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Nigh #1
Nigh - Book 1
A disappearing watch. A thief in the night. Whispers around every corner...
Then a mist rolls into town and refuses to dissipate.
Alva Viola Taverner has lived in her small town all of her life, working as a car tech while saving for her little sister to go to university. But everything is about to change as the veil between our world and the world of the faeries weakens and falls.
Suddenly, even the smallest bump in the night can prove the deadliest.
**This is the first installment of a serialized novel
AURORA AWARDS NOTE: If you're reading this to prepare your nominations slate, please note that all five serialized parts create the full novel marked as eligible in the Aurora Awards. (Nigh 1-5). Happy reading!
Then a mist rolls into town and refuses to dissipate.
Alva Viola Taverner has lived in her small town all of her life, working as a car tech while saving for her little sister to go to university. But everything is about to change as the veil between our world and the world of the faeries weakens and falls.
Suddenly, even the smallest bump in the night can prove the deadliest.
**This is the first installment of a serialized novel
AURORA AWARDS NOTE: If you're reading this to prepare your nominations slate, please note that all five serialized parts create the full novel marked as eligible in the Aurora Awards. (Nigh 1-5). Happy reading!
98 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2015
37 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Marie Bilodeau
52 books69 followersMarie Bilodeau is an award-winning science-fiction, fantasy and horror writer. She has been nominated four times for Canada's most prestigious science-fiction literary award, the Aurora Award, for both her novels and her short stories.
Marie is also a performing storyteller. She's told stories to a wide variety of audiences in theatre houses, tea shops, schools, bars and under disco balls. Find out more at www.mariebilodeau.com.
Marie is also a performing storyteller. She's told stories to a wide variety of audiences in theatre houses, tea shops, schools, bars and under disco balls. Find out more at www.mariebilodeau.com.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 30, 2015
Once upon a time, there were no more happy endings...
So reads the tagline on the front cover of author Marie Bilodeau's new novella, Nigh, which released yesterday. And people, she's not kidding. At 57 pages long, Nigh is the first segment in a serialized novel about two worlds colliding: ours, and that of the fae.
What I liked about it
Nigh is not your run-of-the-mill fairy story, my friends. It's dark, dangerous, and more than just a little terrifying--and it more than justifies its "dark fantasy/horror" designation. The story pulled me in from the very first page and didn't once let go. There's a soothing, almost seductive quality to Marie's writing that lulls you into a sense of ordinariness, only to slam you with a new and rapidly changing reality that leaves you as breathless and reeling as the characters...over and over and over. Marie doesn't gloss over anything, so details are vivid and graphic, and despite the fantasy aspect, they feel scarily real.
What I didn't like about it
Um...nope. I got nothin'. I really can't think of anything I didn't like about this, apart from the fact that I have to wait for the next installment... *taps foot impatiently and raises eyebrow in Marie's direction*
Final thoughts
If you're a fan of darker fantasy and/or horror, I cannot recommend this highly enough. Even if it will leave you waiting and wanting. Seriously. Go. Buy it now. You can thank me later. ;)
So reads the tagline on the front cover of author Marie Bilodeau's new novella, Nigh, which released yesterday. And people, she's not kidding. At 57 pages long, Nigh is the first segment in a serialized novel about two worlds colliding: ours, and that of the fae.
What I liked about it
Nigh is not your run-of-the-mill fairy story, my friends. It's dark, dangerous, and more than just a little terrifying--and it more than justifies its "dark fantasy/horror" designation. The story pulled me in from the very first page and didn't once let go. There's a soothing, almost seductive quality to Marie's writing that lulls you into a sense of ordinariness, only to slam you with a new and rapidly changing reality that leaves you as breathless and reeling as the characters...over and over and over. Marie doesn't gloss over anything, so details are vivid and graphic, and despite the fantasy aspect, they feel scarily real.
What I didn't like about it
Um...nope. I got nothin'. I really can't think of anything I didn't like about this, apart from the fact that I have to wait for the next installment... *taps foot impatiently and raises eyebrow in Marie's direction*
Final thoughts
If you're a fan of darker fantasy and/or horror, I cannot recommend this highly enough. Even if it will leave you waiting and wanting. Seriously. Go. Buy it now. You can thank me later. ;)
January 29, 2015
First of all, a confession: I'm already a big fan of Marie's and love her writing, having read her first two trilogies (Heirs of a Broken Land and Destiny). She writes the kind of books that I can't put down and end up devouring in a weekend, then jonesing for the next installment. Her characters are compelling, and often feature driven women with ample spunk, but no matter how small a roll a character plays they are written with real dept and will draw you in.
There's plenty that's different about Nigh - the fantasy and space opera settings are traded in for something more contemporary and also entirely more sinister – but Marie's craft holds true no matter what she's writing.
Alva is a determined and independent young woman who cares deeply about her family. But when the veil between worlds thin, she finds herself in over her head and must trust a thief to keep herself and those closest to her safe in a world they no longer understand.
Nigh comes out on a strong start with interesting characters and high stakes, and Marie clearly has a lot more in store for Alva and her friends. Can they band together and stay alive, or will the world of the faeries run them over? Only time will tell.
There's plenty that's different about Nigh - the fantasy and space opera settings are traded in for something more contemporary and also entirely more sinister – but Marie's craft holds true no matter what she's writing.
Alva is a determined and independent young woman who cares deeply about her family. But when the veil between worlds thin, she finds herself in over her head and must trust a thief to keep herself and those closest to her safe in a world they no longer understand.
Nigh comes out on a strong start with interesting characters and high stakes, and Marie clearly has a lot more in store for Alva and her friends. Can they band together and stay alive, or will the world of the faeries run them over? Only time will tell.
February 10, 2019
(This is technically part 1 of a serial, so it’s short and ends on a cliffhanger)
Just before her opening shift at the car repair shop, Alva pulls out her great-grandmother’s watch to repair it. But before she gets too far on her project, she gets distracted and on returning finds someone trying to steal it. The thief runs off, and so begins the weirdest day Alva has ever had, starting with a weird mist rolling into town. She takes off with a team of her co-workers to rescue stranded cars, only to find that all the people have vanished and monsters populate the mist. The thief returns telling them that Alva’s watch is the key to stopping the mist, and it must be fixed.
Though this is imaginative, it did feel like it had borrowed from multiple other stories (the mist that made people vanish and monsters appear was straight out of Stephen King’s The Mist, specifically it reminded me of the scene where the family takes to their car near the end of the movie and the water turning into horses was right out of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and the scene were the woman was ballroom dancing with a fairy gentlemen was right out of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and the woman turning into a tree was from the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne.) I did love the dream-like quality to the entire story, though it did feel rather disjointed in that there was no real explanation for why things were happening other than a general blanket explanation of the fairy-world taking over and there was no explanation for why things were happening now. The watch had stopped working quite a few decades ago and there was certainly no explanation for why the watch would stop things from happening other than it would. Alva was a fun character. She’s a strong heroine, not afraid to defend herself and others from threats with her gigantic wrench, and she handled the situation well, and there were fun other characters along for the ride other than just the heroine. While I liked the feel of the story and the characters, the story itself wasn’t really holding together enough to make me want to continue on with the serial.
Just before her opening shift at the car repair shop, Alva pulls out her great-grandmother’s watch to repair it. But before she gets too far on her project, she gets distracted and on returning finds someone trying to steal it. The thief runs off, and so begins the weirdest day Alva has ever had, starting with a weird mist rolling into town. She takes off with a team of her co-workers to rescue stranded cars, only to find that all the people have vanished and monsters populate the mist. The thief returns telling them that Alva’s watch is the key to stopping the mist, and it must be fixed.
Though this is imaginative, it did feel like it had borrowed from multiple other stories (the mist that made people vanish and monsters appear was straight out of Stephen King’s The Mist, specifically it reminded me of the scene where the family takes to their car near the end of the movie and the water turning into horses was right out of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and the scene were the woman was ballroom dancing with a fairy gentlemen was right out of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and the woman turning into a tree was from the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne.) I did love the dream-like quality to the entire story, though it did feel rather disjointed in that there was no real explanation for why things were happening other than a general blanket explanation of the fairy-world taking over and there was no explanation for why things were happening now. The watch had stopped working quite a few decades ago and there was certainly no explanation for why the watch would stop things from happening other than it would. Alva was a fun character. She’s a strong heroine, not afraid to defend herself and others from threats with her gigantic wrench, and she handled the situation well, and there were fun other characters along for the ride other than just the heroine. While I liked the feel of the story and the characters, the story itself wasn’t really holding together enough to make me want to continue on with the serial.
December 18, 2020
I read all five instalments in this serialized book in one go, and so the following is a review for the story as a whole:
I quite liked Nigh! Definitely different from your usual fae stories in a lot of ways, and much darker than I was anticipating when I first picked up the book. Nigh follows Al, a mechanic, as she struggles to deal with the veil between the human and fae worlds falling.
The thing that stands out to me about this story, aside from the frequently vivd and lovely descriptions, is the unexpectedness of it. I was never quite sure where the story was going to go next, never certain where we were going to end up. This had a destabilizing effect that I think mostly worked - the characters, of course, were similarly destabilized throughout the story.
In the end, I was satisfied by both the journey and the resolution, and the way that the various threads were tied up, though I was definitely worried for a little bit there that I wouldn’t be! I could honestly have read much more of this - I’m fascinated by the combination of human/fae world, and would have loved to se a lot more of how that world functioned.
I quite liked Nigh! Definitely different from your usual fae stories in a lot of ways, and much darker than I was anticipating when I first picked up the book. Nigh follows Al, a mechanic, as she struggles to deal with the veil between the human and fae worlds falling.
The thing that stands out to me about this story, aside from the frequently vivd and lovely descriptions, is the unexpectedness of it. I was never quite sure where the story was going to go next, never certain where we were going to end up. This had a destabilizing effect that I think mostly worked - the characters, of course, were similarly destabilized throughout the story.
In the end, I was satisfied by both the journey and the resolution, and the way that the various threads were tied up, though I was definitely worried for a little bit there that I wouldn’t be! I could honestly have read much more of this - I’m fascinated by the combination of human/fae world, and would have loved to se a lot more of how that world functioned.
January 28, 2018
I read this as part of my quest to get some of the shorter things off my to-read list and actually feel like I was making a bit of progress on it. Thankfully, it's free on Kindle, which was a nice surprise. An even better surprise was that it's well-written and pretty tightly plotted. However, I didn't really find it compelling either. I didn't form any attachment to any of the characters, and it took me almost a month to read this itty-bitty thing. I just didn't feel compelled it pick it up. There's not much to pinpoint as lacking, but I never got drawn in. And thanks to the format of the story, I will be leaving this story where it ends. This is a story that's sold in five parts, so although this installment ends without a terrible cliffhanger, the story is by no means complete. If I'd had the entire story in front of me, I probably would have continued and read the whole thing. But since I did not, and since this first part didn't really grab me, I think I'm going to count this as a good effort, but not for me.
December 9, 2015
Bilodeau’s title, “Nigh”, speaks to now-ness, a sense of the impending, but also, being a word that is rarely used in common parlance, evokes an old-timely quality, speaking to the past. It is a title that suggests a clashing of ideas about time, and Nigh, dealing with fairies, creatures who in myth alter time causing people to age hundreds of years in a night, evokes an idea of time clashing and past and present uncomfortably overlapping. The central image of this work is a watch, an object that promises a regulation and easy understanding of time. But this watch is different from what one would expect from a watch. As a family heirloom passed down through the generations and an object that has been the centre of family storytelling, this watch embodies memory, history, and myths – family legends told for generations. It’s position as a link between past and present may make it a key to understanding what is happening with the world as the fairies enter back into our world.
Marie Bilodeau explores the power of fairies to disrupt expectations, as figures who challenge the fixed, scientific, unchanging, rules-oriented way that we view reality. Fairies are figures that invert our expectations, play with our belief in ‘normalcy’ and illustrate to us that our world IS fundamentally topsy turvy, no matter how much we try to think of it as a place governed by understandable rules. The fairies of Nigh, like those of our myths invert the expectations of reality, assumptions about the assuredness of solid ground, materiality. Bilodeau takes away the sense of stability about our world, taking away our sense of the firmness of our world as the landscape becomes porous, allowing in something different, something both familiar and strange.
This is a tale of uncertainty that challenges our comforts about a world that is ours and instead reveals to us that this world has always been something that contains an Other.
To read a longer version of my review, visit my website at http://speculatingcanada.ca/2015/03/0...
Marie Bilodeau explores the power of fairies to disrupt expectations, as figures who challenge the fixed, scientific, unchanging, rules-oriented way that we view reality. Fairies are figures that invert our expectations, play with our belief in ‘normalcy’ and illustrate to us that our world IS fundamentally topsy turvy, no matter how much we try to think of it as a place governed by understandable rules. The fairies of Nigh, like those of our myths invert the expectations of reality, assumptions about the assuredness of solid ground, materiality. Bilodeau takes away the sense of stability about our world, taking away our sense of the firmness of our world as the landscape becomes porous, allowing in something different, something both familiar and strange.
This is a tale of uncertainty that challenges our comforts about a world that is ours and instead reveals to us that this world has always been something that contains an Other.
To read a longer version of my review, visit my website at http://speculatingcanada.ca/2015/03/0...
November 18, 2019
I'm being generous with the third star: it's somewhere between a two and a three. This isn't something that I'd have read while it was being serialized, but if it were then I'd have stopped with this book. I actually have the omnibus edition so I'll finish the whole thing off, but I'm rating them as I go along. It's not that this is bad, it's just that I don't really find the characters that believable or interesting. There's enough development of the main character and her relationships to the other characters that it works, but Al just doesn't seem that realistic to me. And the story is mostly just chaos through this book. The descriptions of that chaos are strong but it mostly doesn't make sense at this point. There are definitely places it can go, but I really would have needed more of a hint as to what's going on to hold my attention. As things develop in the later books I may revise my opinions.
*Addendum* Having finished the five books, I think that Bilodeau is great at painting imagery with words, be it horrific, magical, or beautiful. And she did come up with a nice story. She just didn't do a good enough job of building the world or the people in it to really make me care. Relationships and characters that are explained at the beginning seemed flat to me. I was able to get into the relationships that are built within the novel with new characters, but it took until book 3 for me to find the world interesting and book 4 was the first where I actually cared about the people. The overall novel -- all five books together -- comes out as three stars because of the strength of the last two books (though I found the ending a little flat). It could have been so much more, but there was enough good in the last bit of it to make the time invested in the first two books worth it.
*Addendum* Having finished the five books, I think that Bilodeau is great at painting imagery with words, be it horrific, magical, or beautiful. And she did come up with a nice story. She just didn't do a good enough job of building the world or the people in it to really make me care. Relationships and characters that are explained at the beginning seemed flat to me. I was able to get into the relationships that are built within the novel with new characters, but it took until book 3 for me to find the world interesting and book 4 was the first where I actually cared about the people. The overall novel -- all five books together -- comes out as three stars because of the strength of the last two books (though I found the ending a little flat). It could have been so much more, but there was enough good in the last bit of it to make the time invested in the first two books worth it.
May 23, 2016
So this book was...weird...
***2.75/5 Stars***
I don't even know what to make of this book. It's definitely a page-turner. And there's a lot of...well, not...exactly gore, but...death...? Which I was not expecting. The writing is pretty decent. Nothing really gets explained in this book, but I would assume you would find out more if you read the rest of the series. It's a quick read, and the kind of book that keeps you glued to the pages for sure. But if you're not a huge fan of an excessive amount of dead bodies and disturbing stuff being thrown in for no apparent reason (*points to self*) you might want to skip this one. Just a heads up.
I wanted to give this book a full 3 stars, I really did, but it just weirded me out and I can't quite bring myself to do so.
***2.75/5 Stars***
I don't even know what to make of this book. It's definitely a page-turner. And there's a lot of...well, not...exactly gore, but...death...? Which I was not expecting. The writing is pretty decent. Nothing really gets explained in this book, but I would assume you would find out more if you read the rest of the series. It's a quick read, and the kind of book that keeps you glued to the pages for sure. But if you're not a huge fan of an excessive amount of dead bodies and disturbing stuff being thrown in for no apparent reason (*points to self*) you might want to skip this one. Just a heads up.
I wanted to give this book a full 3 stars, I really did, but it just weirded me out and I can't quite bring myself to do so.
May 8, 2015
With Nigh, Bilodeau provides an intriguing and enticing inroduction to a modern fantasy rooted in classic storytelling conventions. For those interested in reading a serialized story, it promises to be an interesting story experience.
For a more detailed review, visit https://northerntomorrows.wordpress.c...
For a more detailed review, visit https://northerntomorrows.wordpress.c...
March 5, 2015
Wow, wasn't sure what to expect, but this blew me away. The story jumps in, and doesn't stop, I know there is a part two coming out soon, but I want it now!
Marie, has written a great story, the characters are real, and the danger is scary.
Marie, has written a great story, the characters are real, and the danger is scary.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews