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| Tric is too good for all of them. |
What I'm trying to say here is that an author doesn't owe their readers happy endings, the survival of certain characters, or even books that make logical sense, to be perfectly honest. That being said, that doesn't mean that I, as a reader, don't have the right to criticize and complain about an author when they do something I don't like. I have power as a consumer and as a fan and I always have the choice to say, I don't like this and I'm not buying it anymore. It doesn't save me feeling cheated or anything, but not every investment is a good one.
That's not to say that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the Nevernight books, both the first time I read them and on this subsequent audiobook re-read. They are clever as shit, entertaining, funny, and even a little touching. I like them, I like most of the characters, I like Jay Kristoff. I like almost everything about them, except for Ashlinn Jarnheim, and that's really unfortunate because she winds up being such a huge part of the trilogy and is kind of unavoidable. I wish I could skip the parts with her in it, but I can't.
Let's not confuse the issue here though - the first book was freaking brilliant, and I include Ashlinn in that. I found her kind of funny, if not a little obnoxious and know-it-all-ish, but I could overlook that. I could even overlook it in light of the fact that she fucking murders Tric at the end. Not because I could understand it (I don't) and not because I didn't like Tric (I do, I would like to marry him), but because villains do bad things. Morally grey characters do bad things, and bad things happen to good (fictional) people sometimes. If you read Jay Kristoff books you know not to get too attached to anyone, and I'm okay with that....he's like a goth George RR Martin, if you will.
In any case, I enjoyed the book immensely even with my dear, sweet Tric getting killed. I started off enjoying Godsgrave too, but things took a swift turn when Mia wound up "falling in love" with Ashlinn. I'll admit. I'm salty. I'm still bitter over it, years later. It's not all for the reasons you think. Yes, I did prefer Tric with Mia, no, I don't mind that Mia is bisexual. What bothered me here is that Mr. Kristoff devotes numerous paragraphs to trying to justify Mia suddenly falling in love with the boy she cared enough for to actually keep that promise of murdering his shitstain of a grandfather. She never said she loved him directly, but they had been through quite a bit together, and she was obviously getting to the point that she could love him - she was only 16, despite already being a serial killer (technically speaking), and tbh her experience prior to that didn't leave her with the best understanding of what love is or what a good relationship looks like. What I'm trying to say in a very roundabout way was that Tric meant something significant to her, so you would think she would have been angrier longer at the person that murdered him, no?
At some level, Mia and Ashlinn's relationship starts off as one of proximity, opportunity, and availability. She's there, she needs her, and she's attracted to her - as Mia says some time later, being wanted is a powerful drug, and I fully believe it can sometimes lead you to become involved with people you necessarily wouldn't be with otherwise, especially if you don't have other prospects on the horizon. So I could totally see Mia being lonely and getting whatever nookie she could at this point in her life. So what I'm saying is I can understand on some level why it starts.
That level is pretty low, to be honest. That's mostly due to the fact that I'm looking at it from a personal perspective. It's near impossible for me to read anything as a remote observer; I'm constantly viewing the books I read through the lens of my own personal experiences. I wouldn't say that makes me biased, i.e. I'm not going to not read a book because it's about something I can't personally identify with, but if I do I'm going to be judging it based on my own personal ideals. Ideological disparities are a little different for me (i.e. I can't imagine myself reading and liking something about a staunch Republican or Trump supporter), but suffice it to say I'm not, as a cishet woman, going to look at Mia Corvere and Ashlinn Jarnheim and be like "ew, lesbians." I don't prefer Tric as a character because he's a man and I like men. I like Tric because he doesn't murder his friends for no good reason.
Therein lies the rub of the Nevernight trilogy for me - Ashlinn's murder of Tric is no small thing. It's different than almost any other murder that occurs, and starkly different than anything Mia does herself. The fact that she tries to justify her attraction to Ashlinn in spite of Tric's murder by saying it's no different than anything she's done herself is particularly bothersome because the fact is that it..is. It is different. It's different in the context of real-world morality and it's certainly different in the framework of the morality presented in the book itself. It seems a little odd to be talking about morality in a book about a murder cult, but there's obviously a line Mia herself is unwilling to cross, and it's illustrated enough times that we as readers are (I can only assume) supposed to make note of it.
Every murder we see Mia committing can be seen as serving a purpose; we absolutely need to suspend disbelief in the sense that killing people who wrong you, or that are bad people, indiscriminately is not acceptable real-world behavior (I do not support the death penalty, for anyone), but in the context of the book it's important. The murder she uses as her tithe to the Red Church - someone implicated in the execution of her father; the murder of Daimo, a fellow acolyte - payback for wronging her close friend Carlotta. Even when we learn later on that he had nothing to do with her death we can still dismiss it because Daimo was a shitty person, a bully, and someone who enjoyed hurting anyone he could get his hands on. The murders Mia doesn't commit are just as important as the one's she does - refusing to kill the innocent to complete her initiation as a Blade, risking everything to get her gladiatii friends out of the collegium alive instead of just letting them die. My point is that as bad as Mia thinks she is, as similar to Ashlinn as she thinks she is, she's able to discern the difference between people that "deserve" it and people that don't, and still keep to her quest to avenge her family.
So yes, they are similar in that they're both trying to avenge wrongs done to their families, but despite both of their desire to see justice meted at all costs, Mia is able to pull back when seeing her quest to completion means the death of innocents where Ashlinn is most definitely not. Mia takes alternative routes. This is never more plain that in helping her gladiator friends get out of Godsgrave alive; she was able to complete her goal of killing Scaeva and Duomo regardless, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier if she hadn't gone to what was surely immense trouble to help her friends out. Did Ashlinn need to kill Tric, someone who had literally done nothing against her, would was friendly and warm and open from the jump, in order to take down the Red Church? She needed him out of the way, sure, but could she not have dosed him with swoon like she did the Shahiids and other acolytes? Was there no other way to subdue him? Maybe, if she'd care enough and thought hard enough on it, but killing him was easier and she took the easy way out. Mia never takes the easy way out, so for her to lump herself in with Ashlinn shows an incredible lack of self-awareness and/or some serious self-esteem issues.
What I'm trying to point out is that logically, even in the framework of the book, Mia's justification for her love of Ash makes zero sense. We as readers are told that it is acceptable and is okay because they're all murderers, they've all taken lives in the name of revenge, etc., but then we're essentially asked to ignore the nuance involved here when it's convenient for us. Why show Mia being pointedly different and then try to justify something that doesn't make sense in the context of Mia's own moral standards by essentially ignoring that difference? The whole book is based around Mia's desire to avenge the deaths of those she loves, but she's able to give the murderer of one of those people a free pass because she's attracted to her? Or she likes her, or she sees something good underneath it all? It doesn't compute, and the fact that it seems like the author is asking us to accept this is what gets my blood boiling here.
It very much harkens back to ACOTAR and how we're asked to ignore the bad things Rhys has done and vilify Tamlin for doing the same things because...reasons. We're never given reasons that make any real sense. Rhys had a hard life, and he's being a dick because the ends justify the means. Ashlinn was trying to avenge her familia just like Mia is, so her murder of Tric was just her doing what she had to, the same way Mia does. Except Tamlin had a hard life too, and his actions were done in the context of him wanting to protect the woman he loves. Except Mia finds a way to go around the not-so-bad people even when they're in the way of her goal and it puts said goal in jeopardy. Is it the same, or is it different? With ACOTAR we're supposed to believe that in Rhys's case the ends definitely justify the means; Mia thinks herself awful because she kills, but she has limits, even if she can't see them herself.
Taking that last statement into consideration, Mia trying to justify her love of Ashlinn to Tric by saying she's just as bad and that underneath it she really is a good person is especially callous and cold, not to mention glaringly ignorant. I believe at one point either Ashlinn or Mia even tries to say that Tric really wasn't innocent (and thus her murder of him is as justifiable as any other murder she's committed) because he completed his initiation as a Blade and killed the innocent person. The issue with that is twofold: first, Tric was visibly upset in doing it, so yes he did it, but he was bothered by it, i.e. he's not a completely callous person, Blade or no. Second, he might have killed the innocent person, but he never committed any heinous acts against his friends. Why bother showing nuance and shades of grey if things are only going to be black and white? You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here.
Mia justifies Ash's murder of Tric to herself by saying she was only doing what she had to because otherwise it would be too much for her to handle to know she's fucking the person that killed the person she cared enough about to carry out a murder that risked getting her in trouble with the Red Church. If she really was the heartless, poisonous bitch she thinks herself to be, she could screw whomever she wants to without having it weigh on her conscience so. Feyre does pretty the same thing in ACOTAR - you've got to have the heroine justify sleeping with the heretofore-assumed villain otherwise she wouldn't be the heroine if she just fucked who she wanted regardless of whether they were truly "good" people or not, right? It helps if you take the previous fuckee and essentially make them not as lily-white as they originally appeared (Tric because hey he murdered a kid to become a Blade, and Tamlin who turned out to be an abusive asshole) - no consideration for why the previous love interest might have done these things, no context or consideration where they are concerned. Who then is this justification/explanation for, really? The reader? I think it would have been a far more powerful statement, and more in line with Mia's reputation as a stab-happy murder bitch, if she just did what she wanted without thinking about it - then she really would have been as similar to Ash as she already thinks she is.
And I haven't even gotten to the part of the tale that really raises my vapors, gentlefriends. Mia actually has the gall, the cojones, to question whether or not Tric is trustworthy and whether he can be trusted around Ashlinn. Judging against all previously established tenets of revenge, WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK IS BASED ON, MIND YOU, he would be well within his rights to take Ashlinn out, seeing as how she murdered him, her friend, for no real reason other than it was the path of least resistance. So not only is Ashlinn Jarnheim a total dumpster fire of a person, she's also lazy.
I guess my real point in all of this, buried underneath all of this verbal diarrhea, is that when a book is otherwise as clever, entertaining, and well put together as the Nevernight ones are, glaring inconsistencies like these are even more, well, glaring. While this issue obviously rubs me the wrong way, it hasn't stopped me from enjoy the books repeatedly, and it shouldn't stop anyone else either because they are a great, fun, and even poignant, ride. I wouldn't presume to say Jay Kristoff majorly fucked up here - again, this is his work, his brainchild, and he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it. We're lucky to have him, and other authors, share these things with the rest of the world. As a reader, it's my right to criticize, not in an effort to make Mr. Kristoff go back and re-write everything according to my specifications, but rather just to get it out, because honestly it's enough of a splinter in my brain that if I don't get it out my head might literally explode. It would be awesome if I, and any fans of any author that have quibbles similar to mine, could get explanations that made sense for them, essentially get that splinter excised, but the world doesn't work that way, and I'm well aware of it. If it's something that bothered me enough, I'd just stop watching, like I did with Buffy when they retconned Spike into a panty-sniffing stalker Angel 2.0.
So yeah, I'm not happy with the way Kristoff constructed this particular plotline, and it really does bother me considering how fucking brilliant pretty much every other twist, turn, and event is, but it's his baby, and he's gotta do what makes sense for his brain, because that's where the story lives - we as readers just invite it into our homes for brief stays, like an esoteric Air bnb.
As much as bitch, as much as I complain about the books that I read, I find that it bothers me the most when it's a problem with a book I really, really, enjoyed. To paraphrase Shakespeare, it's like my only hate sprung from my only love.
I'll forever stand by the idea that authors, musicians, and any artist that puts their art out into the world for our enjoyment owes their audience zilch. We don't have to consume what they produce, nor do we have to continue paying for something we no longer enjoy if a previously positive relationship turns sour. Creators and fans have a symbiotic relationship to be sure, but no true responsibility to each other. You can go to a restaurant and order something and if you don't like it send it back - the chef isn't obligated to only put things on the menu that one individual person (or that all people) will like. They might undercook the freaking burger, and while I like my stuff well done, someone out there likes their meat bloody. Probably Mia Corvere.
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