When I was younger, I really enjoyed reading those doorstopper epic fantasy novels with a dozen POV characters and a big glossary in the back. These days, I find it a lot harder to dedicate the time to read a book that long, and much, much harder to remember the details of the story in the years between each gigantic volume.
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner scratched my epic fantasy itch while sticking to a more manageable page count, and giving me a more diverse cast of characters than I ever got back in the 90s and early 00s.
To be honest, this book actually reminded me of The Witcher — at least, season 1 of the Netflix show. I have to admit, I haven’t read the books, played the games, or watched any more of the show. But this has really similar “gruff, world-weary slayer character who is underappreciated by society has to protect a young girl” vibes. Except instead of Geralt, we have Kissen, who is a bisexual woman with a prosthetic leg, and she fights gods instead of monsters. Our other POV characters are said young girl who needs to be protected, the small god of white lies she’s mysteriously bound to, and a knight forced out of retirement for one last service to his beloved king.
I was worried when I saw there were four POV characters in this rather medium-sized book, but thankfully their paths all converge in a reasonable amount of time. I felt like the author did a good job of choosing which character should be our narrator at any given time, giving us the right insight to the scene and only occasionally using the POV choice to conceal some key information from the reader.
Kaner also did a good job with the worldbuilding. Information is revealed at a comfortable pace, without any real info dumps. We learn what we need to know for the story, and to make the world feel real and lived in, but we don’t get any in-depth lessons on, I don’t know, macro economics or the history of the royal dynasty or anything like that.
I will say that I was able to predict a lot of the reveals and the plot beats. I don’t know if this means the book is predictable, or that I’ve just consumed way too much fantasy media in my over forty years on this planet. And sometimes predictable isn’t a bad thing, if you enjoy the journey to the predictable stops.
I had enough faith in this book that I put a hold on the sequel, Sunbringer, before I even started reading Godkiller, which means I’m only 27th in line for it today when it released, rather than the 40-something I would be if I had waited. I’m really excited to read what happens next, while the memory of the first book is still fresh in my mind!
CWs and TWs: Parental and child death, death in general, fantasy violence, amputation, fire-related deaths, cursing, and a sex scene that fades to black at the foreplay stage.
Format and Source: I read this as an ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Brick & Mortar: Judge a book by its Cover. I really love the covers on this series. I mean look at this. It brings a real Art Nouveau influence to the sort of painted covers the fantasy books all had when I was young. I also really like the sepia color palette. The cover artist is Tom Roberts.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 9 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 4 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Brick & Mortar: 21 out of 25 prompts complete. 6 bingos.