The Hunger of the Gods Review

E-Book, 656 Pages
Adult/ Fantasy/ Mythology
By: John Gwynne
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

“Real courage is to feel fear, but to stand and face it, not run from it.”

I have read everything that Gwynne wrote with this being the ninth book. My favorite up to this point is The Faithful and the Fallen series which still remains my favorite quartet of all times. Of Blood and Bone & The Bloodsworn Saga book 1 were good but I wanted more from both. I am happy to say that The Hunger of the Gods is close in quality to TFATF and it is is the first book to get 5 stars from me in 2022 after reading almost 60 books!

I was hesitant to go into this just because it is a chunky book and I did not remember everything in book one so it was a challenge. Gwynne made my life much easier by including a recap section at the beginning, a glossary for the characters and even a pronunciation guide. Believe me when I say that without those and specially the recap I would not have enjoyed this series and probably would not have continued it. I am not big into rereads and many readers are like me so I think more authors should be doing this small yet very impactful act of including summaries of the previous books in series.

The writing was great and it is not really a surprise because Gwynne has that atmospheric prose that makes you dive into the story and enjoy it. I think what makes this book stand up are the characters. The story is told through multiple POVs like the first book and the author makes them all intriguing and intertwined in a way that made me think a bit too much about his writing process. I also wish that I had a big map of the world with statues of he characters that I could move along the map and see how everything come together because that’s simply how much I was submerged in the story.

One of the characters gave me Abercrombie characters vibes and I really enjoyed it. The Gods are a big part of the story in this entry which made the world-building and magic systems more complex and I am here for that.

Summary: Although there were small bits that makes this more of a 4.5 stars book. It is the first book that rekindled my love of reading this year which makes it deserve a 5 stars rating. The prose is great, the characters are to die for and I don’t know how Gwynne writes but the scale is just mind-blowing and I love it. I believe the next book will be as great and I can’t wait to read it.