Achieve Down Comes The Night Articulated By Allison Saft File Brochure

Niece of the Queen, Wren Southerland has always felt herself a burden,

Her parents are gone, her family is gone except the Queen so she realized pretty early on that she needed to make herself useful to gain any sort of recognition.
And so she did.

Wren is the most talented healer but despite her power, she's constantly being driven away from the Queen and from her career.


She's too emotional more likely to heal a prisoner than continue his capture, Her most recent incident where she kindasorta is the reason that an important prisoner escaped sends her back to the abbey, where she would likely be shut away forever.


But then, a letter arrives Colwick Hall, Lowry, a lord, is requesting her assistance with a diseased manservant, She against her Queen's wishes and against her bestfriendalmostgirlfriend's wishes packs up her bags to go help,

But when she arrives, she realizes that Hal Cavendish is the servant, The same man whose murdered thousands of her people,

She's trapped in the snowy mountains with a murderer, . . but soon realizes something even more sinister is just around the corner,

Overall thoughts: this was a deeply atmospheric book, It was gorgeously rich in details and imagery,

I liked Wren from the start and while she did get a little woeisme, she was overall a good main character.


I enjoyed the blossoming romance between Wren and her bestfriendalmostgirlfirend but the author did cut the relationship short but it made sense in the long run.


The relationship between Wren and Hal was really well done I loved how Hal was so human despite the atrocities.


The plot felt unexpected and exciting, The lastoooo! I was hooked, As each reveal was given, and more dimension provided to the evil, it was good. VERY good!

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review

sitelinkYouTube sitelinkBlog sitelinkInstagram sitelinkTwitter sitelinkFacebook Snapchat mirandareads I really don't like leaving negative reviews.
It's someone's labour of love, their baby, and I'm basically saying I hated it,

I can't help it, though, I need to rant! I've been ranting in my updates, in my ebook notes, and sending a friend far too many messages and quotes.
But I still can't let it go, . .

I liked the blurb, liked the cover, had seen a couple of illustrations I was really anticipating this book!

Unfortunately, there was little to nothing I liked about it.
I liked the premise: a healer travels to a remote estate to heal someone, only to discover that the patient is her country's mortal enemy they have to put their differences aside and solve a mystery missing soldiers from both countries to prevent another war between their countries.
It sounds pretty great, if a little cliché,

I also liked that sexuality is a nonissue, Wren, the main character is bi and this is never seen as a problem in this world, which is great.


There's also the overarching message that kindness is not a weakness, and Wren learns to accept this about herself.
I'm afraid these were all the positives for me,

There were so many things that I didn't like, though, A lot can just be down to preference, but not all, I think,

The writing was too full of comparisons and metaphors for me, Some felt so forced and just plain weird, Here are the top ones:
"she felt like A rat in a gilded cage, "
"Outside her room, there was complete, esophageal darkness, tight and swallowing, "
"It tasted burnt and astringent, thick as thrush on her tongue, "
" her sleek braid swinging like a gallows rope, "
"At the tower's heart, like the rotten pit of a fruit, was his cell, "
"This was a wet cold weather that filled Wren's lungs like phlegm, "
" she could see a storm rolling off the sea, black as fog, "

I wasn't impressed by the worldbuilding either the countries don't really stand out from other fantasy countries, the magic doesn't stand out, the plot doesn't stand out.
I didn't find anything unique or particularly convincing, I also had a hard time accepting the setting, Danu, Wren's country, is in a sort of Victorian era, where they have steam trains and photographs, but not electricity, like the more advanced neutral neighbour, Cernos.
They have magic and advanced magical healing, but the rules and limits of this are never clear, so I found it jarring to see things like dialysis, DNA and intravenous drip thrown in casually in aslike setting.


I didn't get attached to any of the characters, Wren was good and kind, yes, but she was also extremely irritating, She spent years in an abbey to train as a healer, and for some reason hated the place and dreaded ever having to go back there.
I imagined some sort of mental and/or physical abuse, so imagine my surprise when the only negative thing she could say about it was that she felt confined.
The mother superior was always mentioned as this wise guiding figure,

Anyway, not a big deal all in all, Even Wren's penchant to ogle her unconscious patient one time thinking "How tempting it was to touch him, simply because she could" wasn't her worst trait for me.
I hate to say it, but Wren was the dumbest main character I've ever seen, Details in the spoilers below,

The other characters were just bland and flat, even Hal, the feared Reaper of Vesria, who could kill people with his magic just by making eye contact, and who had killed hundreds in the war between Vesria and Danu.
We only see him as a very soft boy he's nineteen, who was sort of groomed into his reaper role and now feels remorse and selfhatred.


So up to this point it can all be a matter of taste, I didn't

like this, but great if others did,

What baffled me is that people could look past the plot the constant dumb things the characters did, and how clueless they were.
If that's how the author meant to portray them, OK, I didn't like it and I guess, this could also be a matter of preference.
I don't expect genius characters, but I would like them to have a modicum of intelligence,

So here are the things in the plot/characters that drove me up the walls:

Wren is bested by a little boy.
Yes, her kindness and compassion got her into trouble, but she could have been kind and careful at the same time, and avoided the embarrassment.
Worst of all, she doesn't learn from this mistake and makes it again at the end,

She arrives at the creepy Colwick Hall to heal a servant of its owner's, Lord Lowry, On arrival, he wants her to sign a contract that basically says she can't leave without his permission, can't go into the east wing of the house and has a curfew.
She accepts his feeble explanations and signs to be fair, this never really matters in the end, although she's always scared about the consequences and makes a big deal out of it

Wren keeps noticing a key Lowry wears on a chain around his neck.

Wren sees Lowry coming out of the east wing with a cut on his arm and blood on his shirt.

Lowry tells her his father wanted to find out why only people from Danu and Vesria had magic, why it was dormant in Cernosians.
He wanted to conduct experiments to find out,
Wren keeps hearing noises at night, like someone moaning in pain,

Does Wren putandtogether and think "Oh, maybe this means Lowry kidnapped those missing soldiers to experiment on them and try to get magic" No, she doesn't.
It was way too obvious and she didn't realise,
Hal tells her he thinks Lowry is responsible for the disappearances, but she still can't think of a motive, despite Lowry practically telling her!

Wren and Hal sneak into the east wing, find a secret trap door and a locked door at the end of a tunnel.
They are sure the missing soldiers are behind that door, but they can't get it open and don't know where they could find the key.
Wren conveniently forgot all about the key Lowry wore, . .

Wren decides that solving the mystery and saving the soldiers is less important than getting wanted war criminal Hal to her queen, so she could be pardoned she deserted to go to Colwick Hall, so she drugs and kidnaps him, but that doesn't work out as planned and almost gets them both killed.


When it turns out the queen of Danu knew Lowry was responsible for the disappearances but didn't care as long as his country helps her against Vesria, Wren doesn't tell her that Lowry is trying to take magic from his victims and is planning to take Hal's mortal one.
You'd think if anything would worry and sway the queen, it would be another potential Reaper,

Wren and her friend spring Hal out of prison, but instead of making their escape straight away, they go to the abbey and plan to stay there a night and day, like no one could find them there.
. . This isn't even all on Wren, Hal, who wants to become his country's leader, and Una, who is a Captain also think this is a great plan.
Of course they are found and are all arrested a few hours later,

After a short speech from Wren two paragraphs, the queen her aunt, who had treated her like her evil stepmother all her life, has an epiphany and sees the light, later apologising to Wren.


Wren's superhuman kindness almost gets her killed when Lowry stabs her while she's saving him after she regrets that she cut him with a poisoned knife although I couldn't find a scene where she applies poison to said knife it was definitely not poisoned before I may have just missed it.


And then they live happily ever after, Well, except for Lowry and the missing soldiers, particularly Byers, This friend of Wren's who is never shown and is only used as a sort of motivation for her is mentioned no less thantimes in the book, without actually being present!!! And although Wren couldn't shut up about missing him and wanting to find him, once she finds his body she doesn't even arrange for it to be taken back to Danu and given a proper burial.
Perhaps it's done offpage, but after mentioning him so obnoxiously often, he couldn't be mentioned one more time



Rant over! Countless other little things that I didn't find believable at all, but I'll leave it at that.


No one is sorrier than I am that I didn't like this, .