‚The people with the sharpest edges sometimes hid the deepest wounds.‘

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

*spoiler free review* (meaning no information that you will not gather on the first chapters; if you want to go in totally blind you can just read the first paragraph here)

Wow. Simply Wow. This is a new favourite for me and definitely an easy 5 star read. And that pleasantly surprises me as I actually was a bit hestitant to read this. This was chosen by my wonderful bookclub over on Instagram. Seeing the cover I do admit that I was blown away by how beautiful it was (I mean, take a look, what is not to love there?). But somehow the cover gave some YA vibes in my opinion. And YA and me … well, there was a time when it was a good fit, but these days are over, vanished maybe with me not being a young adult anymore, which would make sense 😂. But I searched some online and apparently it is supposed to be adult fantasy, so I decided in the end to give it a chance. And boy, am I happy to have done this!❤️ As there were so many things to love I sorted them into categories (do like the clear arrangement as well, so I might do this more often in the future):

World building: This was very good and surprisingly so as I did not expect that from such a short book (compared to your standard fantasy book that is; the book is 290 pages long). Kaner managed to do a wonderful job here, even a better job than some other (fantasy) authors do on 600+ pages. We are in a world where gods exist manyfold for all things and situations imaginable, fuelled by the praise, love, adoration and fear given them by humans. But there was a war, started by the wild gods against the new gods that enjoyed the attention of the queen. The humans won in the end, although at hugh costs, and the new king forbade worshipping any gods. But if people abide by that rule is another question altogether…
I can’t wait to dig in more into this beautiful, mythical and dangerous world!

Plot: We follow three people in this fantastic tale: Inara, a young girl with a peculiar problem and desperate to find a solution to her situation; Elogast, a former knight and now baker, who still feels he owes his former friend, the king; and Kissen, the godkiller, lonely and hard and with a mountain of anger, revenge and resentment against the very gods that used to rule the lands. Their ways will cross and they will have to navigate their desires and wishes in this dangerous world. More i will not say to not give too much spoilers 🙂

Characters: I just loved them from the very beginning, and yes, all of the main ones. The chapters are told from the view of one of the main characters each, so I could really feel like forming a relationship to each of them Kaner did a beautiful job at painting the diverse nature of human beings and how similar experiences lead to different outcomes. Friendship, love and the whole plethora of human emotion are at the core of her story and it is just so beautiful to be able to be part of this deeply human journey, staying in stark contrast to the godly world that overlies with theirs. I want to really underscore that I loved that the characters all had their flaws. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good hero (and morally grey characters don’t allways work for me), but I think there are few things worse than having flat characters that are just too perfect to be true and therefore not at all relatable. That wasn’t the case here, but still you could very easily see the good in each of them. They have grown on me so much and if it were only for them ( meaning even if just the characters were good in this book, which is not the case) I would go on reading this series.

Character development: Definitely one of the strong suits in this tale! Amazing! And again: Very believable and coherent. I really bothers me if this is done in an unrealistic way. And I guess we all know a book or two where the character development was either unrealistic or non-existent (both extremes just make a whole book feel flat, especially when its one where you follow the characters quite a bit through their life, as it is with a lot of fantasy books). Hannah Kaner managed to find the sweet spot in between and I love her for this.

Cover: So so pretty, as mentioned above 😍 I usually don’t take covers in particular consideration. Or at least try to, as I am in the end a sucker for a pretty book. But this just stood out to me so much. You will find some more pictures down below, where I tried (and mostly failed) to make the gold foiling appear on the pictures. Come on, gold foiling, you gotta love that, right?

Other positive things: I am not just an avid reader but also a chef and baker by heart. And I love the mentioning of food in books and often recreate recipes from them. Godkiller was pure gold here, as there are so many and detailed mentions of food. And also foods that remind me of oriental cuisine (meaning from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Turkey…), which is one of my favourite. About 90 percent of the annotations I made are due to food being mentioned 😂

Negative: the only negative thing for me is that the following books in the series are not out yet 😂 (yeah, forgot to mention this, Godkiller is the first book in a series. I think you can also read it as a standalone though, if you can cope tih not knowing how the story will go on. Which makes no sense, no, maybe not really working as a standalone, sorry 😂). Would love to keep on reading now! ❤❤ (if you don’t want to miss my reviews of the following books in this series, you can subscribe below so you will not miss a new blogpost).

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ definitely 5 stars from me!

Trigger warning: Physical violence; offensive language