📕 [Review] Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
This year I picked up Godkiller by Hannah Kaner, even though I said I was going to focus on books I already own. Haha. I decided to make up for this, I'd read this one right away after buying it, so it doesn't sit on my shelf for a year or longer without being touched.
In this review I try to avoid spoilers, but if you want to remain completely naive to the book for your own read, then I'll suggest you don't read this.
Quick Review
| Category | Notes/Rating |
|---|---|
| Characters | Functional. |
| Writing Style | Strict character-perspective chapters are not my favorite. But the author's voice was fine to me. |
| Editing | Not bad, but commas were overused and it was annoying. |
| Story | Neat idea but lost its luster somewhere along the way. |
| Overall | ⭐⭐⭐/5 I liked it. |
We'll see how long this "quick review" thing lasts, I like the idea of it but not sure I really structure my thoughts well enough for this to work forever, haha.
I'm giving this a rating of 3/5. My ratings are fairly arbitrary, but I'm going by the Goodreads idea that even a 2 is a positive review - if you didn't know that, just mouse-over the stars. A two star is still "I liked it," haha. Which I think is actually a fairly positive view, since normally I'd say a 3 is "meh" and below that is bad.
Summary
The story here starts out pretty strong; we get the backstory of Kissen, who as a child her family was sacrificed to a fire god. Her only other surviving family member, her father, sacrificed himself to their patron god of the ocean in order to save Kissen's life. However, Kissen rejected their god's help, angered that her father would throw his own life away for her rather than try to live himself. Fortunately for her, her stubbornness didn't get her killed, and she survives into adulthood to become a "veiga" (godkiller) who is effectively a bounty hunter for gods. Kissen gives off vibes like she really wants to be Geralt of Riveria, the Witcher.
The opening is pretty strong and exciting. And while we do keep a bit of that momentum as we come along with Kissen on a standard job and to meet another main character of the book, Inara, we eventually slow the pace down to a crawl. This is my big gripe with the story; there's a huge portion of the book where it just felt a bit too slow or unnecessary. It's like the book felt that its tropes and certain inclusions were too important to drop, but they don't actually add a lot of meat. All that said, the book is only 290 pages, so it's not like this is a HUGE drag compared to some other books I've slogged through.
Some other minor problems I had that kept me from moving this to a 4 star rating, which could just easily be pet peeves:
The book follows a chapter perspective structure where the "main" character is the one whose name is at the top of the chapter. This isn't my favorite, but it's not uncommon so I can't really knock points for it. However, included in this list is Skediceth, the god who is bound to Inara. Personally I think Skedi should not have had any perspective chapters (or very few), and instead these chapters mostly should have been told from Inara's perspective. Skediceth is a god - even if he's a weak one, I would have much preferred for him to maintain a level of mystique by not directly telling the reader what he's thinking. I feel this makes his characterization weaker overall, as he feels more relatable (and therefore, mortal) for it. If we do get his perspective, it should be for an important scene.
Another minor problem. While this isn't the worst book grammatically that I've read in the last 10 years, the author overuses commas. As someone who loves to overuse commas, this would have been better if an editor caught it.
Characters
I never really fell for any of the characters. They were fine and fairly well defined, but I just didn't find myself caring. Maybe it's a "me" issue, I don't know. I think I'm getting tired of reading too many stories trying to act like a D&D campaign, but then not making the "journey" part interesting enough.
I think I like Kissen's concept but a character who has "fuck you" tattooed to her body (that for some reason we constantly need to be reminded of) comes off as immature rather than dangerous and cool. I guess I don't really enjoy the F word being in fantasy - it feels too modern and takes me out of the story. I've become a big fan of lines like "he curses under his breath," which lets the reader have the liberty of choosing what a swear in this world would sound like.
But I also didn't appreciate the story trying to... sort of gaslight me into thinking Kissen had a soft side? From page 83, as Kissen is trying on a new leg prosthetic:
Kissen reattached the leg to its knee joint, and then put her weight on it. She bent, twisted, testing its balance, and beaming. Inara had thought a person who killed gods would be somewhat monstrous themselves, but Kissen was like a kitten with a new toy.
Outside of this one line, Kissen never acts like "a kitten with a new toy." And I have a really hard time reading her testing a prosthetic leg as such. It just feels like very poor characterization, but also it was smack dab in the middle of a section I was already slogging through, so it really stood out.
I also felt like we spent a bit too much time with characters that didn't matter. Maybe, because this book has two sequels, Kissen's friends will come back later on and be important. But I just couldn't find myself caring for them. Also: not enough actual god-killing. Would have liked more of that.
Final Thoughts
This book has two more in the series after it, and I'm not yet sure if I'm going to continue. Overall I think I liked it, but I peeked at the Goodreads reviews for the next one, and someone said it's even slower than the first. So... I don't know.
This is a book I would describe as "written like it wants to be a movie," which is an abstract idea that I can't define all that well, but just a feeling I get from some books that puts me off (as someone who doesn't really care for movies.) I say it a lot about books and it's not a compliment, though to be clear, I wouldn't shame an author for taking a movie deal. Just that I think if your intention with writing a book is to try for a shortcut into being a movie writer, I think that's gross. (And again, to be clear, I'm not accusing the author of doing this - it just feels that way to me. Personal opinion.)
After reading Barbara Hambly's Circle of the Moon, the ending honestly feels like the author already commit to writing a trilogy so they have to wrap up "just enough" of the book, but leave some things hanging for the next. In comparison to Hambly, who everything I've read from her so far (outside of maybe Knight of the Demon Queen which is, granted, book 3 of a 4 part series) sits comfortably enough that it could be the last book you read and would be satisfying. I'm not sure if that's a fair criteria to meet or not as authors are entitled to write in whatever style/structure/etc they want. But as I sit and wonder if I should buy the sequel, the main reason to do so is that the main plotline I wanted resolved in this book is not. And that feels cheap to me. Would it have been better if Kaner had simply written a longer book and cut out some of the junk? Would I have bought the book in the first place if it were that long? The main reason I haven't touched Brandon Sanderson is because The Way of Kings is so massive.
So, I don't know. The book was okay. Maybe I'll read the next one, maybe not. We'll see.