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A review by books_ergo_sum
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
adventurous
medium-paced
2.0
This has the dubious honour of being one of the only fantasy books to introduce a romance plot and have me say “Ew, no. Put it back.”
This book was so thoroughgoingly ‘just okay’ (on what I look for in a fantasy) that I ended up having a bad time?
▪️ it wasn’t particularly atmospheric (the cover had me thinking it could’ve had Emily Lloyd-Jones vibes?)
▪️ it was plot heavy without being anything more than a simple ‘walking from point A to point B’ quest
▪️ the action didn’t feel high-stakes (I admit, I wanted our godkiller merc Kissen to feel more like Gideon the Ninth)
▪️ the lore was this uncanny valley between Greek/Roman mythology and completely invented fantasy (a goddess of the hearth named Hestra instead of Hestia or god of the sea named Osidisen instead of Poseidon, for example), which is so meh to me for some reason?
▪️ it fell into that classic trap of wanting the MCs to have lead armies in a big battle that changed the world… but also wanting them to be young. And I was rolling my eyes at their Aragorn-wannabe conversations around the campfire, instead of thinking they were actually cool.
▪️ there wasn’t enough emotion in here—by a long shot. The found family storyline between Kissen, Elo, and Inara didn’t have a ton of heart to me; the romance plot felt so shoehorned in; and was that supposed to be spice?
Honestly—that spice scene was my feelings about the whole book in microcosm. Basically: “why did you even go there if you were going to do it so half-heartedly?” It was neither spicy nor fade to black-y and that neither one/nor the other feeling was how I felt about everything 🤷🏻♀️
But I’ll give it a star for Skedi, Inara’s pet god. I appreciated how small-scale kinda evil he was.
This book was so thoroughgoingly ‘just okay’ (on what I look for in a fantasy) that I ended up having a bad time?
▪️ it wasn’t particularly atmospheric (the cover had me thinking it could’ve had Emily Lloyd-Jones vibes?)
▪️ it was plot heavy without being anything more than a simple ‘walking from point A to point B’ quest
▪️ the action didn’t feel high-stakes (I admit, I wanted our godkiller merc Kissen to feel more like Gideon the Ninth)
▪️ the lore was this uncanny valley between Greek/Roman mythology and completely invented fantasy (a goddess of the hearth named Hestra instead of Hestia or god of the sea named Osidisen instead of Poseidon, for example), which is so meh to me for some reason?
▪️ it fell into that classic trap of wanting the MCs to have lead armies in a big battle that changed the world… but also wanting them to be young. And I was rolling my eyes at their Aragorn-wannabe conversations around the campfire, instead of thinking they were actually cool.
▪️ there wasn’t enough emotion in here—by a long shot. The found family storyline between Kissen, Elo, and Inara didn’t have a ton of heart to me; the romance plot felt so shoehorned in; and was that supposed to be spice?
Honestly—that spice scene was my feelings about the whole book in microcosm. Basically: “why did you even go there if you were going to do it so half-heartedly?” It was neither spicy nor fade to black-y and that neither one/nor the other feeling was how I felt about everything 🤷🏻♀️
But I’ll give it a star for Skedi, Inara’s pet god. I appreciated how small-scale kinda evil he was.