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A review by kenlaan
The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
2.0
There's a lot of good things about this book, that are belied by my giving it a two-star rating.
Hanrahan, when he is not writing novels, also creates tabletop RPG books, and that makes a lot of sense to me, because the world-building in The Gutter Prayer is extremely well-done and there is a lot of originality amongst those he conceived of to inhabit it. From the creepy Tallowmen - somewhat mindless servants of the Alchemists' Guild, who are waxen golem-like creatures remade from corpses of the unfortunate - to the Stone Men - those inflicted with a plague that slowly calcifies their bodies, but gives them immense strength as it progresses - to the Crawling Ones - sentient hive-mind mages created of corpse-eating worms - there's a lot of unique concepts to be found in this book.
Unfortunately, I just never really cared much about the characters or the plot, which meant I forced myself to finish this book more out of stubbornness than a desire to see what happened at the end.
The book starts in media res, a technique I'm usually fond of as a reader, since things move quickly. There's a few trade-offs though, namely that the reader might be a little lost and that the reader will not have formed connections with the characters involved. That was certainly the case for me, especially the latter. The book largely follows Cari, the orphaned daughter of a formerly powerful family, Spar, a Stone Man and the son of the former leader of the Thieves Guild, and Rat, a Ghoul who lives amongst the surface and works with the Thieves Guild. I liked the idea of these three, but they are quickly split up due to the events of the beginning and there was never enough characterization for me to grow attached to them. There's a couple of side characters, Jare and Aleena, who I actually liked more, but they aren't the focus.
And since I didn't really care about the characters involved in the plot, the story was hard to be interested in, either. There's some pretty cool ideas here concerning gods and saints that reminded me somewhat of [b:City of Stairs|20174424|City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)|Robert Jackson Bennett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394545220l/20174424._SY75_.jpg|28030792], but it never grabbed me for whatever reason.
Hanrahan, when he is not writing novels, also creates tabletop RPG books, and that makes a lot of sense to me, because the world-building in The Gutter Prayer is extremely well-done and there is a lot of originality amongst those he conceived of to inhabit it. From the creepy Tallowmen - somewhat mindless servants of the Alchemists' Guild, who are waxen golem-like creatures remade from corpses of the unfortunate - to the Stone Men - those inflicted with a plague that slowly calcifies their bodies, but gives them immense strength as it progresses - to the Crawling Ones - sentient hive-mind mages created of corpse-eating worms - there's a lot of unique concepts to be found in this book.
Unfortunately, I just never really cared much about the characters or the plot, which meant I forced myself to finish this book more out of stubbornness than a desire to see what happened at the end.
The book starts in media res, a technique I'm usually fond of as a reader, since things move quickly. There's a few trade-offs though, namely that the reader might be a little lost and that the reader will not have formed connections with the characters involved. That was certainly the case for me, especially the latter. The book largely follows Cari, the orphaned daughter of a formerly powerful family, Spar, a Stone Man and the son of the former leader of the Thieves Guild, and Rat, a Ghoul who lives amongst the surface and works with the Thieves Guild. I liked the idea of these three, but they are quickly split up due to the events of the beginning and there was never enough characterization for me to grow attached to them. There's a couple of side characters, Jare and Aleena, who I actually liked more, but they aren't the focus.
And since I didn't really care about the characters involved in the plot, the story was hard to be interested in, either. There's some pretty cool ideas here concerning gods and saints that reminded me somewhat of [b:City of Stairs|20174424|City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)|Robert Jackson Bennett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394545220l/20174424._SY75_.jpg|28030792], but it never grabbed me for whatever reason.