★★★★/★★★★★
“Your mind will serve you better than any trinket under the suns...It is a weapon...and like any weapon, you need practice to be any good at wielding it.”
My first Jay Kristoff novel and I liked it! I'll be honest, I was not interested at first, got bored a lot of times but didn't notice that I was actually already enjoying it at some point. It'd been a hard read for me, the writing style is kinda not in my taste, it was very dense, but, but! I was engrossed with the story and I grew to love the characters nevertheless. Not to mention the footnotes anymore because I stopped reading them early in the book.
Nevernight is actually hard to rate and review. At some point I was convinced I'll only give it 2 stars but in the end realized it deserved 4 stars! Now I don't know how to explain. I think it's a matter of liking the book as a whole or not. In short, you have to be patient with this book! There were parts I didn't like but there were also parts I really loved. That's how crazy this book was for me. I'm torn between disliking it to totally loving it!
Own nothing, Mercurio had said. Know nothing. Be nothing.
Mia breathed deep. Swallowed hard.
Because then you can do anything.
The book tells the story of Mia Corvere, a girl who chooses to enter a school of assassins, to train and master the skills she needs to get what she desires most; vengeance for her family. At a young age Mia lost her father, mother and a younger brother but found a friend in Mercurio who later becomes her teacher. There's also Mister Kindly, a cat who is not a cat, a shadow Mia befriended when she was young. With Mercurio's assistance, Mia goes through a series of trials just to get to Red Church and along the way meets Tric, a boy who like her also wants to get revenge. At the Red Church, Mia starts training, she meets new friends/enemies and learns about the skills she needs most if she wants to avenge her family.
The boy stared at the hands that held his. “This is a dark road we walk, Mia.”
“Then we walk it together. I watch your back. You watch mine. And if I fall before the end, you get Scaeva for me. Make him scream. And I’ll swear the same for you.”
Like I said, you have to be patient with this book. It's 450+ pages long with dense writing, violence, intense scenes, sex and strong language. It is bloody, you guys! Dark and edgy with twists and turns you wouldn't imagine. There's a bit of romance, only a bit, but I'm satisfied. You see, I'm a sucker for romance in every book and I'm contented with what little this book offered. I actually loved Tric! Like, really. He's both sweet and a badass and I liked that he cared for Mia as Mia did for him. The supporting characters are also all pretty interesting. Ash and her brother are pretty cunning and I loved all the Shahid. With world building, a lot say it reminded them of Harry Potter and even though I haven't read but only watched HP, I can agree it somehow reminded me of Hogwarts. The Red Church is cool enough to be Hogwarts, I think.
Overall, it's a great book. A pretty slow beginning but when the story starts to grab you, you wouldn't want to stop reading. Now I'm pretty excited to read the sequel, Godsgrave!
