NEVERNIGHT She’s a killer teen

released OUt NOW! 643 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Jay Kristoff Publisher HarperVoyager

A hidden castle, training teenagers in secret arts. Rivalries and family hatreds between classmates. A young orphan with hidden talents. There’s a lot about this novel – the first in a new trilogy from the author of Japanese steampunk series The Lotus War – that feels familiar. But that’s not a bad thing, especially when it’s as well written as this.

Mia Corvere is 16 years old, a trained killer who wants only to become better still so she can avenge the deaths of her family. She joins the Red Church as an apprentice – a class of 28, they will study for a year until four of them are taken on as Blades, the most feared assassins in the world. She has the darkness on her side, able to manipulate the shadows around to help her, but that might not be enough to get her through…

Entertaining and witty throughout, Nevernight feels like a YA novel with added sex and gore – which, though explicit, is always firmly on the side of humour and easy reading rather than gritty and grimdark. There’s an over-abundance of not-asentertaining-as-the-authorthinks footnotes early on, but fortunately these thin out towards the end, leaving you with a strong, well-realised story you’ll enjoy to the last page. Rhian Drinkwater

Kristoff gets a tattoo for each series he sells. His Nevernight one features Mia’s face: http://bit.ly/nevertat.