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A review by rubeusbeaky
Gods & Monsters by Shelby Mahurin
1.0
More spectacle than substance, this book fails its characters, premise and fanbase in almost every way. (This is the second, highly disappointing, trilogy-concluding book titled "Gods and Monsters" that I've read this year. I feel like the title is cursed, and should be retired.)
Spoilers ahead:
The primary protagonists, Lou and Reid, and the primary /antagonist/, Morgane, spend almost THE ENTIRE BOOK (a good 535 pages out of 612) with amnesia, controlled by a body-snatcher, or some combination of the two, so that they are both A) Acting completely out of character, and B) Not exercising free will.
...
Once more: THE MAIN CHARACTERS are NOT themselves and have ZERO agency in how the story concludes.
...
This is not a third installment in a trilogy, it is a fanfiction. Yes, WHAT IF Lou were possessed and WHAT IF Reid were still racist and WHAT IF Morgane never had a daughter and - Oh yes, I've seen this show on Disney+, it's called "What If", now can we PLEASE get back to Gods & Monsters?!?!
Side note, the quirky gods claiming they can't intervene on behalf of humanity, ...who then intervene constantly in our heroes' favor, further rob the main characters of any agency. The peekaboo games the gods and monsters all play in this book is maddening. Don't appear for the majority of the trilogy, show up to make a dramatic save and deliver a lecture on why they won't be doing that again, bail for another few hundred pages, do it AGAIN before book's end! They have an inordinate impact on the plot, but aren't sympathetic characters because we barely spend any page time with them! All of their heroic beats should have been given to actual main cast members, whose powers /evolved/ with their emotional maturity! You know. Character arcs! Symbolism! Power of love and friendship! The gods and monsters are sparkly nonsense, distractions and deus ex machinas.
And as was my problem with Blood & Honey, Lou and Co. pass The Idiot Ball around for much of the book. "What's the plan?" "Wing it!" "And when that doesn't work?" "I don't know, make a joke about sex?" The most grating example being Lou's "attempts" at snapping Reid out of his amnesia... by seducing him. You remember, Lou, that Reid is prudish, bashful, and gets angry and defensive when out of his comfort zone? And that witches, in his addled brain, have been stereotyped as evil seductresses?! Stop feeding his phobia! You don't honestly believe that all he loves about you are your breasts, do you? That preying on his weakness for forbidden lust will reveal to him his true self?! You can't be this shallow. Show kindness, compassion - literally anything, any of the actual character traits he fell in love with. "Sexy" is not a character trait. ALSO also, seducing someone who is not in complete control of their faculties (she even gets him DRUNK on top of his enchantment!) is a little rapey! I don't care if he SHOULD BE the love of your life, or if he was once amorous with you, be respectful of the person he has become. (A universal relationship lesson: Relationships change, especially after enduring a traumatic event. Be compassionate, patient, sensitive, and accepting of change...) Be a PERSON, not a BODY! (Which, okay haters, eventually DOES happen, but not because LOU is aware of it. She accidentally triggers Reid's memories. Her naivete of their own love story, what makes them THEM besides physical acts taken, is infuriating. She really doesn't understand who they are below surface level? I call Shenanigans.)
Yes, this book says a FEW good things about grief and love, and the way to banish the dark passenger of the former, is to make oneself vulnerable to the presence of the latter. And for a hot minute, everyone looks back on who they were in books 1 and 2, at the atrocities committed and biases believed, and they all get to decide how they want to grow and who they want to be...
Which apparently is murderers and thieves XD. They all want to be murderers and thieves! They learned nothing.
Also... I can't help noticing:
- Protagonist wracked with grief is filled with a shadowy passenger who takes control of their body when triggered.
- A dragon shifter woman flies to the rescue.
- A grieving witch is followed around by a white wolf/dog until she makes peace with the loss of her friend/love, causes a flood, and then moves on with her love life.
Guys.... The first half of this book is just knockoff King of Scars/Rule of Wolves. Did Shelby Mahurin and Leigh Bardugo go on the same writer's retreat? Start with the same set of NaNoWriMo prompts? What is happening, here? Not that either author has a monopoly on talking about grief, magic, floods or dragons... It's just eerie how similar they are on the surface.
I think Rule of Wolves did it better, because the spectacle of magic wasn't the most important part; the magic was a cathartic expression of the emotional journey each character had undergone over MULTIPLE BOOKS. Gods & Monsters, sometimes their magic is an appropriate metaphor for their emotional state, but often it's just a shiny THING that's there, because - circling back to the top - the characters have taken a vacation from being themselves. Look at this dragon, look at this naked merperson, look at this tree guy, look at this old lady who popped out of nowhere - look at anything except our main characters, and their pain, and the /choices/ they must make. Literally, they have turned invisible. Delay delay, glittery filler.
But regardless of what this book tries to say about grief... I'm disappointed that it doesn't live up to Serpent & Dove in what it says about respecting differences! In S&D, Lou and Reid were both flawed, biased, stubborn, aggressive, fearful people who somehow, despite it all, overcame their prejudices, and learned to respect and even love one another. And theirs was an example to all, inspiring their friends over the course of the trilogy. But bottom line, everyone was right, and everyone was wrong. No one is perfect, everyone can grow if they lead with compassion. But by the final battle, the book comes down very hard on, "Some people are WRONG wrong, and deserve to die." There is no compassion, it is slaughter in the streets for anyone not of the right tribe. The different religions aren't honored in any way - in fact, a god falls into Hell, for lack of a better description XD. And when the dust settles, and the kingdom is in ruins and chaos and could really use a compassionate leader right about now... our heroes retire to their invisible, impenetrable, fairytale castle and throw a wedding.
WHICH bugged me for whole other reasons! Why is Lou and Reid's wedding narrated by Ansel, instead of Lou or Reid? Wasn't Ansel laid to rest? Isn't it torture for him to be brought back by Lou and Reid's longing? He wanted to rest! And why is this book series LGBTQA positive, but then all the main characters are neatly paired heterosexual couples with wedding bells almost certainly in all of their futures, and the LGBTQA are a side-lined dragon, and Ansel who has... a ghost boyfriend? I thought Ansel was hot for Coco? Is he bi? Why are we getting this reveal in an Epilogue? Why are we getting this reveal at all?! Everyone needs to be paired to live happily ever after?!?!!
And some things are left UNresolved! Madame Sauvage required three favors. She wanted to witness a kiss. Done. She wanted Reid to plant seeds. Not done. And then she never stated the third favor! What if she comes back in a year and demands Reid and Lou's firstborn child!?!?! Why is she not angry that Reid forsook his quest/payment?! How come the seeds that spilled in Cesarine don't take root, and create a sister enchanted woods that communicates with Chateau Le Blanc, a nice metaphor for the growing unity between the races/religions?! Do Beau and Coco get married and unite the country in more ways than sentiment?! So many questions!!!
Characters out of character. emotional beats weakened by confusing or convenient magical elements, an onslaught of secondary characters who lack depth, and a moral core abandoned in favor of a /different/ lesson, all jumble together to make this one unfocused, dissatisfying, ending.
Spoilers ahead:
The primary protagonists, Lou and Reid, and the primary /antagonist/, Morgane, spend almost THE ENTIRE BOOK (a good 535 pages out of 612) with amnesia, controlled by a body-snatcher, or some combination of the two, so that they are both A) Acting completely out of character, and B) Not exercising free will.
...
Once more: THE MAIN CHARACTERS are NOT themselves and have ZERO agency in how the story concludes.
...
This is not a third installment in a trilogy, it is a fanfiction. Yes, WHAT IF Lou were possessed and WHAT IF Reid were still racist and WHAT IF Morgane never had a daughter and - Oh yes, I've seen this show on Disney+, it's called "What If", now can we PLEASE get back to Gods & Monsters?!?!
Side note, the quirky gods claiming they can't intervene on behalf of humanity, ...who then intervene constantly in our heroes' favor, further rob the main characters of any agency. The peekaboo games the gods and monsters all play in this book is maddening. Don't appear for the majority of the trilogy, show up to make a dramatic save and deliver a lecture on why they won't be doing that again, bail for another few hundred pages, do it AGAIN before book's end! They have an inordinate impact on the plot, but aren't sympathetic characters because we barely spend any page time with them! All of their heroic beats should have been given to actual main cast members, whose powers /evolved/ with their emotional maturity! You know. Character arcs! Symbolism! Power of love and friendship! The gods and monsters are sparkly nonsense, distractions and deus ex machinas.
And as was my problem with Blood & Honey, Lou and Co. pass The Idiot Ball around for much of the book. "What's the plan?" "Wing it!" "And when that doesn't work?" "I don't know, make a joke about sex?" The most grating example being Lou's "attempts" at snapping Reid out of his amnesia... by seducing him. You remember, Lou, that Reid is prudish, bashful, and gets angry and defensive when out of his comfort zone? And that witches, in his addled brain, have been stereotyped as evil seductresses?! Stop feeding his phobia! You don't honestly believe that all he loves about you are your breasts, do you? That preying on his weakness for forbidden lust will reveal to him his true self?! You can't be this shallow. Show kindness, compassion - literally anything, any of the actual character traits he fell in love with. "Sexy" is not a character trait. ALSO also, seducing someone who is not in complete control of their faculties (she even gets him DRUNK on top of his enchantment!) is a little rapey! I don't care if he SHOULD BE the love of your life, or if he was once amorous with you, be respectful of the person he has become. (A universal relationship lesson: Relationships change, especially after enduring a traumatic event. Be compassionate, patient, sensitive, and accepting of change...) Be a PERSON, not a BODY! (Which, okay haters, eventually DOES happen, but not because LOU is aware of it. She accidentally triggers Reid's memories. Her naivete of their own love story, what makes them THEM besides physical acts taken, is infuriating. She really doesn't understand who they are below surface level? I call Shenanigans.)
Yes, this book says a FEW good things about grief and love, and the way to banish the dark passenger of the former, is to make oneself vulnerable to the presence of the latter. And for a hot minute, everyone looks back on who they were in books 1 and 2, at the atrocities committed and biases believed, and they all get to decide how they want to grow and who they want to be...
Which apparently is murderers and thieves XD. They all want to be murderers and thieves! They learned nothing.
Also... I can't help noticing:
- Protagonist wracked with grief is filled with a shadowy passenger who takes control of their body when triggered.
- A dragon shifter woman flies to the rescue.
- A grieving witch is followed around by a white wolf/dog until she makes peace with the loss of her friend/love, causes a flood, and then moves on with her love life.
Guys.... The first half of this book is just knockoff King of Scars/Rule of Wolves. Did Shelby Mahurin and Leigh Bardugo go on the same writer's retreat? Start with the same set of NaNoWriMo prompts? What is happening, here? Not that either author has a monopoly on talking about grief, magic, floods or dragons... It's just eerie how similar they are on the surface.
I think Rule of Wolves did it better, because the spectacle of magic wasn't the most important part; the magic was a cathartic expression of the emotional journey each character had undergone over MULTIPLE BOOKS. Gods & Monsters, sometimes their magic is an appropriate metaphor for their emotional state, but often it's just a shiny THING that's there, because - circling back to the top - the characters have taken a vacation from being themselves. Look at this dragon, look at this naked merperson, look at this tree guy, look at this old lady who popped out of nowhere - look at anything except our main characters, and their pain, and the /choices/ they must make. Literally, they have turned invisible. Delay delay, glittery filler.
But regardless of what this book tries to say about grief... I'm disappointed that it doesn't live up to Serpent & Dove in what it says about respecting differences! In S&D, Lou and Reid were both flawed, biased, stubborn, aggressive, fearful people who somehow, despite it all, overcame their prejudices, and learned to respect and even love one another. And theirs was an example to all, inspiring their friends over the course of the trilogy. But bottom line, everyone was right, and everyone was wrong. No one is perfect, everyone can grow if they lead with compassion. But by the final battle, the book comes down very hard on, "Some people are WRONG wrong, and deserve to die." There is no compassion, it is slaughter in the streets for anyone not of the right tribe. The different religions aren't honored in any way - in fact, a god falls into Hell, for lack of a better description XD. And when the dust settles, and the kingdom is in ruins and chaos and could really use a compassionate leader right about now... our heroes retire to their invisible, impenetrable, fairytale castle and throw a wedding.
WHICH bugged me for whole other reasons! Why is Lou and Reid's wedding narrated by Ansel, instead of Lou or Reid? Wasn't Ansel laid to rest? Isn't it torture for him to be brought back by Lou and Reid's longing? He wanted to rest! And why is this book series LGBTQA positive, but then all the main characters are neatly paired heterosexual couples with wedding bells almost certainly in all of their futures, and the LGBTQA are a side-lined dragon, and Ansel who has... a ghost boyfriend? I thought Ansel was hot for Coco? Is he bi? Why are we getting this reveal in an Epilogue? Why are we getting this reveal at all?! Everyone needs to be paired to live happily ever after?!?!!
And some things are left UNresolved! Madame Sauvage required three favors. She wanted to witness a kiss. Done. She wanted Reid to plant seeds. Not done. And then she never stated the third favor! What if she comes back in a year and demands Reid and Lou's firstborn child!?!?! Why is she not angry that Reid forsook his quest/payment?! How come the seeds that spilled in Cesarine don't take root, and create a sister enchanted woods that communicates with Chateau Le Blanc, a nice metaphor for the growing unity between the races/religions?! Do Beau and Coco get married and unite the country in more ways than sentiment?! So many questions!!!
Characters out of character. emotional beats weakened by confusing or convenient magical elements, an onslaught of secondary characters who lack depth, and a moral core abandoned in favor of a /different/ lesson, all jumble together to make this one unfocused, dissatisfying, ending.