The author kindly allowed me to be an ARC reader for this book.
The hero who thinks they are just a normal person until their history is revealed is a major trope in fantasy – Luke Skywalker anyone? Main character Sif Lanthor is exactly such a person. She thinks she is just a “normal girl” until her father fails to return from war and a mysterious man appears claiming that her father isn’t really dead and that Sif can save him. Sif and brother Finn follow the stranger and it starts an adventure where she finds out that she is definitely not who she thought she was.
There are so many things to love about this book. There is some incredible world-building and obviously a lot of thought went into the ancient history and the relationships between the Gods. I loved how it felt very much like the relationships between the old Greek Gods – not just the family squabbles but the really dark stories, like Cronus devouring his children.
There are some places where the story line takes some really dark turns and all the people there – our main character included – make some questionable choices. I love that ambiguity, there is just something so realistic about people doing their best and sometimes failing to do the right thing.
There are also some incredible plot twists – betrayals I did not see coming or character reveals that the story only finds out about after it’s too late. The down side of being in an ancient prophecy is that they never mean what you think they do, and this book really works with that principle.
If there is one thing I have to say I didn’t like about the book is that it all felt very rushed. The book was very action-packed and the story moved very quickly but I think sometimes to the detriment of understanding why the plot moved in certain directions. For example, several times in the text Sif expressed loyalty to her traveling companions but it feels like we didn’t see enough of their interactions to explain why she bonded so tightly to them. I feel like Francis could have spent more time exploring the reasons for why certain things happened. Another example, the fight between Sif and Marly that injured them both so badly, I think there could have been a lot more discussion around how it felt to find out they were manipulated into that and how they interacted afterwards. It would have made the characters feel so much more real. She could split this into two books, spend more time on character development, and it would work so much better.
More than anything I think this book could make an incredible screenplay. There is so much visual description and if it doesn’t have the slower pacing I prefer in books it would absolutely lend itself to a stunning television series.
Molly Francis is a Canadian author and her website is https://www.mollyfrances.ca/