A girl bent on revenge trains at a deadly school for assassins, where every lesson and every lover could be the one that kills her.
- Score
- 79.6
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Steamy
- POV
- third
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Kristoff's razor-sharp voice — dry, sarcastic, and laced with gallows humour — alongside the vivid world-building of a sun-drenched republic built on bones and blood. Mister Kindly, the shadow-cat daemon, is near-universally beloved, and Mia herself is celebrated as a fierce, morally complex anti-heroine who retains genuine humanity. The footnotes dividing critics sharply: on print they delight as world-building asides; on e-readers they frustrate navigation. The explicit sex scenes and their length draw mixed responses, with some finding them gratuitous given the protagonist's age at the story's framing. The novel has also received meaningful criticism for what reviewers describe as an appropriative portrayal of a Māori-inspired culture in its tattoo magic system. Goodreads sits at approximately 4.1 stars from over 200,000 ratings, and it won the 2016 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Read it if
- · Readers who want an unapologetically dark, witty assassin story with a fierce female anti-heroine and rich world-building
- · Fans of magic-academy survival plots with high stakes, found-family bonds, and slow-burn romantic tension
- · Adults seeking character-driven dark fantasy with a distinctive narrative voice — closer to Abercrombie than Maas in tone
Skip it if
- · You are sensitive to graphic violence, gore, torture, or detailed on-page sexual content
- · Footnote-heavy prose breaks your reading immersion — especially on e-readers
- · You prefer lighter romantic fantasy with a guaranteed happily-ever-after focus
If you liked this
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir — oppressive empire, assassin training, and a heroine forged by survival
- · For fans of Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas — fierce female assassin protagonist seeking vengeance in a lush fantasy world
- · For fans of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo — morally grey ensemble, dark humour, intricate plot, and found-family dynamics
- · For fans of Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb — training under deadly masters, slow-burn relationships, and deeply realised world-building
In this series
Part of The Nevernight Chronicle — read in order:
Full series profile & spice/trope breakdown →Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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