
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Guardians of the Gods #2
Pages: 224
Published by Tordotcom on January 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
The fate of the Orisha will be decided in the concluding volume of the Guardian of the Gods duology, inspired by Yoruba mythology.Perfect for fans of N. K. Jemisin, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Daughters of Nri, and Godkiller.For four hundred years, the world's remaining Orisha have fought to survive the rapaciousness of the soul-stealing Godkillers and the charismatic words of the singular, mysterious figure who leads them, known as the Teacher. Now they seek to kill the one person whose existence defies their very mandate.Now that Ashâke carries within herself the spirits of the surviving Orisha, she is on the hunt for allies who can help her defeat the encroaching army of Godkillers. But their influence is everywhere, and no one is immune―not even Ashâke. If she is to succeed, Ashâke will need to answer the question the Godkillers pose―are the Orisha even worth saving?
My Review:
I think I’m going to have to talk ‘around’ this story before I can get to talking ‘about’ this story because that’s the problem I had with reading the story and, as it turns out, with writing this review.
For a short book, it took me a rather long time to get into it, and it’s only now that I can see why that happened as well as what made it work in the end.
The first book in the Guardians of the Gods duology, In the Shadow of the Fall, drove me batty because it didn’t feel like a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. And even though it was clearly part one of a duology, that part still needed an ending – which it didn’t feel like it got.
I expected a cliffhanger, but instead the book read like it fell off a cliff – and took the reader right along with it.
It was a LOT of setup – necessary as background but frustrating in the character development. Then suddenly both Ashâke and the reader learn that everything she was taught was a lie and that all of her actions based on that lie were a deadly and dreadful mistake.
Now, in the duology’s conclusion, we learn the truths behind the lie that Ashâke was taught, the cost of her mistaken belief, not just to herself but to her entire world, and the revelation of the trick that lay behind it all.
In this particular story of discontented trickster gods and the manipulations they wield to get their way, it’s still a bit of a two-man grift – even if both are deceiving each other as much, or more, than they are the world at large.
Escape Rating B: For this reader, just as with the first book, it felt like the beginning of this half of the story was drifting rather than moving forward. After finishing, I realized that the story felt like it was drifting because the protagonist, Ashâke, was herself in a state of drift.
She’s not acting, she’s reacting, and she’s reacting to the drives and whims of the four active gods, for whom she is the combination of guardian, avatar, and only living channel. She was taught to see the gods, called Orisha in the West African myths in which this story is rooted, as all-powerful over the individual aspects that each individual Orisha represents.
And they ALL exploit that belief mercilessly because they have, in truth, lost control and are desperate to maintain some semblance of it.
Meanwhile, the social and political situation is out of control. The Orisha – and Ashâke – have been reduced to desperate straits because a charismatic ‘teacher’ has swayed the hearts and minds of the people who once worshiped the Orisha. Ashâke and the gods she guards are on the run and running out of room in which to keep running.
No one makes good decisions in such conditions – not even gods.
The final confrontation is huge and cathartic and is a truth that sets the people and even the Orisha free. Everyone, it seems, but Ashâke herself, who finally takes the position that was always meant to be hers. All she needed to do was rise to it in spite of all the things and people and even gods that stood in her way.