Review: A Myth to the Night
A Myth to the Night: Parts I-V by Cora Choi
My rating: [rating=3]
Summary:
Once home to the illustrious Order of the Crane — guardians of the world’s myths and legends — Stauros Island, now in the hands of the Order of the Shrike, is an elite university whose students are guaranteed positions of power upon graduating.
However, a dark curse hangs over the island: students are disappearing. The school officials declare it the work of a demon, and blame Hugh Fogg — a young monk of the Order of the Crane who died 400 years earlier.
Could the spirit of a young man who died in 1615 come back to haunt an island and terrorize its students? If so, for what purpose? A Myth to the Night is Hugh’s story and his struggle to see his mission complete.
Review:
(I got a copy from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)
While this novel had its flaws, I nevertheless enjoyed it for some of the ideas it brought forth and for its half-dystopian, half-anachronistic atmosphere. The latter might be a deterrent to some, as it’s quite peculiar, but overall I liked it.
The story itself partly reads as a myth, with its cast of characters born from legends. After all the books about them were destroyed, they came to exist as “phantoms” on Stauros Island, striving to tell people at night about who they had been and what symbols and values they were meant to embody. The descriptions given of these people/heroes/creatures, as well as of their surroundings on the island, lent the novel quite a magical feeling.
I also liked the idea of an evil sect controlling the world through fear and systematic destruction of old tales and knowledge, so that people wouldn’t have anything to turn to, and would more easily allow themselves to be ruled. The sect’s role was a bit far-fetched and one-dimensional, in a “big villain” way, but on the other hand, it also had echoes of secret societies born from wealthy frats, or of a New World Order of some kind—people educated at Stauros are groomed to be the rich and powerful of this world, complete with signets revealing their belonging to the Order of the Shrike. This definitely wasn’t uninteresting.
On the downside, some parts were somewhat muddled and slow, and could lead to questioning the world-building if one thinks about it too much. Some aspects were clearly simplistic and/or too manichean or predictable. If you’re looking for solid world-building, these flaws will quickly become manifest. If you choose to read A Myth to the Night as a kind of myth itself, then it’s less of a problem.