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galleytrot's review
- 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
3.0
READ: Mar 2023
FORMAT: Digital
BRIEF SUMMARY:
In this contemporary fantasy/romance, Sloane has been investigating the deaths of his parents for almost twenty years, refusing to accept the lack of evidence as proof against what he knows he witnessed. When an old god approaches him in the recently-murdered body of a man Sloane just-as-recently met, he is enlisted to investigate Lochlain’s death, with the god promising justice for his parents’ murders in return... and more. God of tricksters, thieves, and divine retribution, Azaethoth the Lesser awoke with the goal of seeking vengeance for the death of his beloved devotee, but finds more than he bargained for in the private investigator whose business card was left in Lochlain’s pocket.
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 3.75 / 5⭐
Was I entertained? Oh boy, was I ever. Even admitting that, I will not say that this is a good book. It certainly is a book, but do I ever have thoughts and opinions about it. Some parts of it had me giggling and grinning from ear to ear; sometimes from genuine humor, mostly from the absurdity. Other parts had me angry and wanting to wave my (human) appendages wildly in frustration. Emotions were had, and while I’m not sure that I could say I like this book, I truly can’t deny that it had value as entertainment.
The characters in this book all broadly suffer from the same flaw. I’ll give them this: they’re uniquely individual in that they’re well-described and they all have widely varying roles to fulfill; however, they all come up lacking in personality. I feel like they each operate on a single volume, lacking any of the depth or memorable traits that would make them compelling. Sloane is gifted. Azaethoth is a li’l stinker. Lochlain is happy to be there. Kunst is a frantic doomsayer. Milo is worried about everyone. And so on, et cetera. All of the characters can easily be reduced to so few words, which makes analyzing their roles within the broader story more than a little disappointing.
The story itself has a bit more going for it. It’s a crime/murder mystery that does an okay job of throwing in a red herring or two and tying in the old crime with the new. It doesn’t entirely read as an excuse to serve us deviant tentacle sex, although that’s definitely a prime directive.
TECHNICAL / PRODUCTION: 2.25 / 5⭐
The writing in this book is not its strong point. I’ve seen worse dialogue, but there’s a lot here that I did not vibe with. The entire opening scene is a ham-fisted exposition dump in the form of a conversation that just wouldn’t feel natural in a genuine friendship setting. There are better ways to set the story’s premise than through two characters throwing facts at each other (facts that both know the other already knows).
Characters often feel like they’re overreacting to things. They’re just very exclaim-y, coming across as frantic or disproportionately excitable. There are some wildly inappropriate conversational shifts from serious topics to all hornt up. The relationship moves obscenely fast – it takes less than a day of knowing each other before the god decides to court the human as an eternal mate. Hell, he only knows the guy for like an hour maybe before doing a sexual assault with uninformed consent.
At one point in the story, a character says that they should tell the person with the MacGuffin not to return it to the rightful owner, which they promptly forget to do – single-handedly allowing the story’s climax to happen. Would the book be a proper book without a climax? No, it wouldn’t; but when you have a character figure out the obvious solution to the problem and then just not do it, it’s more than a little frustrating.
FINAL THOUGHTS - OVERALL: 3 / 5⭐
Are you curious about this book’s premise? Are you okay with monster f*ing? Would you be comfortable reading about non-human anatomy, and one character tricking another into a sex act? If yes, I won’t steer you away from this book. Again, I was certainly entertained by it, even if I might not have liked it. Just be mindful of what you’re getting into.
This book has representation for the gays and like... inter-species couples? But there isn’t much else in the way of diversity (I don’t personally count invented god-races as diverse).
The following elaborates on my content warnings. These may be interpreted as spoilers, but I do not go into deep detail.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Murder
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, Blood, Body horror, Cursing, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Death
Minor: Vomit, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Pregnancy, and Bullying
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