Book Review: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi

Rating: ???

Hey everybody. This is going to be a little different from my normal Book Review posts because to be totally honest with you guys, I didn't finish the book. I'll tell you why later on, but it's the reason I didn't give Beasts Made of Night a rating. You all know I don't like to bash, and I didn't think it was fair to rate a book I didn't finish. Alright, on to the review.

Overview: Taj literally holds the weight of the world on his shoulders, because being an aki means he is forced to eat the sins of the city's royalty to keep them pure. Sins take the form of inky beasts, beasts that Taj and his fellow aki have to kill, then eat, a process which covers their bodies in dark tattoos. These markings make Taj an outsider, even among the poorest people in the city. One day, he's brought in to eat a sin for the king, supposedly the purest man in existence. His efforts are rewarded with a new life in the lap of luxury, but Taj starts to realize there's more going behind the palace walls than he ever wanted to know.

As a Reader: So as a reader, I saw the cover-summary for this book and said dang, sin eating? That's cool. And it WAS cool. Really cool. The concept and the way the author described the actual process of eating sin were both done super well. The world-building that went along with this idea of sin beasts, and mages, and pure royalty was beautiful too. But that's where my enjoyment with this book stopped. I didn't connect with the main character, Taj. I'm not sure why. Maybe because he felt a bit too much like the character cliché of a hero who doesn't want to be a hero. He didn't seem to have any flaws that I could latch onto and appreciate, and because of the hero thing, his actions felt too predictable. The plot also felt a bit slow. And when I'm super busy (which is all the time), it's hard to keep picking up a book with a plot that isn't holding my attention. I was able to stay with the story up until just after Taj is invited to live at the palace. Then he meets the princess (who is beautiful and perfect in every way) and falls in love with her instantly. That was pretty much the point when I said, well, that's it. I'm done. Unfortunately, the amazing world-building just wasn't enough to make up for the other things in the book I had a hard time with, like cliché characters and a plot that just seemed to jump around too much.

As a Writer: From a writer's perspective, Beasts Made of Night really just rammed home something I've always believed about a good story, that characters are EVERYTHING. If they feel flat, cliché, or unrelatable, the reader is probably going to lose interest regardless of how good the world-building is. It doesn't matter if I can write scene descriptions like a goddess (I can't) if my characters are flavorless walking tofu zombies. But here's the thing, making characters relatable is REALLY hard. Maybe because readers are all so different. It's like trying to design the perfect love interest in a book. How do you make a character that all readers find attractive? Um, news flash, you can't. Since every reader is unique and has different tastes, you can't make one perfect character that satisfies everybody. I think I'll write a different blog post about this actually. I may have a better understanding of what makes a character work if I try to explain my character creation process to you guys. You might find it helpful and you might think well this is garbage. But hey, I'll give it a try. Putting my thoughts on paper helps me too, so at least one person will get something out of a character-based blog post.

So what do you guys think? Have you read Beasts Made of Night? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Tell me why in the comments. Better yet, convince me to finish it!