Nevernight

The first book in Jay Kristoff's Nevernight Chronicle trilogy is set in the Itreyan Republic, a realm illuminated by three suns where true darkness falls only once every two and a half years. The story follows Mia Corvere, the 16-year-old daughter of a disgraced nobleman, as she seeks entry into the Red Church, a legendary school of assassins devoted to Niah, Goddess of Night.

A nameless narrator who claims intimate knowledge of Mia promises to separate fact from myth. On Mia's last night in the capital city of Godsgrave, two parallel events unfold: She loses her virginity to a hired companion, wanting the experience before risking her life, and she commits her first premeditated murder, killing Augustus Scipio, the Senate's high executioner. Mia is accompanied by Mister Kindly, a shadow-entity shaped like a cat who feeds on her fear, keeping her nearly fearless. After the killing, she meets her mentor, Old Mercurio, a retired assassin who has trained her for six years. He returns her gravebone stiletto, a dagger carved with a crow in flight, and directs her to a ship bound for Ashkah, where the Red Church hides inside the Quiet Mountain.

Flashbacks reveal the trauma driving Mia. When she was 10, her father, Darius Corvere, a judicial official bearing the Republic's title of Justicus, was publicly hanged for treason. Consul Julius Scaeva pronounced the sentence while Cardinal Francesco Duomo presided. Mia's mother, Dona Alinne Corvere, forced the girl to watch, whispering, "Never flinch. Never fear. And never, ever forget." Scaeva humiliated Alinne into begging for Mia's life, then had her imprisoned and ordered Mia drowned. Justicus Remus, a commander of the Luminatii, the Republic's military-religious order, seized Mia and had soldiers seal her in a barrel. Inside, she found her mother's stiletto, gifted by a mysterious presence in the darkness, stabbed one captor, and fled. The shadow-entity followed, and she named it Mister Kindly. Alone on the streets, she found Mercurio's curiosity shop, where the old man took her in and spent six years training her.

Mia sails to the decrepit port of Last Hope, where she meets Tric, a boy of half-Dweymeri islander heritage also seeking the Red Church. They trek into the Whisperwastes, surviving sand kraken attacks and meeting Naev, a veiled Church servant. They reach the Quiet Mountain with Naev gravely wounded and are admitted by Shahiid Mouser, one of the Church's Honored Masters.

Inside, 28 acolytes are baptized in blood beneath a towering statue of Niah. Mia clashes with Jessamine, who blames the Corvere family for her own father's execution. She befriends Ashlinn Järnheim, whose father was a retired Blade, a fully initiated Church assassin, and meets fellow acolytes Hush, a silent boy, and Carlotta Valdi, a former slave with a sharp intellect. Lord Cassius, head of the Red Church and himself a darkin, a person able to command shadow, appears briefly with his shadow-wolf, Eclipse.

Training is brutal. Four Shahiid teach swordcraft, thievery, venomcraft, and seduction. When Mia secretly uses her shadow powers to nick the blind swordmaster Solis, he severs her arm at the elbow; Speaker Adonai, a blood sorcerer, and his sister Weaver Marielle reattach it with ancient sorcery. Each Shahiid runs a yearlong contest, and the acolyte who tops each hall is virtually guaranteed to graduate as a Blade. Mia discovers that the Trinity, a holy medallion bearing the three suns of Aa, the God of Light, causes her agonizing pain because of her darkin nature. Jessamine steals one and uses it against Mia, driving Mister Kindly away for the first time. Without him, Mia experiences crushing anxiety and turns to Tric for comfort; the two become intimate.

The acolytes are sent to Godsgrave via Adonai's blood sorcery for a contest, and Cassius uses the trip to test loyalty through staged capture and torture. Only 17 of the original 28 survive. When Carlotta is found murdered and Mia is framed, Tric provides her alibi, and both are sentenced to 50 lashes of blood scourging. Mia sends Mister Kindly to absorb Tric's fear, enduring the ordeal unaided. The agony forces buried memories to the surface: at 14, during truedark, the rare period of complete darkness, Mia broke into the Philosopher's Stone prison to rescue her mother, only to find Alinne driven mad and her brother Jonnen apparently dead. Her powers erupted, destroying much of the prison. She then attacked the Basilica Grande to assassinate Scaeva but was repelled by Duomo's Trinity and Remus's sunsteel blade, a weapon forged from a light-aligned metal.

Mia secretly trains with Naev while feigning weakness, then reveals her true skill in the sword tournament. She engineers the death of Jessamine's ally Diamo by planting false poisoncraft notes with a flawed antidote. She deliberately loses the sword final to Tric, preserving her chance to top the venomcraft hall, which she achieves by solving an impossible formula set by Spiderkiller, the venomcraft Shahiid. Hush wins the thievery hall by stealing an obsidian key from Revered Mother Drusilla, the Church's leader, and Ashlinn wins the seduction hall.

The four winners face a final trial: each must murder a bound, innocent boy. Mia places the blade at the child's throat but cannot do it, recognizing that killing a blameless child would make her the same monster she hunts. She forfeits her place.

After Mia departs, Ashlinn's betrayal is revealed. She and her brother Osrik are agents of Justicus Remus, raised by their maimed father to infiltrate and destroy the Red Church. Ashlinn murders Tric by stabbing him and pushing him off the Sky Altar. The siblings poison the initiation feast with a sedative and coerce Adonai into allowing 200 Luminatii soldiers through the Blood Walk, his blood-pool route for instant travel, to invade the Mountain.

In Godsgrave, Mia discovers the conspiracy through Carlotta's notebook and races back through the Blood Walk. She wages guerrilla warfare through the Mountain, incapacitating Osrik, whom Adonai then kills, and freeing the sorcerer and Marielle. She lures soldiers into the athenaeum, where monstrous bookworms devour them, then rallies survivors. When Remus flees with the captive Ministry, the Church's senior leaders, across the Whisperwastes, Mia sabotages the wagon train and attracts sand kraken. At Last Hope, she drugs the remaining soldiers and frees the Ministry.

Ashlinn produces the Trinity, its light crippling both Mia and Cassius. A panicked soldier drives a sunsteel sword through Cassius's chest. Remembering Mercurio's teaching that brighter light casts a deeper shadow, Mia steps into her own shadow and emerges from Remus's, burying her mother's stiletto in his neck. The dying Cassius anoints Mia's face with his blood, the initiation rite, making her a Blade before he dies. Ashlinn flees.

In the aftermath, Mia fulfills a promise to Tric by poisoning his grandfather, Swordbreaker. Eclipse now joins Mister Kindly in Mia's shadow. Back at the Mountain, Mia scratches Tric's name into his unmarked tomb. Chronicler Aelius, a ghost bound to the Church's library, sends her an ancient book called The Hungry Dark, written in a script only her shadow companions can read. The book describes darkin who consumed others of their kind and includes maps marking mysterious locations, hinting at deeper secrets about the world's hidden history. The narrator promises this tale is only the first of three.