Synopsis:
300 years ago, a god was murdered.
Blue, once the deity’s most faithful general, made immortal through her service, has wandered the fractured land ever since.
Her inability to die is a curse she strives to end.
Chance has her collide with Sarai, a guard captain who possesses an ancient memoir detailing the events of the god’s death. If Blue can find the weapon used in that divine assassination, perhaps it can end her life, too.
Fueled by a death drive developed over centuries, Blue seeks out the blade with Sarai at her side. Their hunt will take them across the blood-soaked extents of the broken empire, where the violently faithful battle for the right to name themselves the next God-Emperor.
But a blade that can kill one god can also make another, and Blue isn’t the only one who desires that weapon.
Review:
I want to start this review by saying this book will not be for everyone due to a number of trigger warnings, of which you can find in the book and will be mentioned in this review.
Now that said, this book was devilishly dark and I loved it from start to finish. In a nutshell, this book begs you to ponder the question: is it better to have faith in a violent god or deal with the violent emptiness when said god isn’t there anymore? There is no utopia in this world as humanity’s baser instincts of survival and fanaticism drive people to do horrible things, and when both are at risk, what is the point of continuing?
So, the plot. This violent god (or is it???) is murdered by one of their faithful immortals, thus killing off all but one immortal and upending the world. Hundreds of years later, the last immortal is doing everything in her power to die, but can’t. She happens upon this small town where she meets a young guard captain with loads of optimism and a potential way of ending her immortality. Cue buddy quest with some sapphic shenanigans and lots of deep conversations about seeing the good in life even when the world is absolute shit.
Blue is the immortal (named thusly by her blue eyes and lost memory) and she’s been wanting to die for centuries. She has tried many many times, but she can’t, her immortality given to her by her god-emperor heals her body after every injury. She can feel the pain, can be set on fire, quartered, her skull sawn open, body rent apart (some of this is shown on page…), but she cannot die. And this gives her a bleak outlook. She is the last of her kind and yet she remembers none of it, mostly because she has chosen to lock away her past deep inside. Blue is an interesting protagonist because she walks right up to the line of nihilism, she’s seen it all, been through torture and has such a hateful past in service to her god-emperor. She doesn’t believe in goodness anymore, and begs for the end.
But then she meets Sarai, who is optimistic about the world after the god-emperor has rendered most communities into Mad Max level of violence. With a book penned by the daughter of the immortal who killed the god-emperor, Sarai gives Blue a reason to find that ending. But during their journey, Sarai’s optimism and hope begins to infect Blue, breaking down walls she didn’t recall putting up. It’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming, their relationship. The conversations, the emotions, they’re all writ to make us, the readers, question faith and faithfulness. Of being in the moment, of allowing someone else in, even if just for the night. Sarai makes Blue question her emotions, her outlook, her beliefs, hardened that they’ve become. Just loved these two.
Now, this book is dark, and that’s down to the world Garrison has created. The god-emperor grants their faithful immortality, but then those immortals (including Blue in her past life) do heinous things. After the god-emperor’s death, godsplinters (pieces of god bone) can grant about 5 years worth of immortality, so the peoples (see warlords) of this ruined land hunt for godsplinters to extend their lives. This is where the violence comes in, especially for Blue. These warlords want to become the next god-emperor. Blue is constantly hunted and tortured because of her immortality and these warlords desire her gift. It’s happened in the past and on page, she is brutally tortured, but her gift cannot end her or be passed. Godsplinters are the only currency, so when people don’t acquiesce or try to avoid them, bad things happen. People are seen as pests by these warlords and fanatics, agree with us, you live, disappoint us, you die in terrible ways. It’s such a bleak bleak world and it is no wonder Blue thinks the way she does.
And then on the other side, there are atheist fanatics who burn people alive if they believe. So basically you have fanatics of both sides doing horrible things. Again, raising the question of what happens to our world when beliefs in god/without god grounds itself to the root of survival, do we give in to our worst instincts, or can there be a future where hope can exist.
The book doesn’t necessarily provide an answer, and I don’t think it should, but it does have a satisfying conclusion for Blue.
The prose is excellent, mostly told through Blue’s cynical 1st person POV. However, there are chapters told via Sarai, but in 3rd person POV and I thought Garrison navigated these perfectly, though we don’t get as close to Sarai as we do Blue, but that is fine. The pace is very steady, never slowing while on this journey. In the early stages, Blue is reading from this book and I loved these scenes because it made Blue uncover memories she’d buried deep. The reveals in them were A+. The action is great, the reveals given more than enough adequate time to sink in, the sapphic relationship is excellent in its growth, and the conclusion is epic.
Acts of Deicide isn’t for the faint of hearts, nor should it be with the questions it forces you to contemplate. But if you can squeeze past some of the squirmier parts, this book is phenomenal. A definite recommend for fans of dark dark grimdark and are open to religious debate.
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