Godkiller: The no. 1 SUNDAY TIMES bestseller and epic fantasy debut (The Fallen Gods Trilogy, Book 1)

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Elogast, the Knight. Of course every badass character needs a soft, golden retriever kind of man on their side. Elogast was nice, loyal, and honest. He had this savior complex going on, and her loyalty was frankly annoying sometimes, but what would you expect from a person who literally embodies a dog? And I don’t mean any of this in a bad way. He wasn’t a zealot, nor was he annoying. He just followed what he thought was right. The other characters we follow through the course of the novel are Elogast, currently a baker but formerly the Prince’s most-trusted knight suffering from PTSD from his time in the war; Inara, a young noble’s daughter who spent her short life hidden away from prying eyes to a point where no one knows she exists; and Skedi, the hare-deer-bird God of White Lies who is mysteriously bound to her, and whose existence puts both their lives at incredible risk. On the pilgrim road, among other pilgrims, they each have their secrets. But with demon-like constructs in pursuit of at least one of them, keeping their secrets from each other turns out to be the least of their problems, especially when circumstances separate them from the other pilgrims—the real pilgrims—of their small travelling group. They have to figure out if they can afford to trust each other: a hard choice, when one of them is a godkiller, one of them’s a god, and one is a former knight who might be expected to look askance at either. Add to that Inara discovering that she has very unusual powers all of her own, intimations of civil war in Middren, and and the tension can only rise.

Each person’s colours were different, bright, manipulable. Skedi could tell a liar from a lover, a joker from a fraud.”I found Kaner’s portrayal of Gods captivating throughout. These are not invisible gods which the people blindly pray to, oh no, these gods can be summoned, they can physically manifest, and they can be bargained with. Kaner takes great care to show two sides: one where gods offer comfort and hope to those facing desperate times, and one where gods feed off people’s pain and their suffering, and greedily lust to grow more powerful through their prayers. Thus showing why gods of old and new fought against each other and divided the lands between those who still held belief and those who feared the gods. It follows Kissen whose family was murdered by zealots of a fire god, now makes a living killing gods and enjoys it, that is until she finds a god she can’t kill and the young girl, Inara that it has somehow attached itself to. But then she encounters a god whose existence is bound to twelve-year-old Inara Craier, the sheltered and isolated daughter of one of Middren’s noble houses. Inara has never been allowed to leave her mother’s rural estate, where for five years she’s lived with the small god Skedi as her companion. Skedi is a little god of white lies, with hardly any power, but his life is connected to Inara’s: to kill Skedi might kill Inara, too, and neither of them can separate very far. But when Inara sneaks out to find someone who could, maybe, help her and Skedi live separate lives, she finds Kissen. And when Kissen attempts to return Inara to her mother, they discover the estate burning, all its inhabitants dead, killed by mercenaries. Inara has nowhere else to turn, and Kissen, once a young adolescent who had lost her whole family, can’t quite bring herself to abandon her. When Inara refuses to be left in relative safety with the two women who form the rest of Kissen’s chosen family, Kissen reluctantly agrees to take her to ruined Blenraden, to beg the remaining wild gods for aid. I loved writing Inara and Skedi and their relationship. I mean – Inara felt pretty easy at first, possibly because I was that wilful and intensely vulnerable know it all as a child. Hers is a journey of self-discovery, and finding her grit, which is such a delight to write. Godkiller by Hannah Kaner is a dark, gritty and highly immersive debut. This is a tale where gods and mortals collide, where myth and legends are brought to life, where having faith could get you killed. The power of belief is strong, worship can bring peace to many but believing in Gods can be deadly. To seek a God’s favour, to have their light shine upon you, is to pay a high price.

but at least, at the very least, he now had someone to fight alongside, though he would not in a thousand years have suspected it would be a god, a godkiller, and a child.

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I absolutely adored everything about this book, it was phenomenal! The world was so vibrant and alive, teeming with history and ancient beings; the characters were so real and human, always flawed and always interesting; the prose was beautiful and evocative. I simply cannot fault it!

While the fantasy genre is no stranger to divine characters, Kaner does something interesting with the concept by closely intertwining the Gods’ fates with humanity. Gods can only come into existence if people believe in and pray to them. The more shrines people build and the more offerings they bring, the stronger the God. This makes Kissen’s work more interesting in so far that she is more than just a killer of Gods, she is also a hunter of their symbols, and thus equally feared and despised by those who still pray to the beings of old. Whilst reading Godkiller, we follow four different points of view. Two of them are reluctant legends in their own fields, both were active and influential throughout the god war, and are now just generally plodding along. They find themselves in a position that is similar to how Ringil begins in The Steel Remains. Kissen is the titular Godkiller and her occupation is pretty self-explanatory. She doesn’t like gods much and will kill them for a fee. Elogast is currently a baker, yet his previous occupation was as one of the King’s most trusted Knights. We also follow Inara, a young noble lady who the majority of the nobility don’t seem to know exists, and finally her bonded god companion Skedi, the god of white lies. It’s an interesting question, I didn’t start Godkiller intending to write a disabled character, or a character with PTSD, but as I sketched the characters, who they were, what they’d experienced, then these became important parts of who they were, how they acted, who they loved and who they hated. Godkiller is set in the aftermath of a God War, where our characters are trying to survive in a dark and gritty world where gods and monsters roam. It reminded me very much of The Witcher, was this a source of inspiration to you? What other aspects influenced your worldbuilding?The complex trio central to the story are distinct, fleshed-out characters. Fierce yet caring, Kissen was easy to like, and I loved the disability representation she presents through her prosthesis. Although I took slightly longer to connect with Elogast and Inara, the growth they experience adds depth to their characters and makes them endearing.