Nevernight

A grim dark fantasy about a super strong assassin Mia who is undertaking the mission to kill the prople who ruined her family. The first book in the series is about Mia going to an assasin school to train herself to be a bad-ass assassin.

Mia's parents are killed before her eyes by the government and she is also sent to her death when she is saved by a not-cat shadow. You see, Mia, is something called a Darkin. Who or what that is, we don't know yet. A Darkin can manipulate shadows (which is so super cool) and she can shift between shadows which is another cool teleportation method.

Coming back to the story, Mia travels to the Assassin school called the Red Church. She meets Tric on the way and both of them fight their way to the school. All of the students similarly make their way into the school and they have to pay a tithe to actually be in the school. The tithe being some body part of the person they murdered (yeaaahhh!) So, the school is actually a school of murderers.

Here, they are trained in the arts of murder: fighting, seduction, sleight of hands, poisons. While each of the amateur murderer tries to become a Blade, they backstab, murder even more and even make friends. Our Mia fails the final test and is thus exiled. However, there is a ploy afoot at the Red Church where every assassin to-be and assassin teacher is captured to be investigated by the government. Mia comes back to the school and does her shadow-thing and murders about 200 government officials (centurions) to rescue her friends and teachers. Kristoff doesn't shy away from killing some of our favorite characters and some of them die. This rescue act makes Mia finally the Blade for the Red Church.

Notable characters:

  • Mia: Protagonist

  • Mister Kindly: Not-cat, familiar, A conscious shadow

  • Tric: Fellow student who Mia is hot for

  • Mercurio: Mia's teacher prior to Red Church

  • Solis, Aalea, Mouser, Spiderkiller: Red Church professors with murder specialisation

  • Cassius: Fellow Darkin, shadow manipulator like Mia

  • Duomo, Scaeva, Remus: Government heads, also arch enemy of Mia

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆