The Nightjar

The Nightjar

Loved the concept and it started out ok but soon turned into the WORST read. Just awful. Bad soap opera awful. Here’s a copy and paste from a reviewer Sarah on Goodreads that perfectly articulates most of what is wrong with this book:

I was so fed up and frustrated and just wanted the story to end. Why, you ask?

Because the main character is a complete and utter idiot.

Maybe that’s harsh. I’ll put it another way: Alice Wyndham comes across very, very stupid because she makes increasingly illogical decisions every opportunity she gets.

Still harsh? Sorry, not sorry. It really bothered me.

In one scene, Alice is explicitly told not to reveal the kind of magic she can do to a Bad Guy because her magic is very rare (of course), and the Bad Guy will surely use it against her. What does Alice do? She immediately tells the Bad Guy about her magic, even though this Bad Guy has absolutely no reason to do anything Alice says.

Alice’s desire to help her friend Jen, who has fallen into a coma and whose nightjar has fled to the land of the dead, makes her impulsive and unable to think virtually anything through. She plugs her ears to anyone who starts giving her advice about the task – she literally interrupts people as they are trying to tell her important details.

People literally force objects into her hand that she needs to take with her because she hasn’t bothered to check what obstacles will await in the land of the Black Menagerie.

At one point she literally says that it did not occur to her that the cages holding the nightjars would be locked . This main character thought that she could enter the land of the dead, encounter no obstacles, walk up and take her friend’s soul guardian and then leave just as easily. Even though every other character around her has been telling her just the opposite this entire time.

Not to mention the character’s physical ineptitude. I would say it is the “clumsy but cute” trope (which is still painfully eye-rolly), but the main character reassures us and other characters again and again that she’s a man repeller. Alice trips over curbs, bumps into people, injures herself, accidentally stabs someone while trying to sew up a wound, drops valuable weapons in moments of immense need more than once, and fails to use her magic power to incapacitate enemies – all she has to do is reach out and touch the cord tethering their nightjar to their body – because she simply reaches out and misses.

There is the typical and very frustrating denial of attraction to her mentor figure, Crowley. Why am I blushing? Why did he say that vaguely flirty thing? Why do I have butterflies when he’s near?? Which goes on hundreds of pages too long. And I’m not quite sure why she’s into this guy because quite literally all he does is lie to her.

There are some fantastic concepts set up here that are abandoned pages later. Alice is taken to the Rookery when she discovers her powers (why is a magical world where aviarists are incredibly rare named after a collection of birds’ nests??). This city is a magical double to London, where once defunct or destroyed buildings and architecture have been transplanted (awesome). There are four houses of magic, each with their own specialties, tests, schools, and god-like founders (amazing). Alice starts her studies with stolen and probably illegally obtained books, like a guide to understanding nightjars and what they reveal about people (so cool).

All of this goes literally nowhere.

Alice exhibits powers aside from seeing people’s nightjars, suggesting she has further powers from a house’s “legacy.” This is completely brushed aside from anyone who witnesses or hears about it. Some side characters have a couple powers from other house’s legacies and nothing happens with any of them. The water magician is scared of water because of a memory having to with drowning (we never find out the details of this). The metal magician uses his powers twice: once to fix a leaky pipe and once more to defend himself against enemies (to whom he loses). There is a hint at the end of this book that there will be more talk of magic training and legacies in the sequel(s), but I won’t be hanging around for them.

There is more, but I will stop here in the event that you’re still reading (Everyone is a spectacularly bad teacher, but that’s fine because despite being an idiot, Alice manages to get all magic concepts on the second try. There are too many names for people, places, and things, I feel as if I need a diagram to understand this world). But I am mostly just so mad. I am mad that this book set up so many awesome concepts and had such a great premise and then steadily unraveled all of that with a meandering plot that was too complex (the finale gave me whiplash – it revealed too much in too little time), and a main character whose decisions rendered her completely unsympathetic and childish.