Lately I’ve been reading a lot of romantic fantasy, a.k.a. romantasy. However, I sometimes like changing this up and Godkiller by Hannah Kaner was the book I choose for doing that. I never heard of it before until I went to a bookish event in Amsterdam last month. Kaner attended this event and was interviewed about this book and its sequel. The book sounded intresting, but did it deliver for me?

About the book

Godkiller Series: Fallen Gods #1
Published by Harper Voyager on January 19, 2023
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780008521462
Genres: Adult, Fantasy

Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins.

Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour.

Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.

My review

As I already stated, I never heard about this book. Saw nothing about it on social media and nobody seemed to be talking about it. Apparently, it was included in a bookish box, although i can’t remember which one. When I heard the author interview, the book sounded quite interesting and my curiosity got sparked. I knew beforehand that this was really different from the fantasy books I have been reading recently, so I didn’t know what to expect really.

Unfortunately, I had a very, very rough start with this one. Even this rough that I comtemplated whether to DNF and never look back. Well, I switched to the audiobook and that helped for most part, but I’m still unconvinced. The writing was okay, not special or whatsoever. However, books with heists and quests happen to not really be my thing. To me, it was unclear where this story was headed for most of the book and therefore it felt like nothing was at stake. I found it hard to picture the world, because even though the characters travel a lot, the environment was hard to grasp. The first half of the book is really, really slow and boring. The second half partially makes up for it though. I really enjoyed the POV switching and this was also necessary for the story.

We follow four characters: Kissen, Inara, Elogast en Skedi. They differ a lot from one another, but fate brings them together and somehow they are bonding. Personally, I didn’t like Kissen. She’s really rough and even rude most of the time. This makes it hard to care for her. I didn’t actually care for any of the characters, because we didn’t get to know them that well and they barely seem to grow. Furthermore, it feels like Kaner wanted to tick all the diversity boxes way too hard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for diversity in books, but it can also b overdone and that’s what happened here. It didn’t feel natural to me, rather forced. However, all characters felt like they were created by ticking off boxes and tropes and that’s such a pity. Since this book is plot driven, it kind of works, but again, it felt forced.

Even though Godkiller by Hannah Kaner sounded interesting, it didn’t really work for me. I was bored, especially the first half of the book. It picks up a little in the second half, but I still didn’t get the direction the story was headed in. The diversity feels forced, the author tries way too hard to tick all the boxes. This is super unfortunate, because I’m all for diversity in books, but this was hugely overdone. Furthermore, the characters fell flat to me, even though this book switches POV a lot. Maybe this type of fantasy is not for me, nor are books with heists and quests. I miss my romantasy to be honest LOL. It’s safe to say that I won’t be reading the sequel to this book.