Siavahda's Reviews > The Nightward

*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*

You know what? I just don’t want to read this any more. I’m a bit sad about it, because this was one of my most-anticipated books – I was RABID to read it! But. I’m bored, and I don’t care, and there are some objectively cool things going on that are just not grabbing me, for some reason. I made it to 38%; that’s a lot more than my usual cut-off point, at 20%. But the extra pages didn’t make a difference for me.

The writing is fine: very readable, very easy, but nothing special, and lacking the lushness I’m always hoping for. The magic is so simplistic. As is the matriarchy I was so excited about; women are warriors, men are oppressed (and also warriors), Oh No. (Not that we see said oppression? There’s some semi-nasty comments about men from literally one person, and it’s implied that men aren’t taught as much magic, but 38% of the way through this book I still didn’t know how men are oppressed – I was just told, not shown, that they were. Can they not inherit property? Are they banned from certain professions? Are they objectified, does the law not recognise that men can be raped by women, are they considered less intelligent, what???)(For that matter, I don’t get how this is a matriarchy; we have queens, and women warriors, but men are warriors too, and if you made all the women into men you’d never spot the difference from a generic Fantasy patriarchy, this is boring and also stupid.) Of course it’s an Evil Man who murders the queen and steals the throne (albeit not for himself); of course his partner is a woman who feels she was passed over as queen. And where is the Caribbean influence? So much of this set-up seems ripped directly from the (historically INaccurate) collective hallucination that is SFF’s idea of Medieval Europe. (Dressing characters in saris and having warrior women named after the Dahomey Amazons is just set-dressing, not fundamental worldbuilding.) And why do you even HAVE princesses/princes when the monarchy isn’t hereditary? Why is the Queen Mother a position of influence when she wasn’t chosen as queen, her daughter was? This whole set-up should be wildly different; the worldbuilding is so inconsistent, it doesn’t fit together, ARGH.

(And why Gaiea? Why? That’s such a cliche. I disapprove of cringe culture immensely, but folx, anyone using Gaia/Gaiea as an All-Goddess figure in a secondary world setting makes me cringe so hard.)(I got excited for this book before there was a blurb, okay, I didn’t know.)

Bonus, stupid contradictory details, like someone moving ‘soundlessly’ despite being decked in anklets and bracelets. OKAY. Or – again, in a secondary world setting, where names I recognise SHOULD NOT EXIST – names like Sophia and Frances and Elise existing right alongside Viella and Valan. Or, supposedly experienced warriors thinking it’s better to remove an arrow still in the wound, when that is the thing you must absolutely not do until you’re with a doctor who can deal with it; and seriously suggesting that TWO PEOPLE are enough to get the queen where she needs to go while her queendom’s under threat

THAT BEING SAID.

It’s clear that there is a huge, world-changing mystery lying beneath Gailand’s history; the magical portals are actually teleportation technology, and the oraculars are something like mobile phones + holograms. ‘Property of Genetech’ is a gigantic clue that Something Is Up. Gailand’s legends have Gaiea overthrowing ‘the Masters’ – perhaps some corporation or other entity that set up Gailand as an experiment, or some kind of wildlife reserve, or something even stranger. And yet, the Dark is objectively real, so this IS a matter of demons and magic too. This should be SO INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, and for the right reader, it absolutely will be.

But not for me. The story moves quickly, but not in a direction I cared about; the clues for What Is Up were coming far too slowly to hold my interest. The worldbuilding does not hold up in my eyes, so I don’t really care about it for its own sake. And the characters are nice, sure, but bland. Nothing about them stands out: honourable warrior, honourable warrior, 9 year old whose maturity spikes and dips from moment to moment (although to be fair, she’s been through a lot recently, which would mess up most 9yos). I suspect Luka might not be cis, but it’s already clear that Gailand has no room for nonbinary people and I’m not interested in seeing Luka have to fight for acceptance on that front as well (he’s already lesser because, you know, man in a matriarchy).

It just…all fell so flat. Maybe Nightward becomes EPIC in the second half, maybe we would learn more about Genetech and the reveal will be SO COOL…but that’s just not enough of an incentive when the first half is so meh, when I don’t care about the cast, when the worldbuilding bores and annoys me.

Some readers will love this, undoubtedly. I’m sad I’m not one of them.