I am so upset about this stupid book.

The first in Hannah Kaner’s Fallen Gods series, Godkiller is maddening to read. I was reading it for a book club (and none of us are surprised), so when I struggled from the near-beginning with the writing, I kept going to see if I really had to DNF it. I was immediately drawn into the world and was interested in the magic system and the unique interaction of gods and humans. And in my defense, the first chapter was written so much better than what was to follow. I can’t recall exactly where the writing took a turn; I was glued to the page and then I was super frustrated.

Because the writing and editing in Godkiller is so, so bad. It just plain is. There are pronouns and even nouns all over the place that are dangling, antecedents unknown. Action sequences (even small actions) are confusing and inconsistent. In general, there are sentences and paragraphs on almost every page that require re-reading just to understand Kaner’s head-hopping, circuitous sentence structure, and misused words. Also, she is so far from nailing the four POVs. (That’s me being nice.) They have the same voice, and they are inconsistent, at best.

Except, I found that I was just invested enough to pull a little trick: I turned off my inner critic, my editor-self, let myself not understand every sentence, and just read. Every once in a while, a sentence or paragraph would so incense me that I would write something scathing in the margin before I could go on, but overall, my strategy worked. I was able to float through the story absorbing enough to get the story, but letting some of what wasn’t working just go. I’d catch up in the next scene. And besides the romance being a flop (the set-up was nonexistent and the timing way off), I loved this story and its characters. I loved the world, the magic, the twists and turns.

Infuriating, isn’t it?

Where was Kaner’s editor? Did she have one? Did she reject all the edits? What on earth happened here? I am currently going through revisions of a fantasy-mystery and my beta readers would have left Kaner’s MS (like in a hypothetical where it was mine) bleeding red with line corrections. I know she’s British or maybe Scottish, so some weird-to-me things like “span” instead of “spun,” fine. But, well, let me pull a few random examples:

• “The chair shook with the thud of the bolt as it hit the seat, a hand’s span from Inara’s face” (p24). What bolt? The chair hit “the” seat? What seat? And why did Kissen throw it at Inara? Or near her? (I’m still confused about this one.)
• “The godkiller flipped the knife…” (p24). What knife? I looked. No reference to a knife earlier. And as an aside, I had to re-read the paragraph this sentence began, four times to understand what was happening. I tallied.
• “The godkiller scoffed. ‘I don’t kill people,’ she said…” (p25). Didn’t she just kill someone? Had to go back and figure out that she didn’t.
• “Once and over, twice and over, the dough rippling as he rolled it. [Dough rippling? And it should be rippled.] That was the pride of his bakery, commissioned especially from Irisian smokewood, from the land of his mothers, the same beautiful dark, warm brown as his skin, and the pale ground wheat flour stood out on both like stars or snow. [What did I just read? What noun is this sentence even about?] This bench was a better surface than the crowded kitchens of the Reach in Sakre, the palace of Middren’s capital, where he had squired. Better still than the flat stones and mud of battleground” (p27). I had to re-read several times to figure out what she was saying and absorb the enormous amount of info she was trying to give us in just a few sentences. Like Elo’s entire history and skin color.
• “His mother still living sent him generous parcels when she could. The meal was originally north Irisian too, but a popular enough working supper across the Trade Sea” (p28). Can we just agree “still living” is unnecessary? And how do the clauses of the second sentence play together? They don’t.
• “The step shifted.” Like he heard a sound—a step—and it shifted. What?
• “Although his visits were rare, Arren always showed up without warning, without letter, and most often for no reason at all. [Not great, but fine.] But there was something different about him this evening, as if Elo’s thoughts of his friend had summoned him into being. [Wait, what? How does that follow?] A new intensity also burned in his eyes. [Delete “also,” because now I’m annoyed.] It was most of a day’s ride from the Reach to Elo’s bakery in Estfjor village, and he looked half-wild [who did?], as if he himself had run the whole way” (p29). That last phrase is the kicker. Enough “as if”s! And how does that follow? Delete “himself,” 100%. Maybe he did run. It’s a weak simile, at best.

I tried to stop jotting annoyed notes on page 30. For funsies, I’ll give you one or two more:

• The baker, Elo, [we def know who the baker is at this point] drew his own sword [or just his sword] as the beast’s mouth reformed and finished it [wait, is Elo or the mouth finishing?] with one strike through its middle. [Through the middle of a mouth?] Out spilled white smoke, heavy and hitting the ground” (p101). Art is dead.

I silenced my pen for most of the book after that, until almost the end when there was a “them” that I still haven’t figured out. Please note that these examples are not special. They are persistent. And all the little things contribute to a general confusion and therefore lack of development.

The series is a trilogy that wrapped up this year: Godkiller, Sunbringer, and Faithbreaker. Some people say Godkiller ends on a cliffhanger, but not really. It wraps up this part of the story, and our questions are bigger now, about the longer haul. We get what has happened to all four POV characters

What does it have going for it? Disability representation. Different body-types and ages. A queer-normative society. And a great story full of cool characters (and strong girls and women) and cool ideas and cool places (though the places were not as creative as the rest of it. They were pretty standard fantasy but still really cool). Some people also said it sagged through most of the middle, but I found it to meet that whole fantasy-journey pacing, like books from The Fellowship of the Ring to modern D&D-inspired stuff. Everything came together in the end (except the romance). Lots of little pieces slotted into place, which was so satisfying. Characters grew and changed. Surprises happened. (All of it would have been so much better, though, if they writing had really landed–the reader would have been so much more invested.)

If only I hadn’t been gritting my teeth most of the time. And this: Kaner has a “first class degree” in English from Cambridge! I still don’t understand what happened. Also this: lots of people love this book (and the whole trilogy). Plenty of readers even praise the writing. Though the.bookish.designer on GoodReads is with me, “There is no way to dress this up, the book is poorly written. I’m not going to pretend I could write better, I couldn’t, but I can identify poor writing. The sentence structure is difficult to read, at many points I was finding myself re-reading paragraphs multiple times to make them make sense.”

I’m going to be giving the book three stars. (Gasp!) The story is saving it from two. The problem is, I now want to know what happens with this story, with these people! For the first time, I may continue a series that I basically panned and gave three stars. I mean, they are shortish books, for fantasy. WIth cool covers. We’ll see. There’s so much on my TBR, maybe I’ll forget about this whole experience in time. I told you; I am so upset about this stupid book.