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A review by secre
Godblind by Anna Stephens
1.0
EDIT; downgraded my rating from two stars to one because this made me so disappointed it put me into a week long reading slump and that takes a lot. It therefore deserves its rightful bashing.
This is really just never ending violence and action with little actual narrative or motives or, for that matter, characterisation. On top of this the writing is done in two to five page chapters, constantly, making it choppy and difficult to engage with. This is particularly noticeable because each chapter changes character view point; some in the same battle or area, some on other sides, some in different areas of the world. Few of which I could bring myself to care about.
The world building is thin; the Dark Gods love torture and want to take over from the Light Gods. The Dark Gods are bad - obviously - and yet there are traitors from the Light side left, right and centre. There aren't any real motives at all for characters being evil, even the most torture porn style scene I've read in a long while, merely makes these traitors to the Light pale. Rape seems frequent, bad things happen and there isn't much hope in sight but again, actually I don't care.
There were perhaps three characters in quite a large line up that I gave half a damn for, two of them spunky females. The authors most talented writing is the spunky fighting female... just about every other character pales poorly in contrast and that isn't because our heroines are excellent. It is simply because everyone else is flat and two dimensional.
I don't know why this is being likened to Abercrombie and Scott Lynch; the author may well be able to convey the same level of violence, but both of the above also convey humour, narrative, world building and characters that jump off the page. Anna Stephens does none of this and the short, choppy chapters with non stop violence quickly became boring leaving me skipping ahead to see if anything emotively interesting happens next. I was frequently disappointed.
The war may have only just begun but I can say for absolute certain that I'm done with the author and the series.
This is really just never ending violence and action with little actual narrative or motives or, for that matter, characterisation. On top of this the writing is done in two to five page chapters, constantly, making it choppy and difficult to engage with. This is particularly noticeable because each chapter changes character view point; some in the same battle or area, some on other sides, some in different areas of the world. Few of which I could bring myself to care about.
The world building is thin; the Dark Gods love torture and want to take over from the Light Gods. The Dark Gods are bad - obviously - and yet there are traitors from the Light side left, right and centre. There aren't any real motives at all for characters being evil, even the most torture porn style scene I've read in a long while, merely makes these traitors to the Light pale. Rape seems frequent, bad things happen and there isn't much hope in sight but again, actually I don't care.
There were perhaps three characters in quite a large line up that I gave half a damn for, two of them spunky females. The authors most talented writing is the spunky fighting female... just about every other character pales poorly in contrast and that isn't because our heroines are excellent. It is simply because everyone else is flat and two dimensional.
I don't know why this is being likened to Abercrombie and Scott Lynch; the author may well be able to convey the same level of violence, but both of the above also convey humour, narrative, world building and characters that jump off the page. Anna Stephens does none of this and the short, choppy chapters with non stop violence quickly became boring leaving me skipping ahead to see if anything emotively interesting happens next. I was frequently disappointed.
The war may have only just begun but I can say for absolute certain that I'm done with the author and the series.