The Keeper of Night: ARC Review

by Kylie Lee Baker

Rating: 3.5/5 ☀️

First of all, apologies for such a late review. The grad school workload makes it difficult to get much reading done, let alone reviews. Now that I’m on break, I’m just catching up on everything I missed before. Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

To get into it – The Keeper of Night was an enthralling fantasy adventure full of lush descriptions and amazing worldbuilding. The mythology was gorgeously rendered, and the way it intertwined with the historical setting was so well done. It was a unique take on a villain origin story and corruption arc, and admittedly I came away feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the execution, but I can not deny that it was a pretty great reading experience.

I loved the journey aspect of the book, and how the way the reaper/shinigami realms were described. The quest and the mythology of the kitsune and other creatures were also really strong. And then there was Neven, who absolutely won my heart. I loved him as a character so much in terms of what he represented for Ren and how his character developed.

Hiro is a point of conflict for me. At the beginning, he came across as rather boring. Ren was just so ready to take him at his word and the perspective of him is so rose-tinted that even though I knew he probably had some ulterior motive, he just was not inciting much of a reaction from me. Even the romantic chemistry was lacking. However, when the reveal happened, I was so, so excited. I went from hoping he would die to wanting to read more of him. Unfortunately, it happened quite far into the book, and then it was cut off before I could even enjoy it. The pacing at the end was a real weak point, as the last few chapters shoved so much in there and it was so rushed. It honestly felt like it should have been in the sequel. 

The bigger issue, though, was just Ren herself. I can accept terrible choices made over the course of a corruption arc, but she was unlikable from the start in a way that makes it really difficult to feel bad for her. She seemed edgy for the sake of establishing her darkness, but I didn’t necessarily see her as any worse than the other reapers or shinigami since everyone was just doing their job. It made me pretty annoyed and it was difficult to be sympathetic for her beyond getting her feelings as an outsider, especially with how she treated Neven. 

Still, the book even missed the mark in its approach to Ren’s mixed heritage and the conflict it created. Ren was just strangely haughty regarding her heritage, and while I understood her desire to belong somewhere, there were a number of moments where it felt like she saw herself as superior to the other shinigami. I found myself thinking about it in terms of my own identity: I’m ethnically South Asian, and while I am not mixed, I grew up in the United States and I would never presume to know better than people who live in India, nor do I expect them to see me as the same as them because I know I am not. It’s not better, it just is. However, the narrative not only upholds Ren’s superiority, but affirms it as she becomes the new goddess for a world she is barely a part of, and I hope I misread, but it seemed to have an imperialistic savior implication. 

So yeah, it was a conflicting read for me. I’m somewhat at a loss, because where it worked, it really worked, and where it didn’t work, it really didn’t work. Personally, I’m undecided whether I want to read the eventual sequel, but I think this is another book where readers might have to decide for themselves.