Godblind by Anna Stephens REVIEW

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Started: 05/09/17

Finished: 21/10/17

Spoilers: No.

So this is a weird one for me. I enjoyed Godblind, and on reflection, there's very little to find fault with on the whole, but for some reason, I struggled to get into it. And it's not cause it's a bad book, actually, it's really pretty good. I love fantasy and Grimdark, epic and vast worlds with maps and multiple character perspectives. This should have been everything I wanted in a fantasy debut, but the whole time I was reading something felt off to me.

Figuring I simply wasn't in the mood for this story, I put it down for two weeks, read something else, and revisited it. I persevered because it's one of the few books I've bought during its first week of release, and if I pay full retail price, I read every god-damned word whether I like it or not.

Characters I think the main reason it struggled to get into this book was the sheer amount of characters. Don't get me wrong, I love third person multiple perspective stories, it's actually my favourite writing style, but this book is maybe a little overkill. Throughout the course of the book, we don't see two perspectives, or three, or even four, there is a total of TEN. Yes, ten POV's.

Rillirin, Corvus, Crys, Durdil, Dom, The Blessed One, Galtas, Mace, Tara, Gilda.

This would have been fine, were we given enough time to invest in any of these characters early enough. With an average chapter length of about 3 pages (sometimes less, sometimes more) I never felt like I had enough time with any given character at any given point. They were difficult to become fond of or grow with in the beginning because I just didn't know enough about them

It took me to near on the 300-page mark to finally decide that the only characters I truly liked and cared about were Crys, Tara and Ash. I would have been happy with a story with just them. They were really likeable in the end and made an amusing trio at times. Crys and Tara felt the most developed, the ones that had actually grown and changed throughout the story, adjusting to their situations.

I'm all about character driven stories, and although this book is, I never felt like I knew the characters, I just never had time to get close to them and I think the reason I ended up liking the three mentioned above was because to me they had the most distinctive voices.

It's interesting that the synopsis mentions Dom by name, as though he's the main character, but I never got the impression of any one character being more important than the other. I had no idea Dom was the MC.

Plot Oh boy, this is an intense plot to describe in a paragraph.

Two armies from two different kingdoms. We have the Mireces who worship the Red Gods and the Rilporians who worship the Gods of Light. The Mireces want to invade Rilpor and take control of the kingdom in a bloody and glorious war that will split the veil and allow their gods to re-enter the realm of reality.

So that's pretty much the basics, but there's way more going on than just that of course, naturally, there would be with ten main character story arc to establish. Majority of those characters are Rilporian, the 'good guys', but like any religious war ever, that depends entirely on where your faith lies. Many of the characters' storylines overlap and interweave, and some of them don't meet at all, but they are all working towards the same goal: to win the war.

This is a great idea. I can't fault the plot at all. It's truly fascinating. There's so much happening, betrayal and subterfuge and deceit, bravery, good intentions and true colours. Plot-wise, this is everything it needs to be for a fantasy grimdark.

One scene in paricular involving a certain prince literally had me cringing. I don't cringe ease, but the violence was so graphic, I was practically covering my eyes trying to block out the imagaes. It was uncomfortable to read, but I'm little sick and enjoy uncomfortable reads.

In a weird kind of way, I really appreciate the extent of the violence the author used. She wasn't afraid to go there.

Toe-curlingly violent torture scenes, so BIG trigger warning there if you're senesitive to graphic violence.

Setting I enjoyed the setting. I love anything set in an entirely different world, especially one well fleshed out. Sometimes authors create a world but then set the story in a small corner of it, never expanding out. This isn't the case with Godblind. I really felt like the author made good use of the interesting world she'd created. The story literally stretched from one side of the map to the other. And the map in the front of the book is also very useful and I referred to it a lot.

So much of this world is mentioned and described, so it really does feel like it's alive, like the world continues to live around the characters, and despite the characters. Another thing I can't fault.

Writing Style Written very much in Third Person Multiple. I feel this story has been written with the sole intent of marketing it for TV. Each chapter is short, choppy and straight to the point, like a minute long scene in a TV show, cutting away abruptly to other character before returning to the previous one to conclude that 'scene'. To an extent, I understand and appreciate what the author is doing with this, and this medium works perfectly in TV, but to me, the style is too disjointed for a book. Because of this, I couldn't get into the pacing.

The dialogue was fantastic though. Not a single line was cliche, and I one of the reasons why I love Grimdarks is the colourful use of language. I know profanity isn't everyone's cup of tea, but to me, it's just more realistic and adds to the grit. The descriptions and writing quality, in general, was really very good, it's simply the number of characters and their lack of development that makes the whole thing feel rushed.

Final Impression A great book that could have been outstanding. This has many raving reviews on Goodreads and I'm glad that it hit the mark for so many. I will continue this series, as my main issue was not knowing the characters, but hopefully, I won't feel that way with the second book and the characters will feel more familiar to me.

Trigger Warning: torture.