Review // Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis

Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis

Give the Dark My Love #1

Publisher: Razorbill

Publication Date: September 25th, 2018

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Source: Purchase from Emma @ Miss Print

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 368

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Summary (from Goodreads):

When seventeen-year-old Nedra Brysstain leaves her home in the rural, northern territories of Lunar Island to attend the prestigious Yugen Academy, she has only one goal in mind: learn the trade of medicinal alchemy. A scholarship student matriculating with the children of Lunar Island's wealthiest and most powerful families, Nedra doesn't quite fit in with the other kids at Yugen, who all look down on her. 

All, except for Greggori "Grey" Astor. Grey is immediately taken by the brilliant and stubborn Nedra, who he notices is especially invested in her studies. And that's for a good reason: a deadly plague has been sweeping through the North, and it's making its way toward the cities. With her family's life--and the lives of all of Lunar Island's citizens--on the line, Nedra is determined to find a cure for the plague. 

Grey and Nedra continue to grow closer, but as the sickness spreads and the body count rises, Nedra becomes desperate to find a cure. Soon, she finds herself diving into alchemy's most dangerous corners--and when she turns to the most forbidden practice of all, necromancy, even Grey might not be able to pull her from the darkness.

So, Give the Dark My Love is a book that I was really looking forward to because I have relatively recently just fallen in love with books that deal with necromancy. I feel like it was maybe a little bit disappointing, but I still enjoyed it.

Basically Give the Dark My Love is about a girl named Nedra who comes from the poorer side of Lunar Island. She receives a scholarship to study medicinal alchemy at the prestigious Yugen Academy. She wants to help stop the Wasting Death, a plague that has been sweeping through poorer areas of Lunar Island. When normal channels don't work in the slightest to help stop the plague, Nedra turns to necromancy to find the cure.

Let's start with the characters. I am definitely a character driven reader and I feel like the characters in this book kind of left a lot to be desired. I don't feel like I really knew any of the characters in this book. Nedra has such a single minded focus on researching the plague and trying to find a cure that it doesn't feel like there is anything else to her personality. When she is with her family or reminiscing on things she did with her family, she definitely feels like more of a whole person, but the times in this book where she gets to be with her family are so scarce that it doesn't really matter.

The other POV character (and the love interest) is Grey. He is also kind of a boring character and I also feel like I don't really know anything about him. I know he doesn't really want to be anything like his father. And that's really all I could tell you about him.

There are a couple other characters I want to talk about. One is Grey's friend Tomus. I think he's actually like his cousin or something. From Nedra's first day in Yugen, he has something against her and is always mean to her. I feel like the only reason he doesn't like her is because she's poor and because she didn't know where everyone sat when she first showed up to class. And he is just kinda vicious to her every time he sees her and there really isn't ever a reason. Nothing ever comes of it so it feels completely pointless to include him being SO rude at every turn? Maybe something will come of it in the future of the series? I don't know.

Finally, the villain. I will admit that I was reading this book fairly late into the night when I figured out who the real villain was in the book so I might have forgotten, but I don't remember if the book ever stated their motivation for why they were doing what they were doing? Maybe it was related to the rebellion against the Empire that seemed to be gaining steam (but also didn't feel very important to me in this book?). I don't remember, I don't usually stay up that late reading.

Now, let's move onto the romance. It definitely felt like instalove and I honestly don't know what Nedra and Grey saw in each other? Their relationship just felt weird to me. They don't really ever seem to learn anything about each other or know anything about each other? I don't know why they like each other. I literally did not care one bit about the romance.

Other things I noticed, I have absolutely no idea how much time passed in this book. I think that kind of quite a bit of time may have gone by, but it didn't really feel like that long? 

Regarding the plague, it shows all these people dying of the plague and mentions that people CAN survive it, but I feel like there is one random person that is mentioned that survived it and they're not an important character. I feel like there should have been more people that survived. Also, it seems like sometimes people can have this plague and last AGES, other people seem to be almost fine one minute and dead the next. I don't know, it just didn't feel consistent??

Okay, and here is the last thing that I can think of that I don't know if I really liked. I have only read two other stories that deal with necromancy, but I feel like I didn't really like how Nedra viewed the people she raised? Granted, she only raises people that want to come back, but it seems like she views them as her property. ***Spoiler-y content (highlight to view): I think that when she raises the dead, they still have their souls, but when her sister dies and she's trying to finish her iron crucible, she accidentally uses her sister's soul as a sacrifice to create it. So when she raises her sister's body, that's all it is. It's basically just a body that she can control and heal through alchemy. It feels selfish to me that she would keep her sister's empty shell around like that. I didn't like that.*** I guess all of this could just be the extent of necromancy in this world, but in the other stories that I know of, the dead still have some kind of autonomy. But in this story, like they can roam around and what not, but when she wants to, Nedra can control them like robots programmed to do her bidding as she wills.

I am interested to see where this series will go because I did enjoy the story. I just feel like there needs to be a lot more. I need to know more about the characters and their motivations. I feel like the only basis for a sequel is a weak rebellion brewing and the fact that Nedra won't return from the dark side now that the plague is figured out because she got a taste of necromancy and doesn't want to give it up. But dang it, I want to know what Nedra is going to do with her army of plague victims.

Have you read this book yet? What did you think of it?