A review by jcooper221
The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Amazing world building but man, what a terrible book. Story is boring, characters are all basically the same and have almost identical problems to overcome. Around the third time a significant character was
kidnapped I realized Gwynne doesn't have any idea how to motivate characters to move from one place to another. Three POVs was definitely too many, he should have merged the two characters in war bands. I started to mix up which side characters belonged to which war band.


The worst blunder in this book was the lack of narrative motion. Nothing important happened in the first third of the story, Gwynne could have cut it out and nothing important would have been lost that couldn't be filled in with exposition. Minor spoilers here, but
there is no resolution to any of the plot arcs or conflicts raised throughout the story. It was about halfway through the book I realized I wasn't reading a standalone book, but part 1 of a story that's too long and suffers from too much meandering plotting from an author clearly struggling to fill up the blank space between critical plot points.
Sorry buddy, but your idea isn't good enough to stretch across three books.
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