The Hunger of the Gods

THE HUNGER OF THE GODS BY JOHN GWYNNE2/5 stars Major Spoilers Unfinished and unpolished___________Even if I were to enjoy this book, I would not be able to rate it over 2 stars. There is much in here that shows The hunger of the Gods is unfit for publication as it is an unfinished product. A traditionally published book generally goes through several edits before is goes out to the public, and this has clearly either not received that treatment or the editors did not do their jobs well; whether that be because the publisher didn't let them or not is a different matter. However, my paperback edition published in 2023 contains hella many issues. Dialogue tags either disappear into the nether or appear out of nowhere, sometimes they are disconnect from the dialogue and in the wrong place, characters on multiple times are misnamed or have their names misspelled, there is inconsistent italicization, inconsistent hyphenation, inconsistent capitalization, and many sentences (much like this one) should have been split at least in half if not into threes. I cannot fault Gwynne for this as this type of polishing and finishing is the job of the editors, for them to either do or point out to him to get it fixed. From my understanding, Gwynne's daughter had died the year this book had been published. It seems to me that Orbit, the publishing house, has not given Gwynne the time to grieve and pushed for publication of what is essentially a partially-uncooked meal. It's generally solid, but the lack of these finishing touches adds up to a lackluster product. I cannot blame this on the author, so I will not; I am however looking askance at Orbit.About the actual content of this novel! I have blogged my experiences with this book on my tumblr blog as I went through the chapters, where my most detailed thoughts and critiques of prose can be found. I get somewhat redundant there but also very specific about what isn't working and why.The pacing is generally better than The Shadow of the Gods, though there is much build-up to a rather short climax. The main reason the pacing works better, despite this book being meatier, is that the characters tend to be in harmony regarding the energy and action-levels of their chapters, making the flow generally more consistent than in book one. Likewise the multi-POV structure feels more natural. My biggest gripe with TSOTG was that it should have been three books instead of one, or at least three short-stories that we read in full one after the other. The head-switching in The Shadow of the Gods felt pointless with how little the stories overlapped. There are multiple scenes in THOTG that we can see from two to three different POVs, which helps make the multi-POV quirk work much better. Some chapters feel less important than others, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense for some of them to be there.However, there are problems with this book. Mainly, there are underutilized, underdeveloped, and unexplained elements that muddle the story. Raising gods from the dead is done twice, and neither of them amount to anything; not to mention that while the Battle-Grim have the wherewithal to raise Ulfrir from the dead, they somehow don't consider bringing Agnar back at all. That is despite him dying a bad death in book one. We also know from Varg and other sibling-Tainted that Tainted born of the same mother and father have a mental link going on, which lets them know if their siblings are alive, hurt or well, or dead. Glornir, despite being Thorkel's brother, apparently didn't know he was alive, AND didn't realize he died only weeks/months prior? The characters do not grow significantly (besides maybe Varg and Biórr) and some of them get worse if not stagnant. I will not speak at length about the characters as I have done that enough on my blog and all my issues with them. However, to be short and concise:Orka is the same the whole two books; stone-hearted, hellbent on getting her son back and willing to do anything it takes to get to him. This isn't really bad when it comes to Orka specifically, but it does get hard to care sometimes. She gets more supporting characters this book, which helps keep her chapters exciting, though there is... not enough drama/emotion there for my liking.Varg is getting better at fighting and smarter with how he speaks with people (mostly if not only with Sulich) but there are some things that Gwynne does with his character that just do not land with me. He's still the character I enjoy the most because I like the archetype of his character, but there is not much focus on his personal quest, which sucks.Elvar is much of the same and worse, not just a mercenary slaver but also a slave-owner who will not hesitate to beat her slaves if they cross her. I don't really like how the book kind of gives her everything she wants and didn't care for before she got it; it's handed to her on a silver platter when her character is one of the shallowest of them all. She gets more depth added here, her backstory becoming more prominent, but that only makes her worse. There was no hint of any of that in the first book when that should have come out the second her father started trying to manipulate her in Snakavik. It feels tacked on to make her more interesting. It also retroactively makes the chapter of her trying to decide between the Battle-Grim and her father in TSOTG worse and more stupid, and I already hated the fact we needed to devote a whole chapter to it only for Elvar to have to be told by someone else to not be an idiot. I rant about her a lot during my “live-reading” summaries because there is just so much that does not work for me with this character.Guðvarr surprisingly tolerable but also the most aggravating of them all. Gwynne kept on trying to make him more pathetic by mentioning him potentially pissing/shitting himself almost every single chapter, which got boring quick, and didn't really have the desire effect. I just started rolling my eyes. He also seemed a little inconsistent, both extremely self-aware at times and bordering on self-hatred only then to genuinely self-aggrandize with no capacity for introspection whatsoever. It's not necessarily unrealistic but I wish Guðvarr's character was more straightened out because while I hated him as a person, he had the potential to be an intriguing character. Biórr had potential that got squandered in his first chapter. He was not the character I wanted nor expected, and honestly he is worse for it. I had high hopes about him being a strong-willed anti-slavery warrior who'd be among the first to question Lik-Rifa, enough to maybe break ranks, but not really; he's whiny, constantly talking about Elvar and Agnar (made all the worse by my dislike of these characters) and he doesn't have much solid substance to him. Not offensively bad, but he was not someone I really cared about. Lik-Rifa also lacked gravitas or charisma on the page, being rather two-dimensional and very transparent to the reader. There isn't much to say about the plot. Nothing impactful truly happens until the very end, making it a very, very slow build-up filled with blips of excitement. This story overall is not one I particularly enjoy or care about, but that I will be seeing through when the last book comes out. This is less because I'm genuinely invested and more because the Bloodsworn Saga has been frustrating for me, and I want to know what all of this was for. My hopes especially are that Elvar gets what she deserves (which is: nothing fucking good. she needs a serious humbling), and I want to follow Varg around some more. I also hope that Snakka will actually have some actual presence in that book, because while Ulfrir is on the cover of this one, he does fuckall.