Aching God

4.25 out of 5 stars

Aching God appeared on my radar after seeing several glowing reviews on the r/fantasy subreddit. Now, I don't always connect with books that r/fantasy fawns over, but this was certainly not the case with Aching God, which is a thoroughly engrossing debut novel that I enjoyed immensely.

The book follows Auric Manteo, a retired mercenary, of sorts, who leads an expedition to return a cursed gem to the haunted temple from whence it came. It's a straightforward story, but told in expert fashion. The writing is superb, which is not always a given in self-published fare. When a character referred to something as an “ensorcelled receptacle,” I knew that this was the right book for me. I expected a fairly simplistic dungeon quest tale, but it's really so much more than that. Author Mike Shel has built out the world of Hanifax in rich detail and explores a great deal of the map with compelling encounters and fully-formed characters.

This is for anyone who enjoys dark fantasy and a well-told story. It's certainly one of my favorite books of 2018 and I will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series, as Aching God builds a very solid foundation from which to jump off from. It feels like sword and sorcery Indiana Jones – and I'm very here for that.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

A Very Exciting Book. So many questions near the end i'm excited to keep reading and see what happens.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-7
A-9
W-5
P-8
I-8
L-8
E-9
TOTAL-7.71/10
CAWPILECharacters.felt very real and fully formed. Lots to Like and dislike about all of themAtmospherei could really feel the "grime" of this world and the consequences of their actionsWritingFelt his writing was good, but that sometimes Mike Shel didn't trust his audience to pick up on certain things, because he would repeat things that would be important later, but that just made me unhappy that i couldn't be surprised, or take pride for noticing because he hit me over the head with it.PlotA reverse grave robbing. I'm glad it was more than just that and had enough layered in to make it real and worthwhileIntriguePacing felt a bit inconsistant sometimes, fast then slow then fast and slow again, but once i got to the barrowlands, I had a very hard time putting it down.LogicVery consistent with internal worldbuildingEnjoymentVery much enjoyed this book, especially the ending where we learn many things that question what really happened in the past of the book and what certain people know.
I will be talking about it on Libromancy 01/16/2022 https://libromancy.podbean.com/