Midnight Lie

The city is divided between the ruling High Kith, the serving Middling class, and the Half Kith who remain walled in a ghetto. The Half Kith live under strict rules with the guards at liberty to take tithes from them for the smallest infraction; belongings, hair, eyes, blood…

Nirrim knows to keep her head down and follow the rules. Except when it comes to her talent for perfect memory which allows her to forge passports for Half Kith, allowing people to escape beyond the wall. She doesn’t herself escape, knowing she has a duty to help others in the city.

Eventually, she finds herself in cahoots with a traveller from a land that should not exist. Sid is a charming, rakish womaniser. She convinces Nirrim to help her uncover rumours the High Kith have magic and they explore the world beyond the Half Kith wall into the high society of an island that seems to willingly forget its own history.

I felt very drawn to both the characters here Nirrim is very relatable for anyone who has always put their own happiness behind the needs of others and Sid is certainly someone trapped by other people’s perceptions & expectations of them. She’s also hilarious and I certainly wouldn’t mind her fleeting affections… The romance is certainly charming and the world-building fascinating for the history, the Greek-style god drama and the lies a society learns to recite to get by or enjoy its privilege. 

The world in THE MIDNIGHT LIE revolves around a caste and class system that divides its people: At the top is the High Kith, for whom life revolves around decadent pleasure, luxuries and flamboyance. They know no hardships and are content in basking in the scent of perfumes and the taste of drugs that induce visions and experiences akin to magic. On the second tier are the Middlings, those who cater to the High Kith but aren’t without their own comforts. The Middlings have a geographical section of society dedicated to their own property and lifestyles, able to amass their wealth in the hopes of getting in with the High Kith crowd. And then there’s the Half Kith, of whom our protagonist, Nirrim, is one. The Half Kith form the lowest tier of these three classes, only above those called the Un-Kith – those without a home or any kind of standing in society, performing the most derogatory of tasks and fading into the grime and dark, unnoticed.

"It is what it is" is the mantra deeply interwoven into the society and mindsets of the people. There’s no room for question here, no particular need to wonder why and how things came to be. And when asked about the past, about how things were different before, there is no before, no way of knowing when the rules came in place, why the High Kith are who they are or why the Half Kith are made to live within the Ward, prohibited from entering the Middling or High Kith zones and separated by a wall that keeps them within their designated area.

However, there are hints of there being something more, something that doesn’t fit in with the perception of the world that Nirrim has formed, the perception that has been formed for her. There are rumours of gods having once roamed the land, images that flash before her eyes like forgotten memories, hints that these are actually remnants of the past, glimpses into a world that used to be – and to top it all off, a magnificent Elysium bird that catches everyone’s eye circles the city, its feathers glinting red.

Nirrim’s voice is clear and distinct, the character development steady and gripping. Torn between wanting to stay with the status quo that she’s known her whole life and the doubts that keep creeping into her mind along with a need for adventure, an itch for more, Nirrim’s character is one you will hold your breath for, get into a murderous rage for, fervently turning the pages to see how her story will progress.

The plot picks up when Nirrim meets the nefarious and adventurous Sid, who shrouds her identity in mystery, wears her passion for seducing women like a cape. Sid calls herself a traveller and has all the markings of a High Kith in her manner of being, ability to open doors and get her way, and she introduces Nirrim to a brand new world, a new way of thinking, of questioning all that she’s been told to believe in. Sid holds a lot of secrets and allows Nirrim her own, their stories interwoven with rays of possibilities, passions and hidden insecurities.

Rutkoski’s prose is gorgeous, layered with vivid imagery, beauty, and a careful choice of words, building up the world and characters with deliberate accuracy, shedding light on their vulnerabilities and personalities. With the Half Kith, we see a class of people desperate for their own identity, one that isn’t woven in with their duties to the higher classes, grasping onto every sliver of independence they can get. But always within the window offered to them. After all, it is what it is.

As Nirrim begins to take steps towards understanding herself and her true place in this world, it is not only the system around her that seems to disintegrate, revealing deceit and unexpected horrors, but also her personal standing with her adoptive mother Raven – a hard taskmaster who goes from hot to cold in the blink of an eye, one second lifting a hand against her so-called surrogate daughter and stating her undying love the next. Nirrim journeys through this world with Sid, beginning to distinguishing reality from falsehoods, hard evidence helping the pieces fall together; and in her personal life, going from accepting Raven’s possessive and manipulative countenance to standing on her own two feet.

Marie Rutkoski unravels each part of Nirrim’s life and growth with sensitivity and tenderness, making my heart ache along each step of the way. Nirrim’s character is so well-developed that it’s hard to not root for her along her journey, especially with each piece of her life that’s shattered before she can put them back together the right way. The ending came as a huge surprise as well, going down a path that I did not expect, and it was refreshingly suspenseful, making me eager for the next book in this two-part series.

I relished every word in THE MIDNIGHT LIE and highly recommend it for anyone looking for some adventure, fantasy, and multi-dimensional LGBTQ+ characters.

[For the full, unabridged review, check out my blog; link in profile.]

I loved this while I was reading it, and now that I've put it down I'm torn between wanting the sequel, and not trusting that the sequel will be satisfying given how this book ended and some other issues which I'll discuss. Firstly, what this book is: THE MIDNIGHT LIE is a sapphic story of moments of happiness amid oppression and abuse in a fantasy setting. It's about loving small joys and good things for their transience, not in spite of it. It's a heartbreakingly relatable portrayal of trauma bonding, abuse, and betrayal, piling small cruelties atop systemic injustices in a setting where escape isn't enough. 

One thing this does very well is show what gaslighting can look like in a way that gently and persistently provides a series of outside voices to counter the narrative being fed to the main character by her abuser. Her protests of this person's goodness and faithfulness become smaller and smaller until she finally has to decide what to do with the information she has been given. It begins subtly and slowly builds in a way that makes it a useful example of how insidious the abuse is and how much her abuser is controlling her understanding of reality, beginning when she was a much younger kid. As much as it muddles the message a little, I'm glad that the people trying to point out the one person's abuse aren't paragons themselves, that's especially important because it stop the main character from just switching which character has her undying loyalty. 

I like how queer this is but please don't pitch it to anyone as a sapphic romance. It's sapphic, there is a romance, but the combination of traits implied by that conjoined phrase is not representative of this book. So much of the emotional core in THE MIDNIGHT LIE revolves around whether and how to trust untrustworthy people, whether they can't be trusted because they're personally cruel, they're not powerful enough to provide protection from the system, or they're impermanent and nothing and no one lasts forever. This commentary on untrustworthiness and betrayal makes for a fascinating book but an emotionally fraught romance. I'm also concerned about possible biphobia transphobia from some interactions with the love interest. The words the love interest chooses when expressing jealousy are suspiciously similar to some biphobic and transphobic talking points and it was uncomfortable to read, waiting to figure out whether the character was bigoted or just insecure and using bigoted language to convey those feelings. I think it's more the second one, but I remain unsure. 

The end-of-book revelations about the truth of the setting worked well and made things make sense but I hate the decision that the main character made with that information. I don't know what she should have done instead given what she learned, but I hope the sequel takes the consequences of her choice seriously and doesn't treat it flippantly. I want it fixed but I don't want it cheapened by being handled too quickly.