Launch: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

On Friday night I was fortunate enough to attend the Melbourne launch of Nevernight, the newest offering from Jay Kristoff.

I'll be posting a review on Reading Lark next week, so I won't go into details but briefly, this is the story of Mia Corvere, whose family was destroyed for political reasons, leading to her vowing revenge. Mia trains as an assassin at the Red Church, the fiercest killers in the world, in order to take down those who executed her father and imprisoned her mother. First, she just has to survive the training.

Let's start with the cover. This is a thing of beauty. Those three coloured circles are more than that, they're the three suns that circle Mia's world.

If you look closely, the crow is not just a crow, you can see a cat, a noose, a phial of poison, a barrel, a dagger and so many other elements of the story. It really is magnificently done and represents the story beautifully. Well done to the cover artist and designer.

So to the launching bit. Jay spoke about the book and thanked those involved in its development.

Then this awesome cake was cut and we all got a slice. Check out @cakeandmadness who made it. It tasted as good as it looked.

And once the massive line had died down, I managed to get my copy signed. Apparently there are some differences between the review copy from St Martins and this copy published by HarperVoyager, so I'm looking forward to reading it again and seeing the differences.

 And here is my signed beauty.

My next book related event will be the Melbourne Writer's Festival next month. It's great to live in a city with so much going on.