A review by ajlawford
Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff
4.0
Firstly, this review will not spoil Darkdawn but will spoil the first two books, so reader beware..
My history with this series has been turbulent. I found the start of the first two books to be really slow but I really liked the ends and ended up giving four stars. This book is the opposite. I really loved the first part, but the last half was really average, and once again I’m giving four stars. But I’m not as satisfied because I’d much rather a slow start than a shitty end.
I did listen to this on audiobook, and it was just shy of 22 hours. That’s a long time to pay close attention to a fantasy book. Normally I don’t have much problem but parts of this book were so confusing to listen to. The first half of Nevernight had an overly descriptive wring style that I didn’t like with lots of similes, and the last half of this book felt the same. I grew so tired of hearing about how black eyes, hair and shadows were. I became very confused about major plot points and I think the story lost sight of where it was going. Plus there were all the characters to keep track of, some with similar names. All the ones from the first book from the Assassin School, plus all the ones from the second book from the Gladiatii Arena, plus new characters from this book! So confusing! The character recap at the start was helpful, but still hard to keep track of who is who.
There were very large battle scenes that I started to tune out during because they were so long and boring and then they would talk about someone in past tense and I would be like wait, what, when did that happen, and I’d rewind a bit and their death happens in like three sentences and then we move on from it quickly. The actual death scenes just seemed short in comparison to the epic long drawn out battles.
Other really drawn out scenes were the copious amount of sex scenes. One night when I was doing the dishes and cleaning up after dinner, for twenty whole minutes it was one sex scene. When my partner came into the kitchen after bathing our toddler, I said all I’d done since I saw him last was listen to sex and laughed at how absurd that was. The previous books were smutty but this was next level.
This book is full of gore. There is gory sex and gory violence and lots and lots of blood. None of it feels like horror. It actually feels kinda cartoonish. And there is a very large amount of swearing. The swearing I actually quite enjoyed. It felt very Aussie and I giggled at a lot of the insults. It definitely is a very low brow form of humour, but absolutely is my type of humour. One example that comes to mind is calling someone a Fuck Stain. So Aussie.
I liked how Mia’s series arc of revenge targeted three political figures and over the series we see her systematically take them down. But I felt like this book didn’t have that same burning single minded goal. The first book was all about going to assassin training school, then the second one was all about becoming a gladiator but what was this one all about? I can’t answer that. In Godsgrave she went to incredible lengths to became a Gladiatii and win just to have access and an opportunity to kill them and in this book it just doesn’t seem to be that hard to get access anymore and also doesn’t seem to be the main tension that the ending is working towards. I found end ending to be really anticlimactic.
One part I really liked was a very Inception type plot point about a book within a book and Jay Kristoff actually takes the piss out of himself. So funny and very enjoyable. I really enjoyed how this was used as a plot device.
In the first book, Mia is with Tric and Ash murders him and my heart broke. Then in book two, Mia fucking forgives Ash, the murdering bitch and they are in love, what?! And then at the end of Godsgrave, Tric is back from the dead, so that leaves us with a love triangle!! Argh. Much drama.
One overriding theme I was really invested in was Mia’s magic, and in this regards I was also left disappointed. I wanted it to go much further and I felt it ended up being just a lot of describing how black her shadows were.
Overall an equally entertaining and boring series. One with equal doses of potential and problems. I certainly do recommend reading if you’ve already started the series, and I’m keen to talk to someone about all the spoilers!
My history with this series has been turbulent. I found the start of the first two books to be really slow but I really liked the ends and ended up giving four stars. This book is the opposite. I really loved the first part, but the last half was really average, and once again I’m giving four stars. But I’m not as satisfied because I’d much rather a slow start than a shitty end.
I did listen to this on audiobook, and it was just shy of 22 hours. That’s a long time to pay close attention to a fantasy book. Normally I don’t have much problem but parts of this book were so confusing to listen to. The first half of Nevernight had an overly descriptive wring style that I didn’t like with lots of similes, and the last half of this book felt the same. I grew so tired of hearing about how black eyes, hair and shadows were. I became very confused about major plot points and I think the story lost sight of where it was going. Plus there were all the characters to keep track of, some with similar names. All the ones from the first book from the Assassin School, plus all the ones from the second book from the Gladiatii Arena, plus new characters from this book! So confusing! The character recap at the start was helpful, but still hard to keep track of who is who.
There were very large battle scenes that I started to tune out during because they were so long and boring and then they would talk about someone in past tense and I would be like wait, what, when did that happen, and I’d rewind a bit and their death happens in like three sentences and then we move on from it quickly. The actual death scenes just seemed short in comparison to the epic long drawn out battles.
Other really drawn out scenes were the copious amount of sex scenes. One night when I was doing the dishes and cleaning up after dinner, for twenty whole minutes it was one sex scene. When my partner came into the kitchen after bathing our toddler, I said all I’d done since I saw him last was listen to sex and laughed at how absurd that was. The previous books were smutty but this was next level.
This book is full of gore. There is gory sex and gory violence and lots and lots of blood. None of it feels like horror. It actually feels kinda cartoonish. And there is a very large amount of swearing. The swearing I actually quite enjoyed. It felt very Aussie and I giggled at a lot of the insults. It definitely is a very low brow form of humour, but absolutely is my type of humour. One example that comes to mind is calling someone a Fuck Stain. So Aussie.
I liked how Mia’s series arc of revenge targeted three political figures and over the series we see her systematically take them down. But I felt like this book didn’t have that same burning single minded goal. The first book was all about going to assassin training school, then the second one was all about becoming a gladiator but what was this one all about? I can’t answer that. In Godsgrave she went to incredible lengths to became a Gladiatii and win just to have access and an opportunity to kill them and in this book it just doesn’t seem to be that hard to get access anymore and also doesn’t seem to be the main tension that the ending is working towards. I found end ending to be really anticlimactic.
One part I really liked was a very Inception type plot point about a book within a book and Jay Kristoff actually takes the piss out of himself. So funny and very enjoyable. I really enjoyed how this was used as a plot device.
In the first book, Mia is with Tric and Ash murders him and my heart broke. Then in book two, Mia fucking forgives Ash, the murdering bitch and they are in love, what?! And then at the end of Godsgrave, Tric is back from the dead, so that leaves us with a love triangle!! Argh. Much drama.
One overriding theme I was really invested in was Mia’s magic, and in this regards I was also left disappointed. I wanted it to go much further and I felt it ended up being just a lot of describing how black her shadows were.
Overall an equally entertaining and boring series. One with equal doses of potential and problems. I certainly do recommend reading if you’ve already started the series, and I’m keen to talk to someone about all the spoilers!