I curse amateur NetGalley user me for not looking more into my requests.

The second time I have requested without realizing its a series. Can't review if I haven't read book 1, my bad!

I assumed this was a standalone novel or the first book in the series, but I was surprised to see that this is the second book already.
I wished that the publisher would have stated it beforehand, so I could give this book a fair chance for a review. I would love to read the first part as the writing seemed really engaging. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

A Dance for the Gods is an incredible sequel. After reading and loving A Cry to War a couple years ago, I knew I had to pick this one up and read it too. It was so nice to be back in the world of The Last Warrior King and to learn more about this world and its conflict and to be with the characters once again. I pretty much read this in one sitting because I didn't want to put it down. In many ways, Phoenix Flame manages to improve upon the mistakes made by its predecessor, shaping up both the interactions and the character development, while also maintaining the elements that I most enjoyed. It's fast paced and entertaining and there's never a dull moment.
Full review to come on my channel.

This was the second book in the series. Because I did not read the first novel, I was very confused. Still, I recommend this for fans of African mythology!

Full review to be posted soonish.

I would like to thank the publisher and netgalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This isn't my usual preferred genre of book so I wasn't sure what to expect. I am pleased to say I was impressed! The writer has created a fully developed, expansive world, with multidimensional, fleshed out characters. Sublime building! There was so much creativity and passion throughout that I found myself invested completely in the excellent storytelling . I would recommend this to an adult audience and add TW's as there are some very graphic, detailed scenes.

The pacing is well super well done. It is not for everyone because it has multiple povs which can make it hard to keep track of. The cover is gorgeous. The African mythology was superlatively woven into the story.

With many apologies, I was a little late in my review due to waiting for book one to arrive.
While a very clever socio-political fantasy that maintains the clever world building of book one, I found myself a little lost in the intricacies of revenge, justice, redemption, etc.

I feel that perhaps the over repetitive ways of describing people (Boy King! Conniving woman) were referencing something that I just didn’t get, and that the sex scenes were a little uncomfortable.

In the end, I am just not the right reader at this time. Definitely for readers dense, morally grey fantasy that doesn’t shy away from things

In preparation for reading this book, I decided to grab the first book in the series first. Unfortunately, I did not continue with the first book, nor A Dance For the Gods as the writing style was not easy for me to follow and there were many graphic scenes. I personally do not read books with scenes nature and decided against continuing, I was drawn to this book because of the African fantasy description, but had trouble overlooking some things in light of that,

I requested this book my first day on NetGalley and I didn't know that this was a sequel, which I spoiled myself.

Is a fast quick read, and the authors keeps a good track of the story, I didn't understand the half of it mostly because it was already explained and set on the first book, which I didn't read, I have to read the first, to get a bigger picture.

I am eager to see most of Princess Jamila, I kind of love her.

I am giving this book a neutral rating for the moment as I have tried a few times and have not been able to get into the story. I had assumed when requesting this book that it was a standalone story as it was not stated otherwise anywhere that I saw. I discovered after starting it that it is actually the second in a series and so that is probably why things are not making a whole lot of sense. Unfortunately I have had to DNF for this reason but maybe I will pick it up again in the future if I ever read the first book.

Thank you Ghagerian publishing and Netgalley for providing me with the review copy.
A Dance for The Gods.
The sole reason I wished for this book on Netgalley was because of that ethereal cover. I did not even see that it was the second book in a series, a sequel to “A Cry to War”. I read this as a standalone and I was able to get almost all references,so kudos to the authors for writing it that way.
A Dance for the Gods reads like a more fantastic version of Black Panther,in reference to setting and scenery. This is a story on the darker side of fiction,with rage and vengeance being the notable themes. The story,based on African traditions and African mythology,was a colorful,intriguing and vivid read for me.
The story is told from a multiple POV narrative,which I usually love,but feels a little difficult and clumsy in this book. Other than that,I found this book to be quite enjoyable.

This was a very interesting read. It being a sequel, the beginning itself was fast paced and i loved that aspect. This book is a political fantasy and something i thought i would love. And i did like some aspects of it, but i have more criticisms than praise.

We’ll start with the things i liked. I really enjoyed the world building. This is a very descriptive book, and the writing style is not bad either and the political intrigue would probably be the most alluring aspect of this book. Another thing well done was Eweka’s character arc. He’s really far from where he was and i loved how his past caught up to him, its a realistic portrayal of what his character stands for and the way his emotions were brought about was something that was done really well.

Now the issues. Well the weird *detailed* sex scenes with minors really wasn’t it. I know its fantasy and it being realistic to the time period, but literally 3 of the 4 detailed sex scenes with a weird obsession with nipples (isn’t that too much 😭) included minors.

The dialogue in this book felt more like a written passage than something that was spoken and it wasn’t that interesting. Another thing was especially in the beginning, during one characters’ pov parts, they could somehow feel what other characters were feeling. When we’re following character A, the writing would be like Character B “felt a tingle around his ankle as though warms were crawling his legs “, which confuses me a lot and i did not like those instances. Another thing is multiple povs are a really hard thing to execute well and this book doesn’t accomplish that. Too much was happening in too little time with a limited word count and we’re switching povs every other chapter following 7+ characters, so even though the characters were different to each other, I couldn’t get invested in a lot of them. Eweka was the only character i felt anything for.

The biggest thing that stopped me from enjoying this book was, this felt like a complete ripoff of a song of ice and fire. Id try my best to not correlate, but then there’s Kofi being Jaime, the red wedding mirrored, the stark wolves but its lions in this story, Tyrion’s imprisonment in Vale mirrored to that of Kofi. A revenge driven princess crossing the sea, The Dead Queen (yep lady stoneheart ) and so much more. I kept trying to not think of this as asoiaf and here comes another event with almost the same exactness and then it just got too predictable. Don’t get me wrong the book had a lot of things done different as well and I appreciate that but the constant mirroring took so much out of me enjoying this book at points i just became disappointed and that made my mindset too critical.

All in all, even though I personally didn’t enjoy this as much, i think it still stands out on its own and people should definitely give it a try!

Thank you to Ghagerian Publishing for proving me an eARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

A Dance for the Gods is the second book of The Last Warrior King series. It follows multiple characters who are all on their own missions of political ambitions, vengeance, and redemption. The African mythology and fantasy together created a world that was so beautiful and vivid, it definitely drew me into the story. Although there were many characters to keep track of, they were engaging and developed well throughout, especially, Eweka and Kamunde.

The writing style was good but at times some of the descriptions could get confusing, there was just so much happening. Overall, I enjoyed it and would definitely want to read more from this series and from these authors.

Thank you Ghagerian Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy to review.

#ADancefortheGods #NetGalley

I wasn't made aware that this was the second book of the series. It took me some time to get into the story. I enjoyed the world building and the writing style. I did find it was confusing to keep up with the characters and the relationships fostered throughout the story. The audiobook also sounds great so far. I hope to reread this to give it a fair chance once I have read the first book of the series.

Several revenge stories intertwine in this story set in ancient Africa. Political intrigue, dark plots, and treachery all play a part in this story.
I didn’t realise that this was the second in a series. This made it a little hard-going as I haven’t read the first. I enjoyed the world building and setting. I think the authors have written an excellent premise and the unique perspectives make for a great read.
However, I would’ve liked more character development and some way to make it easier to keep track of all the people in the book. Not sure if it’s just me but at times I did find it a little tricky to keep track who was who.
Good read, a little graphic in places - would recommend for older readers who are okay with those aspects, I had to skim over some of the more explicit scenes.

A Dance for the Gods was an amazing book to read. The world building was really good and made it easy to imagine the scenery being described. The characters were interesting and I found myself wanting to keep seeing what would happen next. The pacing was intermittently good at times and a bit slower at others, which was okay but could be annoying sometimes. Ultimately, this was an enjoyable read and I would love to hear it as an audiobook in the future.

A Dance of The Gods is suitable for fans of fantasy worlds filled with political intrigue and well fleshed out characters. An ambitious project that will not disappoint lovers of Black Panther and A Game of Thrones. 3.5 Stars.

A Dance of The Gods has been an enjoyable read. Although I had not read the first book in the series I was able to pick up on the story fairly quickly as the characters to me have been the best part of the story. Not sure what each author, since this books is co-authored by E.O. Odiase and K.N. Pumpuni, were responsible of however the characters were really fleshed out. There were moments in which I had trouble to follow the plot but I believe this is mainly due to the fact that I hadn't read the first book in the installment but it was still an enjoyable read.
Plot wise I can't but compare it to 'A Game of Thrones' as many elements have been inspired from the book but not to the point that the story felt a rewriting of a more famous series.

I loved the characters! Great relationships between them and developed very interestingly. It was a very good second book. I don't know if I liked it better than the first, but still solid.

I was drawn to this book because of this gorgeous cover, my love and interest in the enamoring African culture, and of course the highly interesting synopsis. I didn't realize until later that it was the second book in the Last Warrior King series (bummer), but thankfully I didn't face a lot of trouble because I had read quite a few reviews of the first book, so I could more or less grasp what was happening.
The book was overall well-planned and thoughtfully laid out, and had a plot-driven storyline. There was a huge cast of characters and pretty much included all the elements that are expected from a high fantasy novel. What really bothered me was the writing style and the fact that the characters felt too shallow and like puppets being controlled by the author (which they are, but they aren't supposed to read like that).

It was kinda hard for me to get into because in the first few chapters there was a LOT of telling instead of showing. And every time the characters did something to actually make you like them or invest in them, they went ahead and did something exceedingly out of character and something that didn't suit them. It just didn't make sense. In fact, those scenes felt like parts of a fan-fiction.
Another thing was that the author has a weird way of referring to the characters. For example, there is a character named Meha, and she is supposed to be a conniving woman. And every single time that he talks about Meha, he says it like the "conniving woman" did this and that. At one point, it got so annoying that I almost screamed - "I get that Meha is a conniving woman. But what's wrong with pronouns?"

Also, some parts of the story didn't feel ORIGINAL. The "Boy King" named Kendi, (who was referred to as the boy king all throughout) had the exact similar traits, storyline, and characteristics as Joffrey (from A Song of Ice and Fire series/ Game of Thrones) except younger.

And one last thing that disturbed me was the sense of "time" in the story. There was no logical explanation as to how much time had passed between one incident and the other. I could make out that a long time had passed, but exactly how much was unclear. And because of this same reason, the transition between two povs was harsh and took a while to get into

The book was good enough. And I must admit the only I kept reading, was because I really admired a few characters (namely two - Eweka and Hasina) and there were pet lions (!!!!). That won me over me honestly.

I am kinda interested to know what happens in the next book.