Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Nightfall by Shannon Messenger (Keeper of the Lost Cities, Book #6)

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Middle Grade

Summary:
Sophie is reunited with her human sister, but her human parents have been kidnapped by the Neverseen.  In order to save them, Sophie is willing to do almost anything; even if it means trusting the scheming ex-leader of the Neverseen and Keefe's mother: Lady Gisela.

What I Liked:
I'll say it now: I felt this book was rather lacking.  It might just be me growing older, but I remember liking the other books in this series better.  But even though I felt that this book wasn't as good as the others, it is still a great book.  I enjoyed how a lot of the mysteries throughout the series have finally been answered, and the interactions between Sophie and Keefe are funny as usual.  Sadly, the list pretty much ends there.

What I Disliked:
There were so many reveals in this book that they started to feel boring.  They lack the surprise or suspense that makes us readers so exciting, and some of the reveals are rather predictable.  There was also like 5-10 chapters that were so useless that they felt like filler.  Sure, the chapters feed you tidbits of new information that is relevant to the plot, but honestly I felt like she could've put it all into one or two chapters.  Another thing I felt annoyed by (and this is a problem that I believe can be seen all throughout the series) is the lack of female personality.  EVERY SINGLE female character is snarky, snarky, and snarky.  Save for a very few characters (that are still snarky but have a different enough personality), every single female character is practically the same.  Sure, there are slight differences, but I could see multiple characters reacting the exact same way to a single event.  Like even the female adults are snarky, and can be quite immature.  There is also another thing I am unhappy about.  There is a huge reveal, and don't worry I won't tell you what it is, that I felt shouldn't have happened.  It undid (basically) one of the main impacts of the previous book and I feel like that's not what a good story writer does.  I don't think a story writer should undo the impact of an event that's already happened in the story, because it sort of means that a part of the story is kind of useless.  If you undo a big impact, you undo character development, and I feel like undoing character development is just something that shouldn't be a thing.  Unfortunately, I have even more complaints, but since this is a MG book and my complaints don't really hold as much power because of that, I'll keep the rest to myself.

Additional Notes:
I honestly don't know whether the problems listed above have appeared in all of the books in the series or just this book.  As I'm reading this series as I'm growing older, my preferences and my knowledge about story telling is constantly growing, so I might only be noticing certain problems in the series now.  I'm still looking forward to the seventh book though!

Conclusion:
Even though I wrote so much negatives on the book, it's still a great book, and I enjoyed most of it.  It's a happy book (it's MG), so if you've been reading too much depressing, dystopian stories and want something to cheer you up....well this series might help you.

Rating: 7/10

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