Nevernight -- In-Depth Book Review

hello everyone welcome back to my channel my name is Jordan and today I'm going to be doing a review of never night by jay kristoff okay so my voice might sound a little bit weird for this review and I apologize I'm just getting over a cold and yesterday I did a lot of talking I actually filmed this review and the audio didn't record which is super tragic but we're gonna do our best to make it even better today so hopefully this is a blessing in disguise so we're gonna split this into two sections today we're gonna be doing it the short non-spoiler section that I always do where I just give my overall general thoughts and then are gonna go into the spoilers section of the review or I talk about all of my thoughts the nitty gritty so I hope you enjoy and let's just dive into this okay so this book follows Mia corvair who was a wannabe assassin dead set on a revenge after her father gets killed and her mother and younger brother gets sent to a prison where they're likely to die Mia discovers at a very young age 10 years old that she is special she is a darken so she is able to manipulate shadows and do several things with them but she's not really aware of her full potential she basically gets taken under the wing of a retired assassin named to Mercurio and trained so that she can one day enter the red church which is basically a kind of Church of assassins basically and this book Mia is trying to become a full-fledged blade which is a full member of the red church to do that she has to enter the school of the rich and basically compete with the other students to become a full-on blade which there are only four per like class and there's about thirty students so it's very intense there's lots of action lots of drama I actually really enjoyed this book there are a lot of books that are kind of why a witch I don't think that this is by the way I think that this is definitely a new adult book the protagonist is younger Mia is sixteen in this novel but it deals with some pretty graphic violence and a few kind of graphic sex scenes so I would definitely not recommend this to a younger audience but yeah I find out a lot of yaa and new adult books where there are assassins they don't end up killing much and I think that this is because the author wants the protagonist to be still morally good so even though they're an assassin and they're skilled they don't necessarily do a lot of killing and that is not a problem in this book at all which I really she ate jay kristoff was able to go really deep and get really dark and I absolutely loved that on top of this I really enjoyed the world of this book it's really unique it almost feels more like a video game world than a usual kind of medieval high fantasy novel I think gods grave which is where Mia grew up is derived I guess from Catholic Rome and there are some other cultures that may encounters that I think are based off of Vikings as well as kind of more Polynesian cultures so I think that there's a lot of really interesting cultures at play in this world which I really appreciate I also really appreciate how magic was handled in this book it is definitely present but it's not always front and center I love magic where it feels grounded and there are definite rules and balance which I appreciate there's a lot of creatures and fantastical elements which really add a sense of mystery and darkness to the world and then the actual magic has very clear rules and balance so for example Mia who can manipulate shadows can pull shadows around herself and hide herself but she also can't see another example is Marielle who I will talk more about in the spoilers section she is able to manipulate people's flesh but every time she does her own flesh gets more and more deteriorated and kind of disgusting so it's this kind of balancing act I also really enjoyed the plot I think the first third of the book was a little bit slow and I would have loved to have seen it progressed a little bit faster I didn't think all of the elements there were necessary but I did enjoy overall the plot and I thought that there was some really great twists especially towards the end which is where you want the good twist to be I think there was one twist that wasn't completely deserved and I'm gonna talk about that in the spoilers section but overall again I really enjoyed it the characters in this book were a little bit hit or miss for me though and I find that that's often the case I'm the pickiest about characters over anything so it's not necessarily shocking and I find that in any kind of story where there is a school or a a bunch of people the same age competing for something there's definitely gonna be characters that are a bit cliche or weak I'm not surprised by it I will say though that there were some really strong characters and I found that the teachers and the members of the red church specifically were really interesting and mysterious and I think that they did a good job of making layered teachers which you don't always see on top of that I think that trick who is an acquaintance of Mia's a friend is another great character I loved his backstory we're gonna dive more into that in the spoilers section again Mia herself I was a bit on and off with I found that it took a long time for me to connect with her and then in the end I don't know if I really know her I had moments where I really felt connected to her and I really cared about all of her struggles that she was going through and then I had moments where I felt more distanced I'm not a hundred percent sold on Mia who's the protagonist she's okay but I didn't love her so last thing I'd like to talk about in this short non spoiler section is the writing the writing in this novel is I think where a lot of people had trouble and I would say kind of the same for myself the first few chapters I honestly wanted to put the book down and just DNF it it was a lot to get through it almost felt like Jay Kristoff was just trying to impress the reader by pulling out all these different stylistic things and the pace was weird there's also Mia in the past and Mia in the present that he would flip between constantly it was just a lot going on and I didn't think that it was necessary especially because it's a high fantasy world that we were just getting acquainted with so we're already trying to learn all of the names of all the different places the world the characters and on top of that he's flipping between the two times and the writing itself is very flowery and dense and overall I thought that the first third of the book the writing was the weakest and after that it found its footing I did appreciate that in his writing he does use some very creative descriptions that really give a sense and feeling to the world not like you know the scarlet robe he had got really creative with it descriptions of things but in the beginning it was a lot more dense I think than in the end and that just made it really hard to get into the story but I think that's it for this short non spoilers section overall I really did enjoy this book there are a few things that I had issues with um but I would definitely recommend it for people who loved a high fantasy especially darker high fantasy it's very violent at times it feels kind of thriller II at times there's kind of an ominous feel to it as I mentioned I haven't really seen a world like this before and I thought it was very well crafted so for anyone who enjoys really interesting unique world building and fantastical worlds and creatures I think you'll love this book because I thought that that was handled really well I also think that people who enjoy very plot driven action driven stories will enjoy this book and people who are transitioning from why a fantasy to adult fantasy I think this is another great read for you alright so with that out of the way let's dive into the spoiler section so as I mentioned with this book the writing was difficult at first I did end up enjoying it in the end but as I said it was very slow off the top the first chapter especially I found to be very annoying and it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth and had my expectations basically rock bottom I did not expect to like this book but I pushed through and I'm very glad that I did I'm just gonna read the first couple lines of the first chapter so that you got a sense of what the writing is like the boy was beautiful caramel smooth skin honeydew sweet smile black curls on the right side of unruly strong hands and hard muscle and his eyes Oh daughters his eyes five thousand fathoms deep pulling you in to laugh even as he drowned you his lips brushed her is warm and curling soft they'd stood entwined on the bridge of whispers a purple blush pressing against the curves of the sky his hands had roamed her back current tingling on her skin the feather-light brush of his tongue against hers set her shivering heart racing incites aching with wand it's very flowery and that of course is the first paragraph so that's before you really dive into all of the different settings and characters and so it just becomes a little bit overwhelming there are also footnotes which I ended up really enjoying but I know a lot of people didn't I did look up a few reviews after I read this book and it seemed like a lot of people dnf'd it in the first third of the book and I think that that has a lot to do with the writing style as far as I can tell the footnotes I found to be really interesting because I loved in-depth world building where it discusses history and religion customs and culture and that is what I found the footnotes to be good for I thought they were also really interesting because they were told through the narrator's voice which is not Mia by the way this is a third-person narrator who has a sense of humor who's kind of witty and the footnotes are all told through their voice as well which can add a little bits of kind of humor and funny but also there to really enrich the world I know a lot of people had trouble with them because they it brought them out of the story I think they're kind of take it or leave it I don't think you necessarily need to read them to understand what's going on in the story but I do think that it enriches the experience so moving on from the writing I'd love to discuss the world a little bit more I found out the world was kind of like Assassin's Creed especially the second one with Ezio which is in Italy in Rome and mix that with like Dark Souls with all the creatures and kind of dark magic and all of that very ominous kind of elements and then if you add in like Magic the Gathering land cards which if you don't know what Magic the Gathering is it's a card game kind of like Pokemon for adults and the art for the match the Gathering cards is absolutely stunning I'll insert a few pictures just so you know what I'm talking about but the land cards specifically are just the most beautiful landscapes and I think that it's almost like Haiti drew inspiration off of concept art for all the different elements of the world in this book there's also some really interesting creatures which I personally love in fantasy novels like for example there's this huge desert that Mia has to cross with trick once they meet each other and there's sand Kraken which are so horrifying they've got like bone like claws and they go and move through the sand and like tear up and eat people they're horrifying and I loved it as I mentioned I also really loved the magic in this book because it's understated it grounded and has even though it's kind of mysterious and Mia doesn't necessarily know all that she's cave all of it has rules and it has balance and for me that is the most interesting type of magic my two favorite magic users are in fact not Mia but the twins who are albino who work for the red church and so a Donna the guy he is basically able to manipulate blood but to do so he's he's able to do a bunch of things he's able to heal and basically there's this thing called the blood walk and it's how people from the red church move around the world because they have churches all over the place and so basically he can send people through baths of blood to the other baths of blood set up all over the world it's super creepy I love it but to do that he has to consume blood so he's always lusting for blood he's like a creepy vampire that can do really cool things with dark magic I love it and then his sister Marielle who I mentioned earlier is able to manipulate flesh so she's able to make other people really beautiful really hideous and change their faces and bodies but then to do that she becomes super grotesque herself it just was so well done in this book oh my god I forgot again okay I forgot this yesterday too it's called never Knight because it's never Knight there are three sons instead of one in the sky and it's only ever truly dark once in four years because the sons are like constantly rotating they rotate very slowly around the world so the sons are in the sky for basically like three years at a time so I think it's like roughly three and a half years every time it goes dark and I found that that was really well integrated into the world not only and how the people act and you know days tighly how time is measured um but also because it's a huge religious thing in the world all of the religions are based off of that premise so the main religion in God's grave worships ah who is the god of light and his three eyes are the three sons so basically he is odd the ever seeing and I really love this name and I'm not sure if this was intentional but odd just is like very reminiscent of Rahu is this God in ancient Egypt so like that just made me happy even though I'm not sure if that was intentional I just like found that to be awesome but moving on his wife is the MA or the mother and she is the DD of darkness and so the red church worships her that's super well integrated into both the red church and the society in general and the way that they battle each other the magic everything all of the world melting elements were just so well integrated I loved the world building in the story and I found absolutely no fault with it so moving on I would like to talk about the plot overall I really enjoyed the plot as I mentioned in the non spoilery section though I found that it was a little bit slow at first but with any kind of high fantasy story I kind of give the first like 50 to 100 pages a pass because it's hard man it's hard to establish a world and characters and setting especially one as intricate as this and have the action be super fast-paced and the story super quick I don't really mind that the first 100 pages were slow but I know some people will so that's worth you know considering while I had an idea of where it was going I didn't know exactly where it was gonna end up and I was pleasantly surprised at the twists and turns at the end that being said there was one twist that kind of bothered me because I didn't feel like it was true to me his character and that's either a fault with the character or a fault with a plot basically at the end when they're competing to become full blades Mia ends up kind of manipulating a bunch of the other classmates and it all pans out in the end she's manipulated all these people and she's kind of like revealed to herself with as this kind of mastermind and so there's like this whole twist regarding that I love the setup of the twist I love that there was this twist I just didn't feel like I knew Mia to be this manipulative person I felt like her character up to that point didn't lead me to believe that she'd be able to pull something like this off she seemed fairly genuine and while she was a skilled assassin in a lot of the different trades of being an assassin I didn't feel like manipulation was her strong suit and a that she seems really intelligent with knowledge things but her actual like cunning and manipulation I didn't feel like that was one of her best traits sorry guys that my camera just died because I am unprepared but as I was saying I didn't love the twist in the end because I didn't feel like Mia was actually that cunning or manipulative so I didn't necessarily believe that she would be able to pull something like that off and it seemed to almost weaken her character because it felt like I knew her less and it made me almost subconsciously distance myself from her because it felt like I didn't know her at all so that to me it was one of the weaker points of the plot another thing that I didn't like and this is a super minor detail but it drove me in saying in the climax of the book I thought the climax was pretty good I loved all the action and different elements to it it was super fast-paced they kept me on my toes but one element that I absolutely hated was the fact that she seemed to have endless weapons it made it a lot less tense and stressful because she seemed to have a million throwing knives a million arrows and these like kind of chemical poison balls that she could throw that all had different like effects um and so that those are from like one of the teachers she had basically compacted the compounds of these different things so one of them could explode one of them could create like smoke bombs and I think the last one could like sedate people but she seemed to have an endless supply of them you never knew how many she had so I don't know where she kept all of these things especially because like the climax lasts over several days as she's like trying to save the members of the red church once they're betrayed which I will get into but like that was so frustrating to me because I feel like it could have been a really cool thing to know exactly as she's running out as she's using the throwing knives at the crossbow and all of the stuff you know she's running lower and lower that could have been an interesting element and instead it just felt like sandbox mode and she just had whatever she needed which felt very convenient and frustrating to me so the big plot twist that I've kind of been referring to and not mentioning is when Mia's friend Ashlyn betrays the red church the group of assassins and so she and her brother basically to date all of the teachers and the lord of shadows who is the head of the red church and invite the loominatee which are the basically like the guard and army of god's grave which is where Mia's from she basically invites them into the red church completely betrays them and they do this basically to avenge their father but yeah so basically they give up and take down the red church which is a really great twist it's really awesome I didn't see it coming but I thought that it was set up well enough throughout like there was definitely seeds planted so that when the reveal did happen I was like that makes sense I see you so moving on last but not least the characters over all the characters were a bit hit or miss for me I really would have loved to see especially because we have the flashbacks more of me as family and I think though this would have made Mia a lot more relatable because her avenge story from me I didn't necessarily feel it as much as I should have it to me it was almost like the revenant where like we see Mia's family get killed and her mother and brother get taken away to this horrible prison where her mother ends up going insane and her brother ends up being killed or so we think and so like we see all of this happen I should feel a lot more but because we never actually saw Mia's family together happily I didn't actually end up forming a bond with any of them and I felt that that was a huge missed opportunity if I'd seen her parents and her brother in a more kind of familial setting casual setting in their everyday life where we really got to see their bond I feel like the revenge story would have meant a lot more to the audience moving on to Mercurio who is Mia's trainer the ex assassin I thought he was okay we didn't really get to see much of him so I wasn't blown away I would have loved to see a little bit more depth and a little bit more of the relationship but he wasn't a huge part of the book so it's fine whatever following that I'd love to talk about the members of the red church so as I mentioned in the non spoiler section I really liked the teachers in general but too specifically and those two are Shaheed Mouser and Shaheed Alea Shaheed Mauser is the teacher of thievery and escape and lock-picking all of that good stuff which is essential to being an assassin and I thought that his character had a lot of depth like hinted at he was still very mysterious but he definitely had a soft spot he seemed a very layered and he seemed the most human of all of them moving on to Chiquita Leia and she is the teacher of seduction and manipulation she's the one who gets secrets and teaches the art of making love I loved her she was super mysterious but she definitely had human elements it was great that they hinted that she was once ugly but now because of the work of Muriel she's this enchantress and I just love those layers and the kind of look at what self-confidence can do what changing your outward appearance can do what to oneself it was all just very interesting to me and I really like the depth that was hinted at with her the other two Shaheed spider killer who is the teacher of poisons she was a fine she there wasn't really much there she was pretty OneNote and the same can be said for Shaheed solace who was the teacher of weaponry and fighting and all of that he was also kind of OneNote they're both a little bit more dark and villainous more assassin like in my mind they were serviceable mother Drusilla is the kind of matriarch of the church she's not the head the head is Lord Casius who is the king of Shadows we'll talk about him in a second but mother Jerusalem was also very interesting to me because she's that described as this sort of like nice warm grannyish type lady like she's older she seems very welcoming she put completely disarms you and then she's got this super dark undertone and edge to her that's really interesting I kind of loved badass grannies so that's like a weakness to me so maybe that's why I loved her so much but I thought she was great then we have the Lord of shadows and I'm almost disappointed because he ends up dying in the end which I thought was an interesting choice but I would have loved to see just a little bit more of him because I was so intrigued by his character and and I think that there were stories that I would have loved to see but he is also darken like amia and he also has a shadow companion which by the way and Mia does she has a shadow cat named mr. kindly and he has a shadow wolf and the shadow wolf ends up joining Mia in the end so I feel like we'll get hints of lore Cassius's character through what we hear from the wolf in future books which I'm excited about moving on it we have the students and this is where there's the most hit or miss kind of elements there's the mean girl that's Jessamine she's like the evil redhead who's cunning and good with you know fighting and stuff um she was just like kind of evil and I feel like her character could have been so much more interesting because of all the parallels with Mia her father was a soldier who had fought in the rebellion which Mia's father had created and her father ended up dying in that rebellion Mia instantly was like oh my gosh were so alike both of her father's died for this cause and jessamine instantly was like no my father died because of your father so there's this instant tension between them there's this history and I love that I would have been fine with seeing jessamine be this kind of cliche cartoon evil girl if in the end because they're forced to connect and fight together they had a moment like I really like endings that kind of you know not necessarily tie things up with a bow but a little bit where it feels like there's at least a little bit of a resolution and I feel like they had the opportunity because jessamine and me are forced to fight together in the end I would have loved to have seen a moment of connection where something is a resolve between them because I feel like it was missing that okay but moving on from jessamine we have Ashlyn she's the one who ends up betraying the church I thought her character was interesting I just would have loved to have seen a little bit more development between her and Mia in the early stages of the relationship I felt like it kind of went from zero to being best friends really quickly and that development phase was kind of important and was missed out on and that can be said for a lot of the characters I think because there were so many time jumps in this book because it's you know a training progression and all of the relationships seem to have been built very quickly and the same can be said for Carlotta who is Mia's other friend that's an assassin and who ends up dying and I feel like her death would have been a lot more impactful had the relationship been more of a slow progression and that brings me to trick and I loved trick I thought his backstory was so fascinating I thought he was such a defined character I really knew who he was he also ends up dying which was devastating because also like his death was just like it was like a paragraph it happened so fast I was not expecting it it came out of the blue I was like oh and I feel like everyone was expecting to him to come back cuz it's like no it can't just be that it was that it was a lot but anyway I feel like there's one thing that would have made tricks so much more likeable because it took me a long time to really connect with him it took me till he really opened up and shared his backstory for me to like him and connect with him because the author basically through him and Mia together they're trying to figure out how to get to the right church they don't know where it is and so they climb this tower and they end up spending two weeks at the top of this tower waiting to see something in the whisper waist below which is the desert and he skips over all of it there were two weeks where Mia and trick get to know each other and they go from not knowing each other at all to being pretty good acquaintances and we got to see none of it I would have loved to have seen some character moments between them in that time he just skips over all of it and it's like no I want because he's kind of a love interest to Mia so I want to see the progression you can't just have zero tube-like being basically friends that's not how this works good you missed a chunk you missed a very important chunk there jay kristoff that really drove me nuts that made me like mmm mmm we got there in the end I really liked Rick in the end but I feel like that would have been important in getting to know and loving Mia as well not just trick like I feel like the character dynamic between the two of them would have been really good in those moments but it just didn't happen it's fine in the end I did really liked Rick I thought he was great but I think out on that one moment that I think would have made him even more likeable sooner and that brings me to last but not least Mia so Mia again I had a bit of an on-and-off relationship with because it took me a long time to connect with her and I think that might be partially because of the writing style I tend to prefer and this is just personal preference first-person if it's done well obviously but this is the third person and not only that is told from a narrator who is definitely they've got a character so when it's third person but the narrator isn't as present I find it's even slightly then more easy to connect with the main character but when the narrator does have an actual character I find it a little bit hard to connect with a main character sometimes and I was actually surprised because I did end up connecting with Mia especially for the middle section of the book and then in the end again there was that twist that I just felt came out of nowhere with her character I didn't feel like I knew her to be that person to be able to manipulate and like set up all of these things so when that happened I was like oh do I actually know Mia and then it almost because that's kind of when the climax started to kick off so that's when we got all of the action bits and stuff so it didn't feel like we had character moments after that for me to reconnect with Mia and feel like oh no okay I got it I know who she is it was just like it jumped from me being pulled out of her character to a bunch of action sequences so I felt like I really got to know her in the middle section and then I felt disconnected from her again in the climactic bit which is not what you want at all so that was kind of my beef with Mia on top of that I felt mixed about the flashbacks to the past because some of them didn't necessarily need to be there like I felt like it could have been a lot shorter or the rawness should have been more I just felt like there was a weird number of flashbacks they definitely eased off about halfway through the book and it was it almost felt more like just to give exposition and get to know Mia rather than really enriching and grossing parts of the story there was like one which is the true dark massacre that I was like really into and all of the other ones just felt like they were there to really give exposition so that we understand where Mia came from so they felt almost more like lazy writing devices than actual engaging story for me so that was my other beef with Mia I feel like that was not the best way to get to know her character I'm 50/50 on those like I didn't mind them but I also didn't love them alright guys so that is all I have to say about never night I really did enjoy this book I'm looking forward to reading God's grave which is the second one in the series I mean I pick it up real soon and I'm looking forward to reading it so that I can bring a metal review to you and keep you updated on how the series is but as I said I really did enjoy the series I would recommend it to fantasy lovers especially people who are interested in different interesting unique worlds things that are a little bit darker have some kind of thriller II elements and a lot of action and adventure if you have read this book I would love to hear your thoughts on it in the comment section below if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel thank you so much for tuning in and I hope to see you next time bye

Channel: Jordan Harvey

Views: 23,900

Keywords: iMovie, jordan, harvey, jordan harvey, jordan harvey book, book review, nevernight, jay kristoff, nevernight review, mia corvere, nevernight book review, literature (media genre), rant review, booktube, booktuber, never night, jordan harvey book review, jordan harvey review, Nevernight -- In-Depth Review, nevernight in depth review

Id: 1hd6adSIMHQ

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 23 2018