The Nevernight Chronicle

This is an adult fantasy trilogy from Australian author Jay Kristoff. For some reason Australian and New Zealand authors don’t seem to penetrate into the British market all that well so I haven’t come across his work before but this series was recommended to me for its queer content.

Across the trilogy we follow Mia Corvere and, to touch on the queer content first, the loves of her life. In book one, that’s a boy but in books two and three it’s a woman. (The books follow her across a few years from age 11 to about 20, her relationship track across young adult into full adulthood so the “boy” is not a child, but another young adult.) Mia is portrayed as loving them both, not necessarily equally but genuinely. She doesn’t label herself with modern labels in her fantasy world, but bi or pan seem to be the likeliest. Her girlfriend seems to only like women so maybe lesbian? But certainly plenty of queer content.

As for the setting, this is not quite, but recognisably the Roman Empire. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and allow for the changes to real history. Like all the magic… it’s hard to go into detail because it actually becomes major spoilers for the whole series. But there are kind of three magic systems and, while this is a fantasy series not a set of rule books, we get a clear enough understanding of how they work (eventually) that people like me that enjoy watching good world building are in for a treat. If you don’t geek out over that, I think it’s subtle enough you can just go “cool, magic” and follow along.

The plot is where I think some people might have issues. Mia is ripped from her life of luxury, it would be technically wrong but not misleading to call her a princess, and then becomes first a thief then the leading acolyte of the Goddess of Assassins. This doesn’t quite veer into Mary Sue territory for my reading, in part because it comes with a lot of pain, but your mileage may vary. In addition, we have a lot of murder, torture, betrayal and scenes that might be distressing. This is very much not touching on the same territory as the Terre d’Ange books (Kushiel’s Dart etc) but the sex scenes steer well away from kink, at least most of them do. Where there is some it’s much more implied than detailed and skimmed over, and involves minor characters rather than being front and centre. But, if you’re not good with a character who is a gifted assassin going around and killing people by the hundreds (actually probably the hundreds of thousands, but directly, face-to-face by the hundreds) then you don’t want to be reading this.

Making Mia the protagonist has some interesting effects as the story advances. She absolutely came from privilege. Although her training as an assassin is brutal, it’s secluded to the point of isolation, and that’s a different sort of privilege. She then explores the world and experiences some of the brutal realities of how the world works. She comes to startling conclusions like “slavery is bad” but she reaches them by experiencing them as part of the story.

To diverge for a moment, I was recommended another series at a similar time with a queer protagonist that looks at the evils of colonialism. I am not arguing against the idea that colonialism did a lot of harm, and this book lays them out in pretty gruesome detail. But the story is hard to engage with. It took me a while to work out why, because it’s not instantly obvious. For a lot of things, the writing does show don’t tell really quite well. But when we get on to what I’m going to call the soapbox of the evils of colonialism, we definitely get into tell mode, preach mode even. I’m willing to read this sort of material, I am more than able to enjoy it, but in fiction I want to be shown, not told, certainly not preached at. Even in a text book, I don’t want to be preached at. I’m more willing to be told but, on this sort of topic, I want to be told in a way that goes x happens because of y, here is the evidence, here are some counterarguments and alternative interpretations. (Typically in science we don’t have counterarguments and alternative interpretations in the same way, we have more about limitations of this work, how it fits with the existing literature and future work.) I raise this, because I’ve pretty much stopped reading the preachy series, and I’m not going to name it, because I don’t like badmouthing authors.

Circling back to the Nevernight Chronicle, having Mia, for example, experience slavery and reach conclusions based on her experiences avoids that. The outcome might be obvious as soon as her assumptions are challenged, but the journey still feels real and is the epitome of show don’t tell. There are times it felt a bit contrived but it does work within Mia’s character and background. You don’t ever read “check your privilege” but you can feel it lurking in the author’s mind as Mia goes through her experience and changes her mind.

High fantasy is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you enjoy it, and you don’t mind reading about decidedly evil characters, this one is a fun read.