A review by bluejayreads
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

5.0

 I have heard nothing about this book anywhere – I’m pretty sure I found it through The StoryGraph’s (admittedly pretty great) recommendation algorithm. My library doesn’t even have a copy. But honestly, everybody should know about this book because it’s just so good.

First off, I’m already predisposed to like this concept. If you know anything about me, you know I’m a sucker for interesting, unique, or weird takes on deities and religion. A world where gods are formed out of human desire and sustained by their prayers and offerings, but are also outlawed by the king and hunted down and killed by god-killers, is right up my alley. There are so many fascinating little details, from the details of how a god is created to to the ways gods interact with the humans who give it life and offerings to the process of killing one. I found it fascinating, but even if you don’t, it doesn’t detract at all from the story.

And the story is pretty spectacular too. It starts out with Kissen, who lost her entire family and one of her legs to a god being petty and territorial. Fitted with a pretty cool prosthetic, she now makes a living hunting down and killing gods for coin – a bit like a Witcher if Witchers hunted gods instead of monsters. Then she meets Inara, a kid somehow bound to a small god. On their quest to figure out how to untangle the kid and the god, they join up with Elogast, a former knight on a very illegal quest from the king. Though having four point-of-view characters (Kissen, Inara, Elogast, and Inara’s god) gets annoying at times, it gets less annoying once all four are in the same spot headed in the same direction. And there really isn’t a perspective that could be removed without harming the story as a whole – as irritating as it got in the beginning, this story really does need all four narrators.

I’m not going to comment on the plot much, for a couple reasons. One is that as simple as “go to this city and ask the wild gods how to solve the problem” sounds, the actual reality is significantly more complicated than that. The other is that for as strong as the plot is (and it is very good), it’s the characters that really sang for me in this one. Guilty and disillusioned knight only recently forced to stop hiding from the world and his own feelings; sheltered and scared only child of a noblewoman, uncertain about any of this but determined to be brave; god of little white lies, bound to a single child and desperate for more; and my absolute favorite, strong and broken and furious and violent and loyal and traumatized and all-around spectacular god-killer. The plot is great and the world is spectacular, but in such a way that the characters really shine.

I didn’t know going in that this was first in a series, but I’m very glad it is. The ending left so much open – the whole “burgeoning civil war” thing, whatever the hell the king is up to, how the god got bound to Inara in the first place, why Inara has the weird powers she has, what Kissen is going to do after that ending … And above all, I want to read more. Godkiller just came out, so I’m sure book two will be a long time coming, but I’m looking forward to it. 

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