I think the idea was there but it fell short of where I thought it was going. I appreciated the magic actually fitting into the story and the detailed writing (though this sometimes was too much). I still considered these interesting reads and would recommend them but I feel like they could have been much better. ( )

I struggled to read this book. The blurb sounded very exciting but unfortunately the writing quality did not match up to its promise. I found the writing style difficult to read and although the story was of interest, it made the story hard to follow. Would not recommend. ( )

Grand in scope, but not quite supported by plot, characters or the worldbuilding.

Multiple gods create the universe at their whim, but four decide instead of abandoning their creation, they shall stay and become part of it. One becomes scared and instead tries to force the other to recant, and kills his lover, leaving them all trapped in the world, with the killer no more than a formless shadow of hatred. Centuries later fragments of those gods remain in some descendants of their creations. Peoplke have powers and some creatures can bond too. For no reason writing is banned apart from a few in secret, and of those even fewer can use it as a spell to change the world.

And so we have our heroes, a Temple daughter trained to fight, a village son fleeing persecution for writing, and a few other incidentals, a scribe and some other Temple priests. The daughter is forced to flee after becoming too popular in the eyes of the chief priest, the son kills a maundering bandit troop's chief and so becomes their leader. He seeks to destroy the city that persecuted him for writing, aided by his magic cat. Most of the rest proceeds as you might expect, although I was pleased that the obvious romance was neatly averted. The scribe only seems to exist in order to pass on ancient knowledge to the other characters, none were particularly believable but he was certainly the worst.

It was all a bit too straightforward, to clearly black and white, to small scale for a universe with gods involved in multiple planets we were concerned with a few years in one city and a couple of miles of surrounding land. The magic system could have been quite interesting, but needed limits that were explained, and justification of the powers involved. As it was little was done with it. Ditto the magic sword, and even the animal links, each on their own were sufficient, together they were too much and each of them lacked details and proper exploitation. Likewise the characters were all a little bit too stilted, although not the worst I've ever read, and far too much happened without challenge or difficulty. Explanations of the gods did it are always lacking.

Showed some promise but I'm unlikely to investigate further. ( )