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theliterarygnat · 5 months

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THE SHADOW OF THE GODS BY JOHN GWYNNE

2.5-3/5 stars | Major Spoilers Should have been three decent books instead of one that's kinda shit

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This is a long review, full of spoilers, and it is more a way to vent than something meant to help readers decide whether they want to pick up this book or not. I am of the very unpopular opinion that while this book has some solid concepts behind it, their implementation and execution is not really that good. However, this novel still resonated with many people, and so I do not think that my dislike/lack of enjoyment should be a discouragement to those interested.

There are things worth enjoying in this book. The Shadow of the Gods (henceforth TSOTG) features a world inspired by the old North of the viking ages, and this Norse aesthetic is extremely strong throughout. If you liked The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski for its mood, its cynical realist setting, and the melancholy tone throughout (especially in the short story collections), then I think you will find the world and setting of TSOTG to be very compelling. John Gwynne is a reenactor and it shows, both in the enthusiasm and detail with which he writes, and the incredible amount of research and inspiration that has been packed into this book. Every page seems to have been a labor of love and joy. Daniel Greene of BookTube fame has described TSOTG as “an author’s baby” (pos.), “something that the author has wanted to put out for so long” and I do agree with this assessment!

However. Unlike Greene, who came to this conclusion because he enjoyed the book, I had the very same thought because I was questioning whether this book or not was Gwynne’s debut. I never read Gwynne, this being my first book from him, and I knew nothing about him before I picked up the book solely based on the cover and the blurb. While reading the story I did actually look up whether Gwynne was established as an author or had published anything, because there were many things on a conceptual or a executive level that felt somewhat juvenile and maybe even inept; they just seemed to me to be hallmarks of a beginner author. He did publish many works before this, but like Greene said, it feels like Gwynne has worked on this book for so long I wonder if the concept predates the books that predate this one.

My closing thoughts for this non-spoiler introduction is this: go to your local library or pirate a copy of this online, and if you can get through like 100 or so pages, consider buying it (if you pirated a copy). The build-up is slow, but I think if you accept it and can get through that 100 pages, you might find at least some nuggets to enjoy here.

Now, on to the spoilers, and the vent proper:

This book is SO frustrating. Whilst reading I so often thought to myself that this could have been good had these stories and characters been explored in standalone novels in a much bigger series rather than a trilogy. Much of the weakness of this story comes from the lack of pagetime and space to build things up proper and give them a satisfying pay-off. The stories of the characters also do not connect in such big ways that the multi-POV gimmick is useful in any way; there is little to no overlap in characters, locations, events, or themes, and especially in the beginning there is a drastic difference in the pace of the three stories, which messes with the pacing of TSOTG as a whole. This lack of interconnectedness makes the multi-POV structure extremely tiring. I find it unnecessary and, as my rating and previous words imply, I think it detracts from what Gwynne could have achieved.

The characters we follow are: Orka, a mother and warrior; Varg, an escaped thrall (slave); and Elvar, a mercenary slaver. I think that Orka’s story should have been told first, Varg’s second, and Elvar should have just been removed and replaced wholesale, or at the very least overhauled as a character in her entirety. I will talk about each POV character on their own first, with general notes and criticisms included in each section as they become relevant, with more prose and world-building-related thoughts afterwards.

ORKA

Orka is the first POV character. Her story is slow to start, but it goes through three stages: living the normal life, the inciting incident, the revenge plot. This not an unusual structure, but it being interjected with Varg’s and Elvar’s POVs, all of which have started at different point sin their lives, develop at different paces, does make it feel slower than it already is. The multi-POVs distract and detract from each other rather than supporting each other, and I felt it gruesomely when it came to Orka. It is not that I disliked her chapters, but I felt like the thought put into the development and presentation of her story has suffered the most because of how little space there was to explore it.

With Orka, I think that laying the groundwork pre-inciting incident is important. Mostly because it’s almost necessary for the revenge plot to be enjoyable. Orka has built for herself a life as peaceful as this world has to offer with her husband, Thorkel, and her son, Breca. We learn throughout her POV that Orka and Thorkel both have at some point been thralls and warriors, bloodied and brutal and violent, and they have left that life behind. Thorkel with more success than Orka. She is still haunted by her past, and it actually affects her ability to be a good mother. She is emtoionally stunted and prone to lashing out, either in words or in actions, such as slapping Brace, because she was worried and angry that he’d run off in the night to tend to an injured monster-critter when they know they are child-abductors around. Thorkel is actually the one with emotional intelligence, who shows the greatest range of emotions and care and gentle affection. It’s an interesting dynamic, especially because Orka appreciates this fact about her husband. Respects and desires it for herself even. While I didn’t find their relationship to be particularly romantic or appealing, I did like that Orka was the one that was struggling to be a good parent.

Exploring her in her time of peace and as a parent is very important, because the revenge-plot is not about her growth, it is about her regression. And therein lies the greatest frustration: this exploration is shitty.

From the very first chapter, the reader knows exactly where the story is going. Gwynne is very heavy-handed when it comes to Orka and Varg. With Orka, it is abundantly clear that her inciting incident, what will set her off to join Varg and Elvar at some point, is the death of her husband and the abduction of her child. Gwynne then tries very hard to get you to care about Thorkel the husband and Breca the son, and it so clear that he needs you to care about them, that he is going out of his way to make them appealing. He makes Thorkel a whipped husband and a caring, gentle father; Breca an inquisitive child too kind and soft for this world. Because I already knew where Orka’s story was going and what would happen to these characters, I found myself growing frustrated that it was taking us so long to actually get to the point, and I actually disliked the characters because of how hamfisted they felt.

The inciting incident of Orka’s story is also the main reason why I thought this had been Gwynne’s first novel ever written. It hinges on the existence of Froa; a tree spirit that guards Orka’s family and home, whom Orka respects enough to seek advice from when territorial tensions rise and war seems imminent. Because Orka goes to get that advice, she leaves her steading and family for a little while, and during that little while, her home gets raided, Thorkel killed, and Breca is abducted.

Froa is introduced in the very same chapter her existence leads to the biggest turning point in Orka’s story, and we don’t even get to see her; she’s dead. Froa is literally nothing but her supposed existence has a massive impact. She comes out of fucking nowhere and feels like something Gwynne pulled out of his ass to get Orka out of her home. The fact he couldn’t find something more organic or relevant to what was going on in Orka’s story so far was honestly mindboggling and made me stop reading for some time. It is such a beginner’s mistake. I can understand that the concept might have been “the most horrible things can happen for the most insignificant reasons”, but this was not the best execution.

After Orka’s inciting incident, Orka quickly starts to regress. It is obvious that she is returning to her old ways. It gets extremely cheesy and even outright campy sometimes, because you will get lines of Orka thinking “I am death. I am vengeance”, and it reads like a meme. It’s just… not really that good? But at least it seems kind of in character for her, which cannot be said for some other things that I will explore more indepth in a different section. The main saving grace of Orka’s story is that she has two sidekicks, Mord and Lif, who play off of her quite decently. They showcase her as something of a grouchy old aunt, which gives her more dimension than if she had been left alone. However, I see many readers say she becomes very flat, and yeah; her reactions are predictable, her brash nature can get boring, and her regression isn’t the most compelling or even terrifying because of how shallow the exploration of her character had been in the build-up to the vengeance. Still, Orka is one of the more enjoyable POV characters. She and her story would have made for a good standalone book, if Gwynne took the time to develop and pace and plan the story out better, changing the order of events and injecting some more life and thought into the early story.

VARG

My beloved. He would have been a wonderful 2nd installment if TSOTG got split into three distinct books; his story ties into Orka’s in the very last chapter in such a way that we actually meet her again, and there are some small bridges connecting his tale with both Orka or Elvar’s stories, making him a good mid-point between the two. He is honestly the best thing about this book.

While the stakes in Orka’s story were foreshadowed in a very heavy-handed way, Varg keeps nothing secret; the reader knows immediately what his deal is (runaway slave looking for a way to learn who killed his sister so he can avenge her) and what the stakes are (getting caught and forced back into slavery if he fails). That isn’t to say that his story isn’t weak or that it is exceptionally strong. I just have a preference for his archetype, and I found him extremely compelling and sympathetic due to his circumstances. I was enamoured enough that his sister’s death didn’t register to me as fridging, even though I wouldn’t deny that it can fit into that trope commonly found in men’s stories.

The thing about Varg is this; his vengeance is his driving motivation, but it is not really the point of his story. Varg quickly falls in with the Bloodsworn, a warband of warriors who protect him from his potential slavers and accept him into their midst, teaching him how to fight and be a part of the team. Varg is adorably absent-minded; he forgets to put on his helmet and unsheathe his spear in his first big fight, but he still has the guts to try unconventional attack-strategies, and this works out well for him. He has this scrappy, kicked-dog feel about him. He is also very obviously not just a human; I had theorized from the very beginning that he was one of the Tainted, and it is made almost painfully obvious to the reader. This got tiring, but not as outright frustrating as him constantly passing out at the end of his chapters. Did it happen in every single one? No. Did it happen often enough to be annoying? Yes.

But I am getting off-topic. While every single thing Varg does and goes along with is, in the end, motivated by his quest for vengeance, his story is more about him finding his way in the world, about becoming a free man and learning what that means, growing into himself while surrounded by a new family, new friends, new allies. Varg is generally very easy to root for and was the highlight of the book for me. Especially given the fact he is surrounded by some of the more enjoyable side-characters. I love Svik, Einar, Røkia, and Golnir, and pretty much everyone else in the Bloodsworn warband.

There is the downside of everything feeling a little shallow, in part because of the writing style and how little time we spend with these people. I also found myself surprised by how quickly some characters accepted Varg, but that was somewhat resolved by the “big revelation” (to Varg) that he is Tainted. I actually like how this goes down. Gwynne assumes the reader has known this, and so he doesn’t make the reveal something big; he makes Varg’s reaction to this reveal big, the main focus, and it is a choice I applaud him for. The fact that all of the Bloodsworn are Tainted is great. It also explains why Torvik would be so quick to call Varg brother; they both could have been the descendants of the same god, making them true blood-kin brothers in a way.

Varg’s story is still flawed. After he is saved from becoming a slave again, he is not exactly aimless (since he is still looking for a way to avenge his sister), but the stakes are… gone. Kind of. Varg’s story depends on the reader caring for him and just wanting to see how he deals with the life he is thrust into. Nothing horrible is really going to happen if the Bloodsworn reject him and he does not get the aid he wanted from them to learn about his sister’s murder. At worst he might die, sure, but that isn’t related to his quest wholesale; him being a warrior trainee and him seeking vengeance feel like two separate things in a way, which makes his story very slow, without really many scenes or skirmishes relevant to the larger, overarching tale of this world.

Despite this, Varg made this book significantly more enjoyable than if he wasn’t included. His chapters were the light I needed to guide and motivate me to finish this book. His is a flawed story still, but these flaws are minor compared to Orka (in the beginning at least) and Elvar. Speaking of Elvar…

ELVAR

Elvar should not have been the POV character. She doesn’t have anything actually going for her, nothing to make her interesting. With Orka, you know what’s going to happen, but you still want to see it; the violence, the brutality, the depths she will fall to as long as she gets her son back. It’s a dark pull. With Varg, you want him to heal and grow, want to see how his story will unfold. With Elvar, there’s… really nothing.

She is a warrior of the Battle-Grim, a warband of mercenary slavers. Her first chapter is them hunting down and enslaving a man, abducting his family to keep the whole lot under their thumb, and Elvar just… doesn’t have any thoughts on this. She’s completely brain empty up in here. This is frustrating because we later learn that what Elvar ran away from was a life of servitude; her father wanted to marry her off for political ties and power, but she didn’t want to be a “brood bitch”, so she ran away to make a life for herself, to gain reputation and fame on her own merits. She specifically escaped because she didn’t want to be a pawn in somebody else’s game, didn’t want to be a servant, a slave. But she has no thoughts about being a slaver? She doesn’t care about those she hunts down and collars, doesn’t feel any sympathy or empathy, any connection, any regret or conflict when she forces others into the life she escaped from?

Elvar only wants one thing in this story: fame. Well, she wants two things if you count the money too, but she speaks of “battle-fame” the most. She wants to be known, to have a legacy, to live forever in the saga-tales and songs of skalds.That’s fine to some degree. However, Elvar lacks depth, she lacks interest, she lacks any reason to root for her or be invested in her as a character. Even Greene, who I mentioned has liked the book, does not mention her once in his review, despite making the claim that Orka and Varg would become big and popular amongst those in Gwynne’s audience. Elvar does not have the makings of a protagonist; but she would be a decently interesting side/supporting character.

Speaking of side-characters; hers are not that great. Elvar’s story is actually the one that grows to be the most connected to the event that this book is supposedly building towards; the freeing of an imprisoned god. However, most of the characters are as one-note as Elvar, with nothing to characterize them besides the desire to be rich and famous. They are all, like Elvar, mercenaries and slavers, and the leaders and high-rankers within the Battle-Grim are especially shown as being unpleasant at best to their slaves. Elvar is also extremely uninterested int he slaves; she had not known the name of Ilmur, and referred to him only as “the Hundur-thrall” (demigod descendant of the dog god (and also slave)) for her whole fucking story; it is not until Biórr, a major supporting character, informs her the slave’s name is Ilmur that she realizes she didn’t even think about the slave having a name.

Elvar is also kind of just. Stupid.

Elvar’s one and only personal conflict nearly made me throw the book out. The Battle-Grim go to the highest bidder to sell their newly-captured slave, and that highest-bidder happens to be Elvar’s father. He is a jarl and the one who planned for her to become a “brood bitch” for political connections. She has never, not even once, thought about her family up until her blood-relation to the man is revealed. It is clear when she does actually think back on her relationship with her father that there is no love lost between them. Her father’s just straight up a dick; a manipulator, a liar, someone who did not care for her, someone to whom she was a pawn. Gwynne slams the reader over the head with this. Elvar’s father offers Elvar something she had once wanted in the past; her own warband of drengr, elite warriors she would lead. There a whole fucking chapter dedicated to Elvar figuring out what choice to make. Should she stay with her chosen kin, the Battle-Grim, whom helped her achieve everything she ever wanted, with whom she has bled and fought and sheltered, with whom she earned battle-fame and coin on her own merits and skill; or return to a family that she knows is prone to manipulation and lies to get… the same thing she already has, except gifted to her instead of earned. Earning something on her own merits has been her core motivation this whole time!

Wow. what a hard choice it must be. I am saying this with the utmost sarcasm. This """dilemma""" is so fucking hollow and underdeveloped and a waste of everyone's time. It's a waste of my time, a waste of Gwynne's time, a waste of the pages and words that could have been better used for something and someone else. I hate this. It's so bad. It's not compelling, it's not deep, and it makes Elvar just seem like a stupid fucking idiot for needing to BE TOLD by somebody else that HEY. THIS GUY? YOUR FATHER? HE'S KIND OF A LYING CUNT. YOU KNOW THIS. DON'T TRUST HIM.

I wish this was removed. I wish Elvar was removed. Her installment is weak and lackluster and unnecessary. Her story has two supporting characters that I think would have worked better as protagonists, would have been more compelling. There is Grend, Elvar’s taciturn protector and bodyguard oathsworn to her, who I think could offer a lot of wisdom and interesting perspective whilst running after Elvar. She could still be the star of the show (though that’s quite unnecessary), and I think that she'd genuinely be more interesting as a side-character instead of a main one. The other character I think could have replaced her is Biórr. Biórr is the only member of the Battle Grim that seems to care about the thralls on their team; he learns their names and is kind to them. He is also not actually a Battle-Grim; he infiltrated their ranks to aid a different warrior group defeat them. He has so much going for him, I wish we'd have followed him instead. Especially because he was the only one I was rooting for! Sure, I didn't give a fuck about him until he, rather angrily, informed Elvar of the fact Ilmur had a name, since she was dehumanizing and objectifying the guy to hell and back, but after that? Chef's kiss, Biórr was the highlight of the story, and I cheered when he killed the leader of the Battle-Grim. I wish Elvar the worst because maybe then she'll actually grow into someone interesting to follow. I do not plan on reading The Hunger of the Gods but the fact Biórr DOES supposedly have a POV there is tempting me.

Another thing about Elvar that doesn't work is that she's just... irrelevant. Her story ties into the Big Event of the book mostly by accident. Elvar wants to be famous, so she goes looking for fame, and accidentally gets caught up in a different group's ritual to free the god. Elvar is Just Kind of There. Her motivation is shallow, her involvement is weak, and she has nothing interesting to say or do thematically.

Elvar gets 1/5 stars from me. That one star is Biórr.

THE PLOTTING; A CONTINUATION

Like I have already pointed out, both Orka and Elvar have some scenes (or, rather, entire chapters) that make no sense or are dissatisfying; Orka’s thing with Froa feels like an asspull, and Elvar just loses braincells and any possible respect I’d have had for her. There’s not actually too many scenes like this, ones that are offensively horrible, but there are many that are just… very weak.

One is in the very beginning. It’s the first infodump in the story, and it is both a) too early, and b) irrelevant and unnecessary.

This infodump comes in the form of Breca, Orka’s son, asking his father Thorkel to tell him a story about Snaka the Snake, whose calcified bones have become a massive mountain range across the landscape. I get what Gwynne was trying to do. He was trying to justify the infodump by combining it with characterization; showing the reader that Breca is inquisitive and obsessed with the gods and heroes and their tales, and that Thorkel is a softie. But that is not enough. It is not executed well enough, it is not timed well enough, and it is simply not necessary. We could already tell Thorkel was gentler and kinder than Orka, and this characterization continues throughout Orka’s chapters, making this moment nothing special. It also doesn’t reveal any profound depths in Breca’s character. It’s too early in the story, it’s in an awkward spot, and it's entirely redundant. Breca had just missed a spearthrow during his first proper hunt. He is upset by this, which we seemingly forget just to have him ask about Snaka. But then we return to that dejection he feels when Thorkel goes out of his way to comfort him. This infodump feels out of place, like a random interjection. Breca’s obsession with saga-tales could have been explored in this moment instead; Thorkel could have told Breca some story about his favorite hero or god learning and failing at doing something they later became good or even the best at for comfort; boom! Both characters have their personalities expanded with a strong emotional undertone of a father comforting his child, with lore being dropped at the same time.

We could of course just not include any of that, and the story would be fine. It just felt like an enthusiastic and inexperienced author's attempt at worldbuilding that ended up as subtle as a piano crashing onto the pavement. It was not a bad concept (using infodumps for characterization) but the execution was lacking.

This is true for most of this novel. The execution is never really satisfactory, but I can imagine the concept Gwynne is trying to breathe life into here; but little of it works, and that’s a big shame! This is going to sound horrible, but the only time I had anything good to say about his plotting and prose was on page 436. Throughout the book, Gwynne does a lot of telling of some things I would have preferred being shown, like Elvar’s thought-process when presented with her personal conflict and Einar sharing some bread with Varg. This telling and no showing grated on my nerves, especially because the prose is, while inoffensive, not the most evocative or emotionally engaging, and thus depends on showing to create depth. On page 436, there is a callback that is in some ways similar to these mentioned tells, except it actually hearkens back to a scene that WAS depicted earlier in the story! I was so surprised that Gwynne knew what a callback is and how to implement it well… which is genuinely a rude thing to be surprised by, especially with how rudimentary that writing device is, but I truly thought he just wasn’t capable of executing it well, and so I think it’s the fact that I actually liked that scene that surprised me.

THE PROSE AND SOME OTHER STUFF

The way Norse is used honestly cheapens the story. Incredibly so.

Because of the setting, I have assumed that the characters either speak Norse or a modernized version of Norse, and that the Norse we see written on the page is either a) untranslated for the purposes of the audience to signify when magical words are being used, or b) untranslated because in-universe it's the equivalent of someone speaking Late Middle English. Gwynne never clarifies in-book what language is spoken or if multiple languages exist, as even though there is a different continent with Slavic-named characters, I cannot recall a language barrier or the mention of any accents or dialects. As such, when Gwynne writes shit like 'Gudfalla the godsfall', which to the characters would have sounded like 'Gods-fall the godsfall', I am Very Annoyed and Frustrated.

Especially because this happens all the time! Especially with the gods! Do you wanna know what the eagle god is called? Orna. Do you know what Orna means? Eagle. She-Eagle if you want to be very specific. So you have She-Eagle the Eagle, Rat the Rat (Rotta), Wolf the Wolf (Ulfrir), Hound the Hound (Hundur), etc. The only god that doesn't fit this shitass, middle-grade level naming system is Lik-Rifa, who's name means 'corpse-tearer/corpse-ripper', who is a dragon. Good for her. Except I couldn't help but have war flashbacks to Lightlark's naming system, (Wildling, Starling, Sunling, Moonling, Nightshade...>). This was just horrible. We also have two brothers literally named Murder and Life (Mord and Lif). One of Elvar's brothers is named Brodir, which literally means 'brother'. The only time this horseshittery works is with Iskalt Island, because it translates to 'Ice Cold Island' and, if nothing else, it made me cackle for five minutes straight. Granted, it was at the book, but at least that was enjoyable.

The prose itself is otherwise generally inoffensive. I noticed that the word 'rippling' got used a lot, which was distracting, but I think it's just me. There were also some moments where the prose did feel repetitive, like when Varg and Einar fought; there was the imagery of 'hammers' and 'hammer-fist' and fists hammering, and it got tired very quickly. My biggest gripes is the amount of italics and 'thought-cage'. Some words are always italicized, such as brynja and drakkar and more, and it was unnecessary and a little annoying really. Italics enforce tone and emphasis, and having these things be emphasized over and over again is just plain frustrating. They should have been emphasized once when used for the first time to clue the reader into them being special, but no more than that. And thought-cage.... for whatever reason, Gwynne decided that he would replace the word 'mind', 'head', and 'brain' with 'thought-cage', and I just do not get it, because all three of these words exist in this world. What the purpose was I don't fucking know.

See, I started reading this novel because the premise interested me, but I like to be prepared for what might work and what might not, so I watched multiple reviews on YouTube. Both good and bad. And the thing that came up over and over again was the hate of the word 'thought-cage'. I thought to myself that surely, it cannot be that bad, Gwynne is definitely trying to achieve something here that he might have overdone but that still has importance and relevance and a reason! No. I was deluding myself. I had this whole theory about it. I thought that 'thought-cage' would be either something unique to Orka and Thorkel or something very specific; something that warriors deal with, a different word for trauma perhaps, where you are paralyzed or stuck in a pattern or feeling or catastrophic thoughts, like getting triggered; or maybe it was about Orka's pessimistic and depressive and cynical thinking and how she'd get stuck in circles and 'thought-cage' was a word Thorkel invented and she'd use it often in her narration as a call-back to her lover...

No. Nope! None of that. Everyone uses it for everything. Sometimes it feels like Gwynne is purposefully writing sentences just so he can include 'thought-cage' in them. It's clunky, it's distracting, and it's unnecessary, and it's bad.

Still, despite all this, I don't think I can say that this is a badly written book. It's just... serviceable? Middling. I can neither recommend it due to my own lack of enjoyment for so much of it, but I also cannot say to stay away; there are elements with much appeal, and while I called much of the writing juvenile and inept, Gwynne can write well. It's just that he also plots shit. Overall this was just a frustrating read with a lot of squandered potential. I wish Gwynne took the plunge and dedicated himself to writing these POVs as standalone novels or novellas in a fantasy series (it could have been a whole ass 3 books to just introduce the readers to the world and its players, then multi-POV sequels following that; kind of like the Percy Jackson novels) instead of a comparatively small trilogy. If he was given more room to explore, these stories would have been much better developed, plotted, and executed. Hopefully. But this is not the reality of this book, and The Shadow of the Gods remains a dissatisfying, disappointing read.

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