to show you the crude aspects of the story exactly how it is. No poetry, no dissertation on how the character’s eyes shone while they died.
It is a story about assassins, after all.
In the last chapters of the book, we witness the murder of a specific character (which I’m not going to name because spoilers) that’s supposed to shake the reader. It’s the major plot twist, after all. Oh, you’re going to be shocked indeed, especially by the crude, direct way the author presents it.
Cruel, you might think.
Brilliant, I say.
Firstly, it creates shock in the reader, the need to know what happens next. But most importantly, it differentiates that specific death from all the other ones, giving it a different meaning.
Throughout the book, we are reminded many times that, to the Red Church, death is something holy. A gift to the Mother, each time preceded by a prayer. Killing is regarded as a sacred thing, something which only the most virtuous of Acolytes will be able to do – only four out of thirty can become Blades, after all.
This one is not.
This murder has nothing sacred. It’s not a gift, nor a sacrifice. It’s plain, simple murder that only serves a purpose. A character bothered another, and they were therefore got ridden of. The crudeness of the scene is also fitting to the personality of the murderer: anything else, in this case, would have felt out of place and incoherent.
It’s exactly this attention to the small aspects of the story that make Kristoff’s writing style compelling. Again, chapeau.
The ‘personal feelings’ part
Now, after all this “trying to be objective about the book” sort of stuff, I can finally say that I fucking loved Nevernight. It made it to my favourites of the year, and the series has the potential to make it to my favourites of all time.
Everything stated above contributed to my enjoyment of the book, of course, but the highlight of the story was hands down Mia.
The way her character is portrayed is just wonderful, and I’m thrilled to dive into the second volume and have an insight to her feelings and thoughts once again. So, sorry if I end this review here, but Godsgrave is waiting for me.
The Reading Nargle 