The Children of Gods and Fighting Men

This book is set in Ireland in the 10th century and is based on Irish mythology/folklore and it was really good! We followed two perspectives, Gormflaith and Fodla, who are different types of magic users that keep themselves hidden from the general population and from each other. Gormflaith has married a king and is very deep into the politics of the region after that king dies and she tries to make his son king of Dublin, whereas Fodla is a healer and keeps herself more low profile, but has been tasked by her leader to infiltrate the inner circle of King Brian Boru, a historical renowned king of Ireland. The historical stuff felt very well done, and these two main characters and their supporting cast were interesting, particularly Gormflaith's. Gormflaith has to use all her political wiles as well as her previous relationships and potentiality for a new marriage in order to manipulate as many people as she can into helping her son become the uncontested king of Dublin. She's kinda like a magical, competent Cersei and I loved following this character., even if she is difficult to root for.

It was kinda fun to imagine this series as a pseudo-sequel to the Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell, just because they take place like a century later and Uhtred the Bold (the person Cornwell is an ancestor of, who gave him the idea to do his Uhtred) makes a small appearance in this book. TLK being my favorite historical fiction series, the similar vibes from Children of Gods was a welcome one for me. It's not a very action heavy book, as it primarily follows the political maneuvering of the kings of Ireland through Gormflaith and Fodla's interactions, with the secondary plot thread of the magical groups trying to stay hidden from each other, but the ending is really awesome and has some good battles scenes. The magic is sparely handled in this book, almost nonexistent, but it feels like it will be used much more in the following books.

On a personal level, this is the first book I've read with dual first person perspectives, and I never really got used to it, which detracted from my enjoyment. While the chapters are named with each POV character, I just had a hard time fully orientating myself as to whose perspective I was in because I'm used to first person POVs being all one character. The writing of each character felt the same to me, so maybe with more differentiation it would have been easier. This was particularly an issue if I had to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, when I picked up the book I would struggle to remember who I was reading about until context clues came in. Other people may not have this issue.

I also thought Fodla was just kindof annoying. Her character is very passive and basically does what other people tell her for most of the book, and when she does have opinions and her own agency, it's just so emotion based that I was constantly frustrated with her (this is probably intentional, but it made her hard for me to care about). She also hated mortal men to a degree I found frustrating. She is very old, several hundred years I think, and while she has obviously been heavily propagandized by her leader, she has presumably interacted with men occasionally and seems likely to have developed some form of nuance or insight about them. But every time a man does anything, she thinks “MEN CAN'T BE TRUSTED” or when a man is nice she's like “He's nice now, BUT EVENTUALLY HE'LL DO BAD THINGS” and it was somewhat exhausting. So I definitely preferred Gormflaith's perspective, even if I think the storyline happening in Fodla's chapters is also very interesting.

My final negative for this book is that it uses the word Viking incorrectly, which I hate with my whole heart. It's probably an intentional choice for readership, but the rest of the historical stuff seems so good, to casually call everyone Vikings all the time and say things like “That's the VIking way” just takes me out of the story and perpetuates a phraseology that I wish people would stop doing, so for that I had to take off a full point. Sorry, I'm pedantic, it can't be helped.

But with that said, I really enjoyed reading this book and the above problems are gripes. I would recommend this to anybody who likes historical fiction, especially for people who like the Viking Age but want some more female representation at the center, this is absolutely going to be a hit.

8/10