A Review of Tara Sim’s The Midnight Kingdom (Orbit, 2023)

Posted by: lsobiesk

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Lizzy Sobiesk

Ah, so now I am reviewing Tara Sim’s The Midnight Kingdom (Orbit, 2023), which is the second installment in the Dark Gods series. The marketing description for this one is far more robust, which I appreciate, but there is also a lot more plot in this second book, so I’m not surprised: “A cataclysmic battle to save the city of Nexus has left the four noble heirs scattered across the realms. Taesia, the shadow-wielding rebel of House Lastrider, and Nikolas, the reluctant soldier of House Cyr, have been cast into Noctus, the realm of eternal night. But they are not alone. The dangerous and unpredictable god of light has traveled with them, and he will do anything in his power to destroy Noctus in his bid for cosmic control.  Risha, the peacekeeping necromancer of House Vakara, must navigate her way through Mortri, the realm of death. But still she cannot help the wayward spirits, nor does she have any idea how to return home. All she knows is that no mortal can survive for long in Mortri. And the creatures that prowl the realm of death don't take kindly to the living. Angelica, the stubborn elementalist of House Mardova, is on her own in Vitae, trying to keep Nexus from unraveling. But Angelica secretly suffers from an illness that her god left in her veins. And when she is sent on a delicate diplomatic mission, she knows that any weakness will have disastrous repercussions for her family, her kingdom, and her dreams of the throne. All will encounter old friends and new enemies as they attempt to restore the balance of the universe. But the gods grow stronger. And their descendants will need more than their magic and their wits to survive the war that is coming…” 

 

I’m going to start off with my critique first, just because I was in a bad way for a good 350 pages of this novel. And let me be clear: Sim’s worldbuilding is meticulous and complex, so there’s much to praise, but I need to let out my feelings haha! In any case, there is that one season of Stranger Things, where the “Scooby gang,” is essentially all separated for the most of that period. You desperately want them back together, partly because their interactions are fun, and their snarkiness is partly what drew you to them in the first place. Such is also the case with this novel, which seems almost more like 4 novels mashed into one. Whereas the prior novel did suffer somewhat from the shifting third person perspective, this one has the extra added complication of the fact that the characters can rarely interact with one another. Sim does have one major trick up her sleeve to help mollify readers who want these different storylines to intersect more often: Brailee, who can use her dreams to contact people in other realms. Because we have four sustained plots of equal weight, readers are sometimes in the position of finding themselves liking one of those storylines more than the others. In my case, because Risha’s storyline in the underworld was so separated from all of the others, I found myself impatient to get through her sections. Then, the weight of some storylines seemed more hefty than others. Dante, Brailee, and Saya find themselves in Seniza trying to track down their rogue Aunt, who had been a major problem in the first novel. They seek to find a way to generate a portal to another realm that would allow them perhaps to connect with Taesia, Julian, and Nikolas. This storyline didn’t have the same urgency as the one involving Taesia, Julian, and Nikolas, who are stuck in Noctus together, and who have the extra added weight of constantly having to fight a god, while also hoping to save that realm from annihilation. Now that my quibbles have been revealed, I want to end on an unequivocally positive note: the concluding sequence is a smash. So much going on, so much action, that you wonder how the last 150 pages might look on an IMAX screen. You have wyverns and other flying creatures, humans with superpowers fighting gods, and the universal emotions like love and grief that stir us to make such difficult choices and decisions. The conclusion to this one seemed to leave fewer loose ends than the first, so it’ll be very interesting to see exactly where Sim goes with the last book. I’ll certainly be there!

 

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