A review by alex_wordweaver
Court of Nightfall by Karpov Kinrade
2.0
I don't know what to say about this one. I really wanted to be thrilled because Angels are My Jam and there are so few decent books about Angels/the Nephilim, but...yeah, that's not what happened.
Whole thoughts below:
Getting this out of the way: I have the second edition version of the book and know between mass production and human error people miss things, but ffs, the editor really missed some basic grammar/spelling stuff. On a related note, I'm not sure if it's just because it's first person POV and the MC Scarlett just has a weird voice, or because it's two authors or if it's just one of the authors over the other, but the entire book felt very disjointed sentence-wise. Especially when it came to how characters speak to each other. One minute Ye Olde Timey no-contractions speak, then the next they're back to using contractions. Please pick one; this just makes my brain hurt trying to figure out if they use them or not, especially considering they're supposed to be in the States. Far into the dystopian future, sure, but c'mon.
On that thought, another thing that drove me nuts: WHAT. YEAR. IS IT? I know it's explained in the book that they stopped keeping dates the same way we do after The Cataclysm, but WHEN. WAS. THAT? The only context I have for a date is that it's at least post-1945, because Einstein is reference and well dead by then, and a hint near the end of the book that American Society As We Know it maybe survive into...the early 2010s, maybe, considering tablet and flat-screen-like items exist, as well as eGlasses, which I cannot stop thinking of as looking like DBZ Scanners. I was constantly waiting for the MC to ask the device's AI about her opponents' power levels. Also, Scarlett makes a reference to TV and movie tropes and the Internet somehow survived The Cataclysm that sent people back to a monarchical society. Which, yeah. The Internet still exists, but is mostly for the upper class (patricians), and the Catholic Church and the Knights Templar/Hospitalier/Teutonic are still/remade as a thing. As is the not-Spanish Inquisition (didn't see that coming, huh?)
Which brings me to my feelings on transitions. They hardly existed and it made the timeline even more difficult to follow. It felt like I was reading a comic series in which I'd missed several intervening issues when the chapters would jump forward some unspecified amount of time. The only real transitions we get are in Scarlett's flashbacks, which make up about the first third/almost half of the book. I would have to try to lay out the timeline visibly in front of myself to even begin trying to follow it.
I can also see the love triangle they're trying to set up between Jax, Scarlett, and Andriy. I see it and dump water on all three of them. None of these three seem ready for any kind of relationship. With anyone.
Last point is, well, I don't know how to feel about the Zeniths and Nephilim and how they're described in canon. I mean, it tracks that Angels have Phenomenal Cosmic Power, and their direct offspring, Nephilim, would too, and that the Zenith, being even further descended and thus more genetically mixed, would have Some But Not All Especially Potent Sorts of Powers. But the Nephilim are also vampires in this, in a way, and can make more of themselves that way, but don't because the last one who did that was a Horrible Bastard Man who forced people into it and those Nephilim mostly all died a little after killing him. So now there's currently only two. There's probably more in hiding somewhere, but I don't want to read more to find out.
Final point that is more of a pet peeve of mine in general that I wish more people would undestand: Nephilim is *plural.* The word itself is plural. Nephil is the singular you are looking for. Say it with me now. It *clap* is *clap* plural. *clap*
Tl;dr: 2/5-like a condiment sandwich, it got me through work, but wasn't very filling or especially tasty.
Whole thoughts below:
Getting this out of the way: I have the second edition version of the book and know between mass production and human error people miss things, but ffs, the editor really missed some basic grammar/spelling stuff. On a related note, I'm not sure if it's just because it's first person POV and the MC Scarlett just has a weird voice, or because it's two authors or if it's just one of the authors over the other, but the entire book felt very disjointed sentence-wise. Especially when it came to how characters speak to each other. One minute Ye Olde Timey no-contractions speak, then the next they're back to using contractions. Please pick one; this just makes my brain hurt trying to figure out if they use them or not, especially considering they're supposed to be in the States. Far into the dystopian future, sure, but c'mon.
On that thought, another thing that drove me nuts: WHAT. YEAR. IS IT? I know it's explained in the book that they stopped keeping dates the same way we do after The Cataclysm, but WHEN. WAS. THAT? The only context I have for a date is that it's at least post-1945, because Einstein is reference and well dead by then, and a hint near the end of the book that American Society As We Know it maybe survive into...the early 2010s, maybe, considering tablet and flat-screen-like items exist, as well as eGlasses, which I cannot stop thinking of as looking like DBZ Scanners. I was constantly waiting for the MC to ask the device's AI about her opponents' power levels. Also, Scarlett makes a reference to TV and movie tropes and the Internet somehow survived The Cataclysm that sent people back to a monarchical society. Which, yeah. The Internet still exists, but is mostly for the upper class (patricians), and the Catholic Church and the Knights Templar/Hospitalier/Teutonic are still/remade as a thing. As is the not-Spanish Inquisition (didn't see that coming, huh?)
Which brings me to my feelings on transitions. They hardly existed and it made the timeline even more difficult to follow. It felt like I was reading a comic series in which I'd missed several intervening issues when the chapters would jump forward some unspecified amount of time. The only real transitions we get are in Scarlett's flashbacks, which make up about the first third/almost half of the book. I would have to try to lay out the timeline visibly in front of myself to even begin trying to follow it.
I can also see the love triangle they're trying to set up between Jax, Scarlett, and Andriy. I see it and dump water on all three of them. None of these three seem ready for any kind of relationship. With anyone.
Last point is, well, I don't know how to feel about the Zeniths and Nephilim and how they're described in canon. I mean, it tracks that Angels have Phenomenal Cosmic Power, and their direct offspring, Nephilim, would too, and that the Zenith, being even further descended and thus more genetically mixed, would have Some But Not All Especially Potent Sorts of Powers. But the Nephilim are also vampires in this, in a way, and can make more of themselves that way, but don't because the last one who did that was a Horrible Bastard Man who forced people into it and those Nephilim mostly all died a little after killing him. So now there's currently only two. There's probably more in hiding somewhere, but I don't want to read more to find out.
Final point that is more of a pet peeve of mine in general that I wish more people would undestand: Nephilim is *plural.* The word itself is plural. Nephil is the singular you are looking for. Say it with me now. It *clap* is *clap* plural. *clap*
Tl;dr: 2/5-like a condiment sandwich, it got me through work, but wasn't very filling or especially tasty.