A few spoilers below.
This was a no-nonsense good time sort of book. This is a ‘rebellion against an evil empire by scrappy underdogs’ sort of story. It’s the first book in a trilogy, specifically about the births of the rebellion. The protagonists are a group of oppressed religious, ethnic and LGBT minorities, in the fight for their lives against an oppressive colonialist power.
If I were to compare this book to anything, it would be the Riyria books by Sullivan (in terms of being about scrappy good guys), the Bound and the Broken by Cahill (especially ‘The Exile’), and ‘The Craft Sequence’ by Gladstone (in terms of being focused about gods). This book’s most interesting bit of worldbuilding is that faith and prayer creates magic, culminating in gods physically manifesting. The evil empire is waging a conquest of the entire world, stomping out all other gods and cultures, forcing everyone to worship their God-Emperor. The villains are willing to do ANYTHING for victory, even blood magic; the enemy’s army contains many supersoldiers created by human sacrifice.
The heroes in this book are the priests and paladins and shamans of various slain gods, coming together for one final big push. It gave the story a really great underdog aesthetic. Their gods are dead, their magics are broken, but they still feel the need to fight for freedom. However, in their failure and desperation, the rebels are finally willing to fight dirty to achieve victory, even if it means sinking to the level of the Evil Empire. This book is not grimdark, even if it did have dark moments. I loved the final battle, which was fought amongst the corpses of rebels slain by the empire.
This book was a rebellion about assassinations and violence. The protagonists go around killing people to advance the cause. It’s understood that the rebels also rumormonger, bribe and trade favors to advance the cause, but that sort of thing is largely off screen. I wish this book also included those subtle parts of fostering the rebellion, but it didn’t. Instead, this book contained a lot of pulse-pounding and well written fight scenes, so I can’t complain.
This is my first book by Dalglish, and I heartily enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the final twist ending. The twist was foreshadowed, and I guessed it might happen. HOWEVER, after I guessed it I immediately dismissed it as being outlandish. Good work to the author.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 