Review: Night Spinner

Night Spinner by Addie Thorley
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars


Night Spinner gives us an interesting fantasy world set in a harsh kingdom, Ashkar, where some fighters are gifted with magical powers, like wielding ice, spinning darkness, or harnessing starfire. Our protagonist, Enebish the Destroyer, is one such magical fighter but a loss of control that resulted in the death of an entire caravan has resulted in her banishment to a monastery. At least her adoptive brother Serik is a monk there. But she is regularly abused at the monastery as she struggles to heal, not just physically from her punishment and disfigurement but emotionally, from the knowledge that she apparently killed innocent civilians. As the novel opens, Ashkar is at war with neighboring Zemya, in a longstanding and from Enebish's view, pointless feud. Enebish's adoptive sister, Ghoa, wants to call Enebish back to serve because unthinkably, Ashkar appears to be losing the war. Ghoa blames a charismatic deserter named Temujin who continues to lure able bodied soldiers away from fighting for Ashkar. Ghoa sends Enebish off to capture Temujin with a promise that she will secure her pardon and restoration of rank if she accomplishes the mission. Only when Enebish locates Temujin she finds his soldiers are sharing food with the impoverished of Ashkar, who are being used as fodder by the Ashkari king in Ashkar's border regions with Zemya. Serik doesn't believe everything is as it seems, and Ghoa denies the abuse of people that Enebish can see with her own eyes are being abused. Will Enebish serve Ashkar's King, her sister Ghoa, or the Ashkari people? Whose side is just? How much can she ignore to regain her standing and name?

The novel opens with a quote from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame :

"... within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in my soul."

and has been blurbed as "transforming The Hunchback of Notre Dame into a tundra-inspired epic." While one can look at both Night Spinner and THND as explorations of the label "monster" (since Enebish is considered a monster by many in Ashkar), the majority of similarities end there. There is no real Esmerelda, and Enebish's disfigurement is not congenital but rather the result of torture and being marked an imperial traitor by the king himself. Though taken in (in more ways than one) by Ghoa as Quasimodo was by Frollo, again, there are few connections to the Hugo novel. I cannot fathom why the novel was marketed this way. Isn't it enough for Thorley to say she took her inspiration from the beautiful line in Hugo's novel?

Ultimately, though I would probably pick up the next book in the series, I was also troubled by the trope in which evidently, Enebish needs affirmation from a male character (be it Temujin or Serik) in order to feel her inner core of strength and morality. Filtered through the lens of potential romance with these two men, I felt it really diminished her character arc in struggling to understand how she could have killed an entire caravan of people and whether she would ever feel whole again. Romance should not be the key to her solving her self-esteem issues and recognizing truth from lies. I was also bothered that she cannot clearly put the abuse she suffers from Ghoa in perspective and call it that. The word "abuse" does not appear a single time in the novel (I checked the Kindle edition) and the relationship with Ghoa is clearly an abusive one. Enebish is very broken through much of the book, seeking praise from Ghoa, Temujin, Serik, and pretty much whoever can provide her with some transitory sense of self-worth. This PTSD-type of scenario requires a deftness of touch, especially if you are going to mix in romance. The psychological aspects of the novel felt muddled here. Serik at least feels steadfast in his love for Enebish but I felt he was often childishly oppositional and therefore rather unappealing. In fact, in the beginning of the novel, his childish poor judgment almost cost Enebish her life. Temujin's character initially seemed skillfully drawn, but given all the twists and turns of the plot, I felt deflated by the endpoint of Temujin's character arc in the novel, which felt paper-thin after a build-up that suggested more complexity.

I listened to the audiobook, sonorously narrated by the award-winning Natalie Naudus. The audiobook added to my enjoyment but ultimately did not carry me past some of my frustrations with the novel.

CW: This novel's protagonist has been disfigured after being branded a traitor. She is also flogged in a torturous manner.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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The audiobook of Night Spinner is available exclusively from Audible.com.

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