Reviews

A Painted Goddess by Victor Gischler

themanfromdelmonte's review against another edition

1.0

This is a review of the trilogy. It starts with a standard premise of a young noblewoman fighting to restore her family after treachery has killed her parents. Along the way she acquires special powers. All well and good. In the second volume she is restored as duchess but now has new problems to deal with and must go on a quest. Hmm, this is when the story starts to sprawl.
The author is quite ruthless in the dispatching of secondary characters. For example, no sooner have we started to make a connection with the Birds of Prey than they are being cut down one after another. By the end I think one out of the original set is left. And no one mourns anyone. When one of a pair of twins is killed in a battle at sea, there's no mention of the surviving twin's grief.
Around about this point (Alem & Maurizan's sea voyage) I started to get the feeling that this was a novel written on the back of a D&D campaign.
For example, on this voyage, Maurizan and Alem are washed overboard. Maurizan gets rescued by Fishboy (local colour, don't worry about it) and gains the Prime Tattoo. Alem gets washed up on an island and on the neighbouring island finds a magic sword! Then the two of them find each other and their friends on the boat!! How about that!
Then there are portals and other macguffins and I stopped caring about halfway through the third volume. However, I was able to skim to the end where Rina becomes the Painted Goddess of the title, blah, blah, blah. Then there's a epilogue with the standard "20 years later"
It's a shame that this is so poorly plotted because I enjoyed "Warrior Prime" (a side novel) and the premise that magical tattoos confer talents.

iskanderjonesiv's review against another edition

4.0

When the gods go to war, who will stand against their divine fury?

In the thrilling conclusion to the A Fire Beneath the Skin trilogy, the enchanted kingdom of Helva faces a nightmarish future of endless bloodshed, and Rina Veraiin—a young warrior-duchess armed with mysterious, magical tattoos—must use her fantastic powers to save her home from eternal war.

As her far-flung friends scour Helva for additional tattoos to increase her formidable abilities, Rina reckons with an enigmatic death priest…the one whose contract grants her extraordinary magic but demands an awful price. When her debt comes due, can Rina make the ultimate sacrifice?

Deities clash and allies succumb as Rina strives to fulfill her obligation and confront her strange and shocking destiny. Becoming an ink mage taxed Rina’s resources to their very limits; now she must become something else, something more, something awesome and terrible.

If she fails, her world will fall.

tirnel's review against another edition

5.0

Definitely enjoyed this one and the ending. I think the audiobook was so well done that I would likely prefer it over reading the actual book. The author brought all the threads together well from the prior novels with some unexpected endings.

tonyriver's review against another edition

4.0

Enjoyable series and well imagined.

brenttrek's review against another edition

3.0

Don't really like an ending where so much is unknown.

jesserbessers's review against another edition

3.0

Ehhhh, sort of lost interest halfway in.

Honestly, thought it was a dead end. I just couldn't enjoy the ending or the debt plot. It just felt too odd for my taste.

jj7twin's review against another edition

5.0

Feels like there's more to come

This journey was so good. Sadly other books kept me distracted and it took awhile to finish. I'm upset with the ending but I also find that it was a good ending for this story. Some heroes don't get happy endings and as long as the author is true to the story then I'll eventually be happy with it.

kbear_59's review against another edition

3.0

I finished this series because I needed to know how it ended. It wasn’t bad but it definitely wasn’t YA!! Overall it was an engaging story full of drama and interest. There were a lot of unexplained things about the world and I felt that there definitely could have been more character development and less careless sex scenes.
Not a bad read though

jsholmes's review against another edition

4.0

A ripping good yarn

It ended pretty abruptly, but on the whole I really enjoyed this adventure. Fun light reading and an interesting world.

blackflame451's review against another edition

1.0

Worse ending to a series

The ending didn't even make sense and wasn't really even a wrap to anything. Plus no happy ending for the good characters and no horrible deaths for the bad....I'm done with this author.