Everneath left me feeling blue. The tone of the whole book is morose, the main character's outlook bleak, the relationships flat, the narrative monotonous. It took a while to adapt to the style of writing, which distracted me so much for the first half of the book that the lack of a plot didn't click until I was too invested to quit reading.
Honestly, I should have known better. The warning signs were there.
There are many problems with Everneath, the least of which are the boring, flat characters and the worst being the complete destruction of Greek mythology. Now, I'm no expert on Greek mythology, but I know enough to figure that Ashton's Everneath is different from the Underworld, and that no matter how hard you try, the Orpheus and Eurydice story will not translate over.
It is annoying how hard Ashton tries to squeeze Greek characters into the history of her Everneath, because the world she builds and the world they belong in are wildly different. Everlivings and Forfeits are not the same as Gods/Godesses and the dead. And you can keep going on about how Persephone and Eurydice were Forfeits, but I won't buy it.
The time spent recolouring Greek mythology is time wasted, which, to my mind, only succeed in taking away from the world Ashton's created. Rather than stand on her own mythology, she spends too much time comparing her characters to Greek heroes/tragedies. The end result is a discordant story that never finds its own feet.
So, the world of Everneath is lacking in detail, in explanations, in logic, which means the precedent for the rest of the book is set. Cue the introduction of the leading cast.
There is Nikki, the girl who couldn't deal with life so decided having an Everliving parasite suck all her emotions/memories away was for the best. Why do so many YA teenagers throw away their lives with both hands? Why do authors make their MCs behave in this way? It annoys me.
Aside from making bad decisions while emotionally unstable, Nikki is a rather gloomy, insecure young woman. You can also add incompetent, completely reliant on other people to take care of her, and utterly selfish to the list. She ditches on her family during a period of grief, carelessly hurts her best friend on her Return to the Surface, and doesn't allow her ex-boyfriend to move on because she needs to say goodbye.
Needless to say, Nikki and I didn't click. She Returned to say goodbye properly, but spends half the book ignoring her ex-boyfriend, avoiding her little brother or father, and screwing her old best friend over. So much for achieving what she set out to do. All in all, she is a weak MC with a penchant for melodrama.
On to the boys! They come in two flavours favoured by Young Adult novels of late. In the left corner we have the American boy-next-door jock type, Jack, and in the right corner we have the typical "Bad Boy" stalker-who-happens-to-be-immortal, Cole. As you might imagine, neither of which are good for our leading lady, but she keeps them around all the same.
Now I can't say much about Jack, because he didn't come into his own until the latter half of the book. He seemed like an average teenager, clearly cared deeply for Nikki (although she didn't deserve his devotion) and showed a lot of loyalty (again, undeserving). Cole is the complete opposite, came off as a jackass and spent most of the book manipulating and mistreating Nikki.
So, considering how much of Everneath is spent on these three characters and their interactions, you'd think I'd have more to say on them. I don't. There really is very little going on in their heads, especially poor empty Nikki. Their motivations are very shallow: love and/or power. Rather than use these motivations to gently prod the plot (hah, what plot!), they are used as weapons against one another.
Plot. I guess avoiding the Tunnels could be considered a plot point, but since Nikki is resigned to her fate for 80% of Everneath, I'm discarding it. To say goodbye to her loved ones to make up for her disappearance? Maybe, if she bothered to attempt to fix the damage she left. Mostly she ignores everyone, because it will be too painful for them when she leaves, yadda yada. So no, not a plot point. Actually, it makes you wonder why she even came back to the Surface if she was just going to spend all her time avoiding everyone she cares for.
Ah, I'm all out of energy. To conclude, Everneath attempts to use mythology as a basis for its world, fails miserably and then proceeds to follow its moody cast around as they slowly gravitate towards a semi-interesting climax.
2/5 stars
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