A lot can happen in a few days. Just ask Ainnevog (just call him Annev), a deacon acolyte in the tiny, remote village of Chaenbalu. One minute, Annev is juggling duties at the Church with his mentor while training for his final shot at passing the grueling Avatar test. The next minute, he discovers he’s being hunted by a fallen evil god bent on destroying his entire bloodline. Annev learns that he is doomed to stay hidden in his village or he and everyone he knows will be annihilated. And if he somehow happens to survive for long enough, it is prophesized that he will eventually break the world. For some reason, this doesn’t have a positive effect on his love life. Poor kid. These predicaments are but a ripple in the tsunami of a story known as Master of Sorrows, Justin Call’s first book of his Silent Gods saga.

Annev is a struggling teenager with no family, raised by an old priest who has mentored him from birth. He excels at his physical challenges while training with the other boys in the town’s Academy, but his altruism is holding him back from advancement. Annev has both friends and enemies, both of which make his life difficult, but this week is his last chance to take a mysterious Avatar test before he graduates. One must be an Avatar to do anything with their life, including court and marry a woman, become gainfully employed, or even leave town. The boys who fail the test become stewards and remain that way for life.

Although there are only three or four days that pass during this book, there are an absurd number of events jam-packed in the story that allows for Annev to evolve and mature in ways that feel earned instead of rushed. Early on, Annev’s cleverness and physical prowess leads to cockiness and immaturity, but as major events are revealed, and he learns more about his place in the world, he starts to struggle with his own morality and loss of control. Some of the strongest scenes in the story are seeing how he teeters between acts of strong leadership and acts of pure malice.

One highlight to note is how Call resolves situations when many of his characters are at odds, and they formulate plans to outsmart each other. But all of Call’s characters are intelligent, so they usually guess their opponent’s intentions quickly, no matter how clever, and it’s gratifying to see that the author gives as much mental acumen to his antagonists as he does to his central characters. This also applies to all major and minor characters in the story; each are treated with care and respect, each are fully developed and fleshed out, and it’s another testament to Call’s meticulous dedication to breathing life and lore into this world where it feels like no area was neglected, and each component of its construction was thoroughly developed.

The lore that supports this story is nothing short of outstanding and echoes Sanderson’s Cosmere universe in terms of history and complexity. Not bad for a book that takes place almost entirely within a small village and its surrounding forest. Call has mentioned that he spends hours on the phone every other weekend with his map illustrator, talking about the layout of his world, discussing the environment, the history of the continent, and the geographic plans for future volumes of the next three to potentially eleven books. I get the sense that Call has written more background history and behind-the-scenes world-building material than the published book we hold in our hands. As this series gains more traction in the years ahead, I could easily see wiki pages, dedicated subreddits, glyph interpretations, and many other fan-created discussion boards attempting to theorize and disseminate all of its mysteries.

Reading Master of Sorrows is instantly entertaining, but it also lays the groundwork for something massively rewarding in the years ahead. It is a balanced mix of palpable action, inventive revelations, and flawed characters. It is respectful of the reader’s intelligence and is impressive as it is ambitious. This is the start of a truly epic dark fantasy saga that is well worth jumping into on the ground floor. 9.3 / 10