Nightfall

Hey look it's another book! One of those things this blog is supposed to be about. So awkward. And what's up with the 10 days of silence? No comment. I had a productive reading break, but didn't actually do much writing...or reading for that matter. Nevertheless, school is back in, and I have a bunch of entries to do to catch up (I've been watching a lot of movies). So, let's begin.
~We're going to say this one is spoiler-ish. Major plot points ruined? No. Minor plot points? Yes~
Nightfall was initially a short story written by Isaac Asimov (of I, Robot and the Foundation Series fame), and, according to the book jacket, "ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR STORIES OF ALL TIME". Alright, Asimov did great and interesting things for Sci-fi. But of 'all time'? Yo, Asimov, Imma let you finish, but Poe did one of the best stories of all time. Is that meme too tired? #swag.

OF ALL TIME

Okay, moving on and getting down to serious business, let's discuss things. Nightfall (the novel, we'll address the short story later) tells the story of Kalgash, a planet with six suns. Because of this, there is never night on Kalgash, the Kalgashians have a crippling fear of darkness, and they have no concept of stars. All of this is entirely plausible, given the parameters we've established. Here's where the plot comes in: Kalgash is heading towards an 18 hour period of night. No suns. No light. Chaos ensues.

The book is split up into three parts; Twilight, Nightfall, and Daybreak. In Twilight, we are introduced to the concept of 'Darkness Disorders' with a psychologist investigating the "Tunnel of Mystery", an attraction in which you ride through a completely dark tunnel for 15 minutes. People died, others went insane. Next, we're introduced to an astronomer who's stumbled on a new discovery concerning Kalgash's six suns. We meet an archaeologist who, while working on the oldest known "human" settlement, discovers 8 more, older settlements, buried beneath the earth. We also meet a reporter who I didn't think was important but was actually the main character, and a bunch of other people who are relevant to the aforementioned characters but overall are not super important. There is also a cult, the Apostles of Flame, who are constantly warning everyone that "The end is nigh(t)". They are generally ignored and ridiculed by the scientific community that represents 90% of the characters in this book.

Next, we get into the Nightfall section, which is, more or less, the original short story by Asimov. The timeline established in Twilight, where we can pass by months in a matter of pages, is compressed for this short, 24ish hour period when the eclipse occurs. Finally, we have Daybreak, which is honestly the most useless section of the novel, largely because we skip over all the insanity that happens at night. Literally, we go from, "The long night had come..." to "The first thing of which Theremon became aware...was that something huge and yellow was hanging over him in the sky." Seriously. You don't get to see the actual night, just the aftermath. No keeping up with the Kalgashians for you.

Okay, I'll stop, I promise.

Overall, the novel dragged. The concept was really interesting, but the text just didn't deliver. We don't see what happens in the dark, just a bunch of crazy people wandering around afterwards. It's difficult to get connected to any of the characters, we're kept at arms distance from all of them, and honestly, none of them are sympathetic enough for a reader to want to care about. Nightfall as a section is fine, but we actually don't need the build up, or what happens after. It should have stayed a short story. 

The most frustrating part of the novel is Daybreak. Things slow to a stop, and we're met with an overwhelming sense of "who cares". The aftermath is boring. What was also weird about Daybreak is its total shift in favor of religion at the end. Throughout the ENTIRE novel, the largest organized religion on the planet (the Apostles of Flame) are ridiculed and mocked. At the end of the novel, they're embraced as the only way. It's a sudden, jarring shift, and it takes all of two pages for the Apostles of Flame to go from villains to heroes. That's sloppy. It doesn't make sense for a number of reasons, especially given that their leader (Folium 66) is basically a symbolic representation of Satan (you'll note that F is the 6th letter in the alphabet, and that his name in the original short story was Latimer. Like Lucifer. Get it? SO CLEVER).
I had a lot of hopes for Nightfall. It was an interesting premise, and I was interested to see what would happen to a society who had never known darkness at night. You don't really find out. Because we skip over everything that happens at night, it's difficult to suspend our disbelief for Daybreak. Really? One 18 hour period of darkness is enough to completely collapse society? Everyone goes insane? Are you sure? The characters, while flawed in their own way, aren't very relate-able, and we don't care about any of them. Don't even get me started on the sole female character, who starts as a "I am a strong independent work driven woman don't need no man" stereotype to the romantic interest of the reporter to his loving sidekick.
Not the best book I've ever read, but it only too me a few days to read, so it gets a pass for not wasting too much of my time. The short story in itself (the Nightfall segment of the book) was more than enough of the story, the rest of the novel is just exposition, and boring exposition at that.

Next time, we'll be looking at Mad Max: Fury Road, and discussing why I love it now despite being so disappointed at my first showing. I promise one day I will shift away from sci-fi. But today is not that day, nor is tomorrow. In fact, you should just make yourself comfortable.
~Sassa