Ultra Negative Review: Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) by Jay Kristoff

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Received: NetGalley
Publication Date: August 9th, 2016
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Point of View: 3rd Person & Feminine
Recommended Age: 14+
Pacing: Slow ”Kill Me Now” Paced
Genres &  Themes: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dark

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BLURB:

In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the 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, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?

I can’t… finish this.

Just thinking about it makes my head ache.

The writing is so… thick. Like every message, action, description that is meant to reach the reader through it is compressed to the point where trying to dismantle it takes too much energy.

If that’s not a reason to prematurely close a book, I don’t know what is.

The truth is, I think I would have liked this, had it not been written in such a painful way and had it not possessed flashbacks meant, it seemed, more to confuse us than anything else.

I really didn’t have a formidable reading experience with Nevernight. This was my first Jay Kristoff book, one I was looking extremely forward to, but boy do I want to stay away from this author in the future. My poor head.

The story looked badass, actually badass, with assassins and revenge plots and kills and vendetta and darkness and fantasy. I couldn’t wait to dive into it.

But the reality is different. First, it’s more perplexing than original and the so-called world-building that we’re introduced to is overshadowed by the horrendous writing style full of figures of style I wanted to smother more than decorticate… and the heroine.

The heroine whom, may I add, is a demon. I think? She’s awful. Any semblance of emotion that she may have been able to make her body feel in the past is gone, and now, only darkness slithers under her skin.

That should have made me love her. It should have. Alas, I felt no connection to her whatsoever and couldn’t even cheer her on her killings – which I’m usually glad to do, for antiheroes.

Sometimes I feel a little sad about not finishing a book, but in this case? God no. Stay away from me, Nevernight. I mean it.

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