The hammered iron crown had long since been placed on his head, his palm cut and bled on an altar as he was named king of Tranavia-his downfall was oncoming. “Any trouble is of your own making,” the voice snipped. Those strange intonations hummed constantly in his veins. The thin, reedy voice that needled him from a place past death. Horrors at the edges of his awareness and that voice. An empty glass on the floor within reach and a book hanging over the arm where Serefin had put it to mark his place as he considered the same thing he had considered every night for the last four months: dreams of moths and blood and monsters. To rouse him, clearly, but he probably wasn’t particularly surprised to find Serefin lying on the chaise in his sitting room, one foot braced on the ground, the other leg kicked up against the back. He was awake when Kacper slipped into his chambers. No, he did it because it was easier to drink himself into oblivion than face the nightmares. It wasn’t like he spent his nights awake because he was expecting another tragedy. He knew that span of hours intimately, but even knowledge of the inevitable wasn’t enough to make it less painful. It was a time when knives were unsheathed, when plans were created and seen into fruition. Serefin Meleski inhabited the sliver of night that was ripe for betrayal.

But, if you enjoyed the first, this book does not disappoint.A viper, a tomb, a trick of the light, Velyos is always reaching for whatever does not belong to him. It’s definitely dark, so if you’re squeamish, perhaps stay away. Overall, if you don’t mind some dark fantasy and you aren’t one to shy away from religion being question, I think you’ll enjoy this. I know this book just came out, but I already want more. This book also has an interesting dynamic amongst the characters, which I think is interesting and I hope will be explored more in the next book.

How it’s not necessarily light, happiness, and healing as we wish it would be. I also really enjoy how this world interacts with the idea of magic. While this thought was explored originally in the first book, I think it truly came to fruition in this one. I really feel like it’s unlike a lot of things I read and really plays into the idea of who are these beings that we worship and call gods? They could look or be anything.

So many books promised a dark atmosphere but this is truly one of the few that actually delivered. This book became one of those that I could not put down.

Ruthless gods a novel