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A review by graculus
Goddess of the North by Georgina Kamsika
3.0
Goddess of the North piqued my interest originally because of a couple of things - firstly, that it's an urban fantasy set in Sheffield, rather than London and secondly the main character being a goddess of order who is working in the local police. Our protagonist is Sara Nayar, currently a Detective Inspector, and also a transplanted Indian goddess who is juggling her desire to live as close to a normal human life as possible with the fact that she is going to watch all the people she knows age and die because of her own immortality. She's able to manipulate time, allowing her to see the past of murder victims, which is a skill I'm sure most detectives would think handy to have.
Her power is limited, however, due to an incident when she first came into being - the gods are sustained by belief and worshippers and her own mother had interfered in Sara's development as a deity, meaning that when the more powerful gods start messing about in her adoptive home city, there's not much Sara can do power-wise to counter them. That is, if she can figure out exactly who is responsible, which takes a significant (and slightly frustrating) chunk of the book to happen.
It lost stars from me (3 seems a bit harsh but I'm struggling to push my rating upwards) for a couple of reasons: firstly, I don't know what research was done around the police but there seemed to be some basic things going on here that didn't work for me, as someone who spent quite a few years working adjacent to police investigations. There seemed to be a surfeit of Detective Inspectors - our main character is one, so is her putative love interest and so is the guy who thinks she's done him over for an impending promotion. That seemed very top-heavy for me, as what's portrayed in the book is a murder investigation run by two DI's, one Detective Sergeant (rank never confirmed) and a couple of uniforms putting stuff into the computer.
Secondly, the pacing of the book really struggles in the back half - there's a lot going on and I found myself skimming the supernatural stuff as Sara tries to figure out just who's responsible for what's going on. She also messes with history without any major repercussions and that always makes my skin crawl a little. This dropped another star for me, as I might well have DNF if I hadn't picked this up on Netgalley.
At the end of the day, it's a competent enough urban fantasy with some interesting things going on and clearly set in an area of the world the author knows very well.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Her power is limited, however, due to an incident when she first came into being - the gods are sustained by belief and worshippers and her own mother had interfered in Sara's development as a deity, meaning that when the more powerful gods start messing about in her adoptive home city, there's not much Sara can do power-wise to counter them. That is, if she can figure out exactly who is responsible, which takes a significant (and slightly frustrating) chunk of the book to happen.
It lost stars from me (3 seems a bit harsh but I'm struggling to push my rating upwards) for a couple of reasons: firstly, I don't know what research was done around the police but there seemed to be some basic things going on here that didn't work for me, as someone who spent quite a few years working adjacent to police investigations. There seemed to be a surfeit of Detective Inspectors - our main character is one, so is her putative love interest and so is the guy who thinks she's done him over for an impending promotion. That seemed very top-heavy for me, as what's portrayed in the book is a murder investigation run by two DI's, one Detective Sergeant (rank never confirmed) and a couple of uniforms putting stuff into the computer.
Secondly, the pacing of the book really struggles in the back half - there's a lot going on and I found myself skimming the supernatural stuff as Sara tries to figure out just who's responsible for what's going on. She also messes with history without any major repercussions and that always makes my skin crawl a little. This dropped another star for me, as I might well have DNF if I hadn't picked this up on Netgalley.
At the end of the day, it's a competent enough urban fantasy with some interesting things going on and clearly set in an area of the world the author knows very well.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.