Nyx was a soldier.
Nyx was a government backed assassin and bounty hunter. Now she works for
herself with her own rag-tag team making a living in the grim, war-torn land of
Nasheen
Life isn’t good, a
centuries long war has turned Nasheen pretty apocalyptic and winning is
surviving to see the next day - and maybe earning enough money to drink enough
not to remember yesterday
This book with all
its short stories is gritty with a capital grit. At many points in the story I
expected something - I expected Nyx to soften, I expected her to see her crew
as more like family, I expected her to see her to melt towards Rhys especially.
But everything about
this is gritty, dark and messy. There’s no love, there’s just the release of
casual sex. There’s no companionship - there’s just people Nyx works with (and
that grudgingly) and every time we feel like we’re getting closer to something
more
I say all this not as
a criticism of the book, or even as a warning but as a clear depiction of what
the book is. And in some ways it’s unique for it. I’ve read a lot of books that
bring in the melodramatic grimdark, usually with lots of rape and torture for
the sheer gratuitous purpose. But few pull off the gritty, certainly
unrelenting gritty, gritty without some bright sparks, gritty without some
sense of a happy ending or a happy moment or something. For unrelenting
grimdark, this book works and is just perfect for it
This works because
this is the world that Nyx lives in, this world far from Earth but clearly
colonised but Earth people, this world where two nations have been at war for
generations, a brutal horrific war complete with weapons of mass destruction
used with such regularity that they have become a normal part of everyone’s
day, with a border where the atrocities have piled up so much that mounds of
bodies just don’t even feature. We have a state, Nasheen, where large branches
of quasi law enforcement are dedicated to little more than hunting down
deserters from the devastating wars, where we have people bred expressly for
that war and conscription that consumes entire lives
On top of this we
have both the grittiness of the war - chemicals, weapons, violence etc, but
also the dangerous nature of the world itself with its multiple suns and high
cancer rates which translates into some really strong messages on class divide
as the poor obviously can’t spend time inside behind filters so they are
susceptible to skin lesions and cancer - while the rich have smooth skin that
is saved from the touch of the sun
In this we have Nyx,
a deeply unlikeable character… which is perfect. Why should she be likeable?
She’s a war veteran from a war that has destroyed her country from before she
was even born. She’s been destroyed, remade, suffered immense trauma, watched
many people around her die, been on an array of missions most of which have not
exactly gone well, worked some rather unsavoury professions. She’s led a
terribly traumatic, awful life, in a terrible traumatic, awful world: why would
she be nice or pleasant or likable? Why would she even care about these things?
It would break this whole theme, world and story if she were a woman with hope
and positivity or had somehow managed to come through all of this still shiny
would completely change the whole tone of the book. Even as Nyx has regrets and
moments of guilt she drowns them in alcohol and so many times I think she’s so
close to making the kinder choice…
