Sep 16

Sep 16 The Gods Below (The Hollow Covenant, #1)

About the book

Author: Andrea Stewart
Publisher: Orbit

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

I had a good time with Andrea Stewart’s The Drowned Empire trilogy (which starts with The Bone Shard Daughter), so when I heard the first book in her newest series was coming out, I jumped at the chance to read it. And I had a good time with this too.

For me, this story’s greatest strength so far is the unique world and magic system. Long ago, mortals destroyed nature via greed and consumption. One person traveled through the layers of toxic, magical gas to the realm of the gods near the core of the world. There he struck a bargain with one powerful god, who would heal the world in exchange for the mortals’ sole worship. Today, realms are being “fixed” one by one, wherein half the population is absorbed as energy and the other half is changed into magical creatures. Those in the unfixed realms spend their time forced to mine magical gems from the dangerous underground layers as tribute. Although for certain people, if they ingest those gems and infuse them with the toxic magical air, they gain godly powers.

Isn’t that such a good premise? I have to say, I’m really enjoying the rise of ecofantasy as a subgenre.

But it’s not a perfect book. Set in this world is a cast of POV characters, some of whom I enjoyed reading about much more than others. I also think that some of the relationships between those characters needed a lot more development. That said, I found the story compelling and the twist was well-placed — I guessed it exactly when and where Stewart wanted me to.

All in all, not a die-hard favorite here, but definitely one I enjoyed enough to anticipate book 2.