Free will is a relic of the past. Souls have a prewritten path to heaven. If they miss it, they are doomed to roam the lost realm of limbo as splinters of their former selves or worse—as demons.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Goddess of Limbo by Lea Falls is the first book in the Forgotten Splinters Chronicles dark epic fantasy series. Goddess of Limbo follows a large cast of characters all of whom are part of different cultures and races within the story’s universe. The story sometimes jumps through time, but every chapter starts with a small list indicating the point of view character’s name, the year, and the location in which the chapter takes place. This list is clearly labeled at the top of the first page of every chapter. There are a lot of stories told throughout the novel including but not limited to a princess turned queen trying to take back her agency, a sixteen-year-old trying to start an uprising among the lower classes, a warrior who turns in her weapons to start a family, and a group of university graduates whose stories are told as they part ways after graduation.

The ending is phenomenal. I did not predict any of it, but it wasn’t that it came out of nowhere by any means. Falls creates an ending that is of the I-should-have-seen-this-coming variety because Falls sets it up nicely, scattering breadcrumbs for readers to find throughout the story. I like being able to guess the endings of books, but I was delighted to find out that I was wrong about this one. Also, at the end of the novel, various characters’ stories intersect in such a way that answers many major questions, but also nicely sets up the rest of the series.

My main complaints about the book are that there are a lot of point of view characters. This isn’t terrible, but there are just so many things happening all at once that reading it felt a little slow at times because one must read several points of view to finally find out what happened to the character whose point of view was fifty pages ago. That being said, I liked all of the characters and their points of view and plots were unique and interesting. There were just a lot of them to go through to fully understand the story.

One text feature that I really liked was the list of trigger warnings Falls includes in multiple places where information about the book is posted. There’s a link on the NetGalley information about the book, Falls included trigger warning information on GoodReads, and there’s trigger warning information on Falls’s website. I just thought this was a wonderful way to make sure readers know what they’re getting into, and it also stresses the seriousness of the things the trigger warnings are about. It gave me the impression that Falls cares about readers and wants to make sure they know what to expect from the book.

I’m giving this book 4 out of 5 stars. It’s not a 5 out of 5 star-rating because as I mentioned before, the pacing bothered me, but it was still a good book. I would recommend it to people who love epic fantasy books that are full of laughter, strong friendships, fighting, danger, and surprises around every corner.

💫 The book begins relatively slowly, but this is deliberate as it allows us to get a real in depth understanding of what is going on in Elfendum. The wars, the loves, the marriages, the prejudices and the beliefs. All of which are important by the end of the book.

💫 Ally, possibly my favourite of the characters, is the one that we spend a fair amount of time following. When you read it you will pick your own favourite. Fun fact; I had to make notes of which characters where from where and what had happened to who. I tried going a couple of chapter relying on my memory but that just didn't work.

💫 I read this book in about 5 days which is a relatively long time for me, that isn't because I didn't enjoy it, or because I struggled to read it. In fact, neither of those are true. Instead the problem was that I found that this book couldn't be left mid chapter as that would usually be in the middle of the action. I love to read an action sequence in one take, I just enjoy it more, but maybe that's just me. With 2 young kids, one of which demands attention, seemingly whenever I'm mid chapter, it just didn't work so I could only read this post bedtime.

💫 Be warned, there are some super spicy sequences that are delicious to read but may not be for the faint of heart. There's a particularly spicy scene in Chapter 12, but there are plenty more. Some of the spicy sequences are between same sex characters, it’s not a big deal in 2021 but for some that may be something to know in advance.

💫 There are several different creatures within this book, and it doesn't matter if you have no previous knowledge of fantasy books as their appearance and movements are perfectly explained. Particularly the orcs, I felt like I could draw a picture of them just by reading their description.

This review appears on Amazon UK, Good Reads, Net Galley, www..bookishbethmars.wordpress.com & www.instagram.com/bookishbethmars/

Loving the representation. I cannot wait to see what the author writes next. I 100% recommend. My only complaint was that the font size was extremely small and I tested it out on multiple devices.