Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff – An Audiobook Review

Blurb:

The greatest games in Godsgrave’s history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic.

Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave, and infamous assassin, is on the run. Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.

But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen, and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.

Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?

 

Author: Jay Kristoff

Narrator: Holter Graham

Series: The Nevernight Chronicles book 3

Run Time: 21 hrs 35 mins

Publisher: Harper Collins

My Rating of ‘Darkdawn’: 5 out of 5

Purchase: Audible UK, Audible US, Amazon UK, Amazon US

 

Review:

Darkdawn was a book that I was both ranking as my most anticipated yet, at the same time, my most dreaded. Anticipated because I loved the first two in the series more than any book I had read or listened to this year. Hell, more than any I had read or listened to in many years. And dreaded because of the exact same reason. I knew this was a complete trilogy and in this day and age where every fantasy writer feels that they have to write 10-book epic series, it’s strange to know that in three books the story will be told. The TLDR of this is that I just didn’t want it to end.

But end it did. And what an ending! It had everything from the author taking shots at himself for his own writing (from the erotica to the footnotes … I mean what kind of w*nker writes a book with footnotes you ask? Good question, the author asks the very same one.) To be honest, footnotes are something I love in a book. They, if done well, can add a whole new dimension to a novel whilst giving you information about the world around the characters that you’d ordinarily have no way of having worked into a story. They are info dumps that don’t feel like info dumps. More like breaks in the narrative to enjoy a little anecdote.

But back to the ending. It was epic! Epic in ways that the two previous novels had promised they would work up to. In these promises, Jay Kristoff delivered. Now, I said that it was finished. And it is, to an extent. Mia Corvere’s tale has come to an end but there were characters left over and enough teasers dangled that new avenues could be opened to tell further tales and create a more complete world. So I’m sad that it has finished, but hopeful that there will be more in other areas/aspects of the world created.

Darkdawn did an excellent job of expanding on old characters, perhaps the more lesser-used ones in previous books, and making them feel like they had been main eventers from the start. It also did a damn fine job of introducing a couple of new characters that I’ll go on loving long after the final page was turned/minute was listened to. I expected this what with the excellent characters inserted into Godsgrave. It just felt like something Kristoff would do again and, dare I say, he has done it better.

There are several ups and downs in this rollercoaster ride of a novel. Obviously, with it being the final book in the trilogy I went into it with that ‘no character is safe. Anyone might die’ mentality. And I’m glad I did. Even with that mentality I was caught out once or twice by the cruelness of some of the characters’ fates. Well-played on that front, Mr Kristoff.

As with the previous two novels the narration was incredible. I only have one small complaint and that is that the pronunciation of the blood speaker’s name changed in this one from the previous books. Whether that’s because he simply forgot the pronunciation in the year or so since he last spoke it, or because the author had got in touch and told him he’d been saying it wrong, I will never know. It just grated on me the first few times I heard it but became smoother and easier to bare as the time wore on. Obviously, for those of you reading rather than listening, this won’t be an issue at all.

There are some incredibly clever moments in Darkdawn, the most clever of which I can’t actually say as it would be a massive spoiler (and I do my best to spoil nothing in all reviews I post). You’ll know which awesome bit of genius I mean when a certain thing happens with a certain book.

I hope that you enjoyed this series as much as I did (obviously except for Ola, who hated it with a passion … I would have put this as a footnote if I was feeling particularly cruel, gentle-friend.)