The Forever Burning in the Dark Between the Stars: Jay Kristoff’s ‘Darkdawn’

“All the years and miles and blood and wrong between them. There wasn’t a hole in creation deep enough to bury it all. So she’d bury him instead.”

And so ends the chronicle… My soul is riven.

I’ve been through a nuclear-powered blender the past week devouring this broiling tome… The Nevernight Chronicle has some of the most distinctive worldbuilding I’ve ever read, fresh as newfallen snow, woven with wit as jagged as the teeth coating a kraken’s maw.

It all begins in a blood-soaked city forged from the bones of a fallen god where an orphaned street urchin, fuelled by vengeance fated to leave a republic in ashes behind her, learns to bend the very shadows to her will… From the ruins wrought by the ones who should have loved her most to the regenerative fire of found family, her story is a tyrant spell that binds and bewitches.

“I suppose now you think you know her. The girl some called Pale Daughter. Or Kingmaker. Or Crow. The girl who was to murder as maestros are to music. Who did to happy ever afters what a sawblade does to skin. Look now upon the ruins in her wake. As pale light glitters on the waters that drank a city of bridges and bones. As the ashes of the Republic dance in the dark above your head. Stare mute at the broken sky and taste the iron on your tongue and listen as lonely winds whisper her name as if they knew her too. Do you think she would laugh or weep to see the world her hand has wrought?”⁣

Notoriously, the kernel of inspiration for the entire series was a conversation the author bore witness to one New Year’s between two so-called “lady friends”, which makes a polarising appearance on the page in Nevernight as Mia rebuffs Tric’s objection to a certain slur…

‘Cock is just another word for “fool”. But you call someone a cunt, well …’ The girl smiled. ‘You’re implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don’t think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folk believe you’re not to be lightly fucked with.’ A shrug. ‘I think they call that irony.’ Mia sniffed, staring at the wastes laid out below them. ‘Truth is, there’s no difference between your nethers and mine. Aside from the obvious, of course. But one doesn’t carry any more weight than the other. Why should what’s between my legs be considered any smarter or stupider, any worse or better? It’s all just meat, Don Tric. In the end, it’s all just food for worms. Just like Duomo, Remus, and Scaeva will be.’

And the world exploded from there, one whose point of differentiation from our own is the fact that it has three suns in the sky (Thra vibes!), and that there is always daylight. His nomenclature is primarily Ancient Rome-influenced, mixed with names like Mia and Tric that emerged for him through euphony and association, as he explained to Samantha Shannon during the London launch of Darkdawn in Autumn 2019. Other countries in the republic drew from the likes of Spain and Persia but Itreya is very England meets Rome, driven by the fact that his three great topics of expertise (as he also said in the talk) are Marvel comics, Tolkien, and Ancient Roman History.

Riffing on George RR Martin’s analogy, he also said he’s a gardener not an architect and one seed he threw out was Mia’s sexuality. He was 20k words into Godsgrave and readers were reaching out to say how the Mia/Ash dynamic was everything to them and so he let that seed grow (though they’re still very much teenagers when all of this takes place)…

Godsgrave in particular was a distinctly difficult instalment to navigate given the many rounds of competition Mia had to sail through to reach that final podium at the magni but there are twists and turns that keep it propulsive. Darkdawn is similarly enthralling, hinged around Mia’s crusade against the Red Church, smiting her tyrannical father from existence, and unearthing the dastardly secrets of the mysterious Crown of the Moon.

Once again, the complex interlace of flashbacks, mirrored POVs, daemon speech, footnotes, and the frame of the mystery narrator’s authorial present weaves a rich tapestry of mythic proportions (I confess I was incorrect in my deduction of the narrator’s identity, but the correct answer was indeed on my shortlist).

This mystery narrator, the chronicler acting as Mia’s Horatio, speaks to the as yet unknowing world of the carnal, bloody, unnatural acts that sank the city of bridges and bones and left nought but ashes behind, immortalising her story in the stars. The meta narrative elements in the third book as you do indeed discover their identity and the circumstances under which these words were penned secures it as one of the most inventive uses of 3rd person omniscient I’ve seen yet. It’s omniscient in that the narrator knows every nuance of thought and action in each scene they are recounting, but limited when it comes to the narrator’s present.

Ultimately, The Nevernight Chronicle is a story of salt and honey, iron and blood, eyes the blue of sunsburned skies, and the forever burning in the dark between the stars.

If you know, you know.

“I will rip all three suns out of heaven to keep her safe… I will kill the fucking sky.”

UPDATE: 10th April 2021

In the evergreen words of Kristen Stewart, words indeed to live by: “Fucking think about what you’re doing. And don’t be an asshole.”