Ashleigh Motbey's Reviews > Hammer of God

4.25/5.

It was a bittersweet ending to The Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller. I am glad I have read the series, but am sad that I have to say goodbye to these characters, this world, because it is highly unlikely I will find time in my life to read these again with my monster of a TBR.

As a whole, this series has been my favourite so far this year. It was well-written, unique, and just plain disturbing on many occasions, which I actually appreciated. I love a good fantasy with all your stereotypes, but I also love a good fantasy where the author turns everything on its head and actually makes you hate the main character of the book. If you see the reviews on Goodreads, you’ll find that many people stopped this series because of Hekat being unlikeable. Hekat was cruel, essentially a killing machine with absolutely no conscience. I liked that we were able to see a character such as her in this series and read from her POV. It was different and I appreciated it.

In Empress, we were introduced to the world of Mijak – a harsh land where animals are sacrificed to appease the god. People are punished through torture if they displease the god and people die if they commit terrible sins.

In The Riven Kingdom we travelled across land and see to reach an island in the middle of other powerful nations called Ethrea – a peaceful place with no war, no murder and living under the rule of a god that reflects that of the Christian god.

Hammer of God brought both Mijak and Ethrea together in a bloody battle that saw many lives lost in a big struggle for power.

In my opinion, this book was the weakest of the three. There was a lot of fighting between characters on the same side and Rhian and Alasdair spent most of their time being angry at each other and then declaring their love the very next moment, which grew frustrating at times.

In saying that, I still gave this book over 4 stars, so ‘weak’ in comparison to other books is not comparible at all.

I loved the way everything came together at the end. Predictable? Yes, a little, but as a seasoned fantasy reader predictability is something you very much need to not be bothered by if you are going to enjoy the genre. What I did appreciate was the ‘good guys’ weren’t as definable as a standard character. Having the ability to read the book from both sides, it was hard to choose who to root for at times.

My favourite character in the whole series would be considered a ‘bad guy’, but he wasn’t really bad, but he also didn’t stop supporting the ‘bad guys’ and I loved the confusion and morally grey aspect Miller adds to all her characters.

This series as a whole contains a lot of heavy content so I do warn that no one who is justifiably disturbed by really unsettling things should go into this book. At times, I’ve felt bad for not being as upset or bothered as maybe I should have been. However, if you find challenging content a reason to read a book, then I highly recommend it. It is a wonderful series with fantastic characters that you just don’t ‘love’ and will keep you busy for a long time.