Never flinch, never fear, gentlefriends. After the enormous buildup in the first two books, Darkdawn closes out The Nevernight Chronicle with a bang.
The story picks up immediately after the end of Godsgrave, with Mia thinking that she’s finally taken her revenge on the man that destroyed her family. But of course, that would be too easy. Mia’s mentor has been captured by the Red Church and she must somehow save him, kill Imperator Scava (for real this time), and fix a world whose day/night cycle was broken thousands of years ago.
Easy, right?
While Kristoff manages to stick the landing with a flourish and a wink, don’t think that this book pulls any punches. There’s plenty of death and heartbreak to go around. There’s also one instance of sexual assault of a child that felt… unnecessarily detailed, even if it made sense in the context of the story.
The Nevernight Chronicle has always cracked, if not fully broken, the fourth wall with its footnotes. Darkdawn embraces this fully, grabbing a hammer and bursting through the wall like a shadowy, sexy Kool Aid man. The UK editions (based on the cover art described) exist in the library of unwritten books, and the characters discover Nevernight and Godsgrave and these influence their actions. Some characters make jokes about how poorly written parts are, especially the sex scenes and footnotes. I especially liked the message about the power of words.
I was a little worried about the resolution of the love triangle between Tric, Ashland, and Mia. I don’t mind love triangles but I hate when the central character waffles back and forth or the triangle is resolved by killing off a character. I don’t want to spoil things but Kristoff pulls this off as well, despite including both of my pet peeves… sort of.
This book probably has both the most action and the most info dumps in the series. Though to be fair, many of these are info dumps that we’ve been desperately longing for since book 1. It also had the most touching character moments. Darkdawn leaned heavily into many of the aspects readers love about the story so far, while also pulling out away a bit from the trademark intense sex scenes. There’s still plenty of ass in this assassin story, though.
It’s always a delicate balance when writing about assassins between death never playing a major role in the story and pointlessly killing off characters because, you know, assassins. Kristoff knows where the line is and walks it confidently. Every death leaves an impact and feels necessary to the story, while never becoming gratuitous.
Another common pitfall is growing characters to insane power levels and not allowing them to take full advantage of their abilities. Never fear, gentlefriends. Mia knows she’s powerful and makes use of it… frequently. If you find yourself tempted to throw up your hands and yell “Why doesn’t she just do THAT” then I encourage you to continue reading. You’ll probably enjoy what comes next.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kristoff had the entire trilogy outlined in detail before book 1 was published, because small details become critical by the end of the series. And it is indeed a great ending to a great series. There’s enough setup where there could theoretically be a additional books at some point, but it ends at the perfect spot. Whether there’s more books or not, I think this is definitely the end of Mia’s story.
And what a wild, wonderful ride it’s been.
Check out our other reviews for The Nevernight Chronicle:
