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A review by clar2d2
Wounded Little Gods by Eliza Victoria
4.0
This was so good!
I recently read Dwellers by Eliza Victoria, and there were some similarities:
1. They both don't stick to the confines of a single genre, and I feel could be classified under multiple genres (though Wounded Little Gods, while it felt like a mystery too, was obviously primarily fantasy book from the very beginning; Dwellers seemed less clear cut).
2. They both progress in such a way that I found myself getting more and more curious, and asking more and more questions, as the story went on.
However, while I REALLY enjoyed Dwellers, I loved Wounded Little Gods even more, because of the following reasons:
1. While both books made me think, this book made me think a lot more. It explored some important ethical issues (which I won't mention because of spoilers), which kind of brought me back to my philosophy class and, again, really made me think.
2. I preferred the characterization here. My one main issue with Dwellers is that I found some of the characters a bit exaggerated and not very believable at times. Here, however, the characters actions seemed more realistic. For example, in general, I hate when characters in creepy or suspicious situations don't act cautious or paranoid enough; the main character here, however, remembered to check things like if the path behind her was still there and if her phone still had signal before she progressed. Oh, and she also remembered she had a phone camera and actually thought to take pictures for proof! I hate when authors sometimes "forget" these things in order to cause more problems in the story.
3. I love how everything unfolded. Something similar was done in Dwellers, wherein later on we kind of backtracked to better understand previous events and why they occurred, but I think it was done so much better here. There was even some overlap here, wherein events from previous chapters were told from another perspective, and I love how this clarified things and added more layers to the story; I found myself going back to read previous pages over again after I had learned more about what was actually happening then. I even read the first chapter again after I finished the whole book! The conclusion actually left me pretty satisfied too, which isn't something I could say about very many books (Dwellers included).
4. As an added bonus, I also like that it made use of Philippine mythology, and included a little bit of Philippine history as well!
My only complaint is that I feel that there's some inconsistency with the years.It is indicated at the beginning that the town started producing increasingly poorer and poorer harvests 10 years before the events in the story. We also later find out that started the night that Dumangan, the God of Good Harvest, died, which was supposedly when "Luciano" was 8 years old. During the events of the story though, he's already 29. How could Dumangan have died 10 years before based on the story, when he died 21 years before based on Luciano's age? :/ Please correct me if I understood anything wrong, but this is really bothering me because I hate inconsistencies, haha.
Overall though...wow. I expected this book to be good, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It goes without saying that I highly recommend this.
I recently read Dwellers by Eliza Victoria, and there were some similarities:
1. They both don't stick to the confines of a single genre, and I feel could be classified under multiple genres (though Wounded Little Gods, while it felt like a mystery too, was obviously primarily fantasy book from the very beginning; Dwellers seemed less clear cut).
2. They both progress in such a way that I found myself getting more and more curious, and asking more and more questions, as the story went on.
However, while I REALLY enjoyed Dwellers, I loved Wounded Little Gods even more, because of the following reasons:
1. While both books made me think, this book made me think a lot more. It explored some important ethical issues (which I won't mention because of spoilers), which kind of brought me back to my philosophy class and, again, really made me think.
2. I preferred the characterization here. My one main issue with Dwellers is that I found some of the characters a bit exaggerated and not very believable at times. Here, however, the characters actions seemed more realistic. For example, in general, I hate when characters in creepy or suspicious situations don't act cautious or paranoid enough; the main character here, however, remembered to check things like if the path behind her was still there and if her phone still had signal before she progressed. Oh, and she also remembered she had a phone camera and actually thought to take pictures for proof! I hate when authors sometimes "forget" these things in order to cause more problems in the story.
3. I love how everything unfolded. Something similar was done in Dwellers, wherein later on we kind of backtracked to better understand previous events and why they occurred, but I think it was done so much better here. There was even some overlap here, wherein events from previous chapters were told from another perspective, and I love how this clarified things and added more layers to the story; I found myself going back to read previous pages over again after I had learned more about what was actually happening then. I even read the first chapter again after I finished the whole book! The conclusion actually left me pretty satisfied too, which isn't something I could say about very many books (Dwellers included).
4. As an added bonus, I also like that it made use of Philippine mythology, and included a little bit of Philippine history as well!
My only complaint is that I feel that there's some inconsistency with the years.
Overall though...wow. I expected this book to be good, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It goes without saying that I highly recommend this.