Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Shadow of the Gods

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The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne

8 reviews

singalana's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Maybe I read this book at a bad time, but getting through it felt like a chore. It’s a shame because it’s in no way a bad book!

The Shadow of the Gods is the first instalment in a Norse mythology-inspired fantasy series by John Gwynne. This is not his first series, but I haven’t read this previous work. I’d classify this book as grimdark - if you’re a fan of epic battles, grisly deaths and vengeance-fueled characters, this book might be for you.

In this fantasy world, the gods have killed each other in a fearsome battle and nearly destroyed the world in the process. Those with the gods’ blood in their veins are hunted and enslaved. We follow three main characters; Orka, Varg, and Elvar, who all have their quests and secrets.

Two out of the three main characters are women: Orka, who lives in the wilderness with her family, and Elvar, who is a member of a mercenary group called the Battle-Grim. Varg is trying to find out what happened to his sister. All the characters are interesting, and I found myself caring for them, especially Varg and Orka.

The world is rich and interesting, and it’s revealed bit by bit. I enjoyed the writing in every other aspect except one: the author loved to use the word “thought-cage”, which in this instance refers to the thinking mind. The word appeared in almost every chapter, and every time, it managed to jolt me out of the story.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading this book: the blurb is absolutely useless and tells nothing about the book. If I had seen this in a bookstore, I would not have bought it based on that. Alas, I got it as a gift, so here we are. Perhaps the lack of a blurb hurt my reading experience because I had no idea where we were headed with the story. Since this is a series, the first book was pretty much a set p for the series. Even though a lot happened, I felt the book really started to intrigue me only in the last third or so.

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plume_de_renarde's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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jcooper221's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Amazing world building but man, what a terrible book. Story is boring, characters are all basically the same and have almost identical problems to overcome. Around the third time a significant character was

kidnapped I realized Gwynne doesn't have any idea how to motivate characters to move from one place to another. Three POVs was definitely too many, he should have merged the two characters in war bands. I started to mix up which side characters belonged to which war band.

The worst blunder in this book was the lack of narrative motion. Nothing important happened in the first third of the story, Gwynne could have cut it out and nothing important would have been lost that couldn't be filled in with exposition. Minor spoilers here, but

there is no resolution to any of the plot arcs or conflicts raised throughout the story. It was about halfway through the book I realized I wasn't reading a standalone book, but part 1 of a story that's too long and suffers from too much meandering plotting from an author clearly struggling to fill up the blank space between critical plot points.

Sorry buddy, but your idea isn't good enough to stretch across three books.

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