Synopsis:
Lik-Rifa, the dragon god of legend, has been freed from her eternal prison. Now she plots a new age of blood and conquest.
As Orka continues the hunt for her missing son, the Bloodsworn sweep south in a desperate race to save one of their own – and Varg takes the first steps on the path of vengeance.
Elvar has sworn to fulfil her blood oath and rescue a prisoner from the clutches of Lik-Rifa and her dragonborn followers, but first she must persuade the Battle-Grim to follow her.
Yet even the might of the Bloodsworn and Battle-Grim cannot stand alone against a dragon god.
Their hope lies within the mad writings of a chained god. A book of forbidden magic with the power to raise the wolf god Ulfrir from the dead . . . and bring about a battle that will shake the foundations of the earth.
Review:
I received an arc from Orbit UK in return for an honest review.
The story in The Hunger of the Gods picks up exactly where we were left at the end of The Shadow of the Gods and this is a good thing. It gives us continuity and leaves out a passage of time passing to move the story forward while not giving us any actual story bar a paragraph or two of what if. John has actually given every reader a huge fist bump by including a ‘story so far’ section which will re-jog the memory of those of you who have read other books since last year. This itself shows that John listens to his fans, knowing that it can be hard to remember all the previous events and understanding that a section like this can really help a person’s enjoyment of the book as they prepare to re-enter Vigrid.
Firstly, I just want to say the cover again has amazing artwork. Orbit and the artist, Marcus Whinney, have executed this one perfectly. It screams something big and bad is going to happen, immediately catches your attention and makes you want to read the blurb. I am already guessing what will be on the cover of the third book and I have it down to one or two options. Whichever it may be, I’m sure it will look ferocious to match the theme the books have going on.
Just like before, we have separate POVs for Orka, Elvar and Varg. Unlike before, we have some new ones but I will keep their names out of this review so it is a surprise for when you get there. I personally love chapter POVs like the ones in this story. They give us different perspectives in a large world and allow us to inevitably have a favourite character (mine is one of the new ones!) so when we get to their chapter we’re excited to find out about them. This concept has worked extremely well for many books before, including one of my favourite series, A Song of Ice and Fire (Jon Snow’s chapters) and it has worked well here.
Of those three Orka is the standout character for her simplistic revenge story. She is still on the hunt for her son, Breca and this continues throughout this story. She doesn’t make much character growth but I think because of her age and status, she is a character who is pretty set-up to go. I liked how she was so focused on this one goal that she took risks that could kill her just to get her son back into her arms. However, Elvar and Varg make large strides in pushing their character arcs forward, especially Elvar who’s story completely changes from where we first met her. Varg also grows a lot and finds his place within his group and develops a strong personality within there. There is a strong found-family vibe going on which is heartwarming and occasionally funny, bringing a smile to my face on numerous occasions. I found these two characters much more interesting than Orka overall since they change more but I still really enjoyed Orka for being the standout, strong (bad bitch) female type this story is selling. There is a difference between her path and the other two that sets her apart. For Elvar and Varg it’s about finding their place in Vigrid, so they share a common goal but for Orka it’s purely about revenge and finding her son.
The story is full of brutal action. As you might expect, there are a lot of fight scenes in this story and John, being someone who is adept at fighting with hand-to-hand weapons as a viking re-enactor, has written them extremely well. They feel real, vibrant, straight to the point and ruthless in their execution. I loved how when reading a scene I thought it would go down in a number of steps but it didn’t, it went straight to a sword in the throat and it’s this kind of ‘shock factor’ that makes this world so dangerous to live in, which of course makes it exciting to read. I like that this has a low number of swords and a higher than-normal number of spears being used. They’re one of my favourite fantasy weapons and I really enjoyed them taking the forefront here alongside axes, shields and seax’s.
One of the biggest and most exciting things in this story is the gods. You’ll be pleased to know they play a much, much bigger role. From the end of The Shadow of the Gods you will know of at least one and from the cover of this book you can guess at a second but there are more which I won’t go into here. They’re big pieces of a moving chess board and I really liked the different ways they’re interacted with depending on who was interacting with them. Their descriptions and the form(s) they take were interesting and gave a new dynamic to them. I love how brutal they are and how their interactions with normal people, and tainted people, changed depending on which god it was you were reading about.
I love the lore and history John has created in this world. The gods have really sculpted a place in history for everyone despite being dead for hundreds of years. They’ve really set the lore from when they were alive and this is evident in every character’s life that you read about, everyone is touched in one way or another by the gods. I love the influence it has on the world and what this means for certain characters, their beliefs and their actions.
There is magic in this story too and it was a cool tool that worked well when needed but didn’t overshadow the realistic fighting you might expect from a Norse-inspired story, giving it a feeling of rarity within the world. This made those who could wield it more valuable and meant that not every problem could be solved with a magic spell.
If you’ve found politics in some fantasy books to be too much then I expect you would love this story. While there are politics in this book, they’re light and minimal but still provide a satisfying conclusion when they come to their end. This doesn’t mean that this isn’t an enjoyable book, far from it, it just means that there are more pacey action parts than chunks of tongue-chess to work through (I enjoy politics in fantasy books). For anyone not sure what I mean, I don’t mean elections and votes, I mean people betraying each other and arguing over goals, people fighting for what they say is theirs but in a vocal space.
Stepping back into this Norse-inspired world was like lighting a firework and waiting for the bang. It has a big bang and a lot of pretty colours, sometimes too many which is where this let me down slightly. There are a lot of secondary characters and the comparisons between them were occasionally too confusing for me to fully enjoy. For example, you have two groups, The Bloodsworn and the Battle-Grim. These two alone are fairly similar in context and then they have multiple characters within them, and there were a few times where I lost track of who was in which group: Agnar, Elvar, Einar, Gudvarr, Varg…Lif, Lief, Svik, Torvik. This might not be a problem for some of you but it was just something that lost me a few times and it was only when I saw the word Bloodsworn or Battle-Grim that I was realised who I was with which is potentially why I really enjoyed the new POVs as they were for the most part, separate to this.
Overall this is a fantastic, amazing, action packed, god filled story about love, revenge, found family and much more. If you’ve read the first one then you can expect this one to improve on everything you loved there. The new POVs are really interesting and probably my favourite addition – the gods, well you’ll have to read for yourself about those. John has crafted an exciting, rich, vibrant story, full of heart-pounding action and colourful characters that will be talked about around hearth fires and internet forums for many years to come.
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