I received this from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review!
DNF at 64% – 1/5
CW: graphic violence, graphic sex scenes, sexual banter, and groping
- Nevernight – 3.5/5
- Godsgrave – 4/5
Okay, all. Here it goes. I requested this book because I was honestly excited about it after finishing up Godsgrave. That one was a solid revenge story — better than Nevernight was hands down — and I was excited for the trajectory that Darkdawn would have. I was very pumped and even took a shot in the dark with requesting it from Edelweiss. For once, they approved me!
And then I went to pick it up. Months have passed since I finished the second book. It had started to slightly sour in my mind. I realized just how little I remembered of that book. I will be honest. I was actually nearly done with it when my sister passed, so, well, I didn’t entirely absorb the ending of it or a lot of what I read when she was sick.
However, thanks to this book, I firmly believe that Jay Kristoff is a one-trick pony. I am pretty sure that I’ll never pick up another of his books. I started to believe this after reading his Illuminae series, which I probably will go and rerate to two stars each. They all followed the same plot pattern. Have some banter, some action, lots of boring stuff, and then repeat. And, not only that but the characters were all carbon copies of each other and I couldn’t tell them apart.
Cut to me reading (or DNFing) Lifel1k3. Same kind of thing. Banter, action, nothing really going on.
And then I went for this series.
While I was reading this, I couldn’t help but notice how the book felt like the last two books. There was bantering, graphic fight scenes with lots of blood and murder, then there were graphic sex scenes (more on that later), and, finally, dull shit to move the plot along. Then another burst of action!
It was fun for the first couple of books, but now I’m tired of it. I want something new. I don’t want to reread the first two books in this “new” book. And this book dragged so much. I could literally predict the way the story was going to go, as I said in a status update on Goodreads. There was fighting/action, some kind of sex scene, and dull stuff. Rinse and repeat.
It doesn’t help that in the middle of that pattern the plot disappeared. I literally got to 50%, paused, and realized that I had no fucking clue what was going on and why they were doing any of this. I got so bored and the book meandered around so much that I entirely lost what was going on. And I was so bored that I didn’t even care that I wasn’t going to find out if my theory was correct about how Mia would die.
That’s not good.
Now, I’m jumping back to the sex scenes. I expressed my discomfort with them in my review of Godsgrave. I just find it incredibly uncomfortable that a 40+ man is writing voyeuristic F/F sex scenes. I already talked about that and it didn’t change from book two to book three.
The sex scenes also are just… there. They don’t contribute to the story. They don’t enhance the relationship the characters have with each other. They’re just there. They were entirely pointless and just took up space where, you know, the plot could have happened. I have no problem with sex scenes, but God I cringed every time I realized they were going to happen because I was so done with reading Ash and Mia getting it on.
In short, I do not recommend this series. I cannot recommend anything by Kristoff. He’s not my author and he’s joining my list of authors I probably won’t read ever again just because I know I’ll be disappointed.
What’s a series that disappointed you?
Are there authors you won’t reach for?
