Defy The Night Series - Brigid Kemmerer
WRITING STYLE AND GRAMMAR
All three books were written in a very basic, easily understandable writing style. Kids above 10 can easily understand this. What I really found lacking in the book was the absence of "quotable" quotes - but I mean, to be fair, I did pick up this book because I wanted a light, easy, intriguing read, so that was kind of expected.
Pacing is easily the most important part of any book. The plot could be interesting, the characters complex, but if it's too slow or too fast, I certainly wouldn't be able to understand or engage with the book that much.
All three books from this trilogy had a pretty moderate pacing, easy to understand for younger readers - my only grievance is how uneven the pacing is. Defy the Night was a pretty chill book, moderately paced, but Defend the Dawn was extremely fast paced comparatively- the twists and turns were a bit hard to keep track of and the main plot events just merge into one another. Destroy the Day was over before you knew it, and especially the last few chapters were horribly fast paced: methinks Kemmerer had either a word/page limit or was just in the mood to get done with the book and by proxy the series. It set a generally irregular rhythm throughout the book - like Defend the Dawn felt like a fever dream while Destroy the Day felt like a cash grab.
I'm the type of person who loves plotlines and world-building more than characters, and let me tell you, this book did not disappoint. This was a kingdom in an unmentioned historical era and an unmentioned geographic area. Not other kingdoms are mentioned throughout the series except Kandala and Ostriary. My main grievance with the world-building was that there were a few issues, some plot holes you wouldn't even have noticed if you were looking for something to. Electricity is there, which means education is there - but somehow, people aren't educated enough to create proper roads and gates and steam engines? I won't elaborate this; you get the point.
Also, the plot with the moonflower poison was never quite tied up. Tessa thinks that Kandala is being poisoned due to Artis and the rivers there, but somehow Sallister, the consul from Moonlight Plains is suddenly the villains. Neither Arella Cherry nor her predecessor - consuls from Artis, have somehow no idea of the poison till the very end where they try to incriminate Harristan for the shipping logs. I didn't quite understand it. I don't quite understand how the people stop getting sick after Harristan is gone. That's just never resolved or the events don't add up.
Also, the bit with the starving guards is kind of just touch-and-go, I would have loved some more flesh on that to show how the kingdom actually fell to shambles. Also the "Allisander on the Throne" plotline? I would have loved to see a fourth POV of what is happening in the court there. But I guess the POVs were too many by that point and the book would have stretched unnecessarily
I honestly don't think that the book developed the Characters to their full potential. Kemmerer just rushed the last few chapters, where I would have to see substantial changes in Tessa and Corrick - that's a tension-inducing thing. I get that you can't just write a whole new book, but she can't keep telling us that Corrick "cried for his brother" while not actually showing how much he grieved. I loved the Corrick development in book 1 and 3.
The Rian character arc was, again, just plain nonsense. In book 2, I thought he was a complex character, but I realized by the end that he's just a poorly written morally grey dude.
Tessa had a lot of potential to be complex - but by book 3, Kemmerer had basically just reduced Tessa to damsel in distress, and the only thing she did was grieve and cry. I loved Tessa's character in Book 1, where she actually has some substantial opinions, although she gets a bit annoying with Corrick in the few later scenes. I didn't exactly appreciate the "dressing down" of characters in the last two books though, in general.
One of the main things I loved about Defy the Night and the first part of Defend the Dawn was how nobody was typecast into specific roles. Characters had opinions, flaws, quirks. It was actually what hooked me to the series in the first place.
But by the later half of the series, I sort of felt like Kemmerer had had enough or was too heady from the success. I would have loved to see the moral ambiguity maintained. It was honestly beautiful.
5. CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS
Okay, yes, this is an entirely new point because it's just not possible to keep extending the character point. Anyway, the relationship I loved most in this book was Harristan and Quint, Tessa and Corrick with a close second and Thorin and Alice a quick third.
In fact, the only purely developed relationship throughout the series was Tessa and Corrick's, and it's so incredibly complex and I've never seen anything like it before.
I was a Wattpad girly so that completely ruined romance for me forever, but this felt like a breath of fresh air. People keep saying it was lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers, or star-crossed lovers or whatever, but it's much more difficult to typecast. In the first book, Tessa was in love with Wes, and even after finding out he never really existed, she is still in love with the idea of him, casting Corrick to play the role in his non-existent life. In the second, it's more about her trying to let go of Wes and trying to love Corrick. Actually, I don't even know who Tessa fell in love with initially, because she used to like Wes, but Wes "died" and he was actually Corrick. She hated the prince, but she never fell in love with the prince. In the first book, she fell in love with Wes and Corrick was just an extension of Wes to her. In the second book, she starts accepting that Corrick isn't Wes and Wes never existed. She starts loving Corrick instead. It was truly beautiful to see such... character. Except that in the next few books, the characters were yet again typecast into specific tropes.
One thing that I was really disappointed in Kemmerer with was how Harristan and Quint literally had sex the first time they kissed, and that too after Harristan just killed a person. That's supposed to have a lasting effect on people. Don't get me wrong, I love the gay representation, but Harristan and Quint are both just so complex characters, I would have loved a little more development and coherency in their relationship. It was obviously not that "out of nowhere" but I appreciate slow burns and angst and the way they ended up was a bit anticlimactic, in fact..
Harristan and Corrick as brothers was the sweetest relationship I've ever seen in any book, honestly, especially between family like that. It was extremely sweet how they had each others' backs, constantly supporting each other after their parents' assassination. Again, my grievance lies with the third book, mainly the last part. Harristan just... gives up the throne and runs off with Quint? It is so completely out of character for him, and so is Corrick's reaction to it.
His brother was most likely dead, he just fought a war, thought he lost Tessa, and had to manage a kingdom on top of it all AND WE JUST DON'T GET HIS POV????? We get Tessa's instead?
Don't get me wrong, I love her, but when the options are "angst-ridden, grieving brother who has PTSD from fighting a war, needs to rebuild his relationships, kingdoms and develop under extreme stress" v.s. "girl who almost lost her lover, acted as a complete damsel in distress in a war that he fought in who needs to deal with new office politics and manage her lover's grief" deciding between which POV shouldn't be hard. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for angst.
They could never me hate you, Defy The Night. Somehow every time I ended a book from the series I felt this crippling desire for more - something I haven't felt in long time, not only for a book but for everything else in my life. Despite all it's flaws, I love the book to my fullest. I recommend it to every one who's survived reading till here.
