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Review Summary:
This is a fantasy adventure novel set in the fictional world of Ferantir. Ferantir contains many regions, some containing nomadic tribes with ancient traditions, others with rigid hierarchy, monarchy and religion. Some are even magical places. The story follows multiple points of view, the main ones being Bodvi-Ismet, the exiled nomad warrior, and the two orphaned brothers Iskander and Agus. But Ferantir is overseen by powerful Gods, and the God of Order isn’t happy with humans. The humans are losing their faith and tradition, and disregard for law and morality are enough to lead the God of Order to drastic action. His siblings including the God of Life, the God of War and the God of Magic must navigate their siblings harsh judgement. Bodvi-Ismet, Agus and Iskander inadvertently find themselves in a band of unlikely recruits faced with the task of defeating the God of Order and his gaggle of followers wreaking havoc across Ferantir. The God has released automatons - humanoid-like monsters who lack sentience and are even harder to kill. To defeat the God of Order they must find the fabled Staff of Karanos which will supposedly destroy the automatons and restore Ferantir’s freedom.
Positives are that the writer has a vivid imagination and has developed a rich world. They clearly take a lot of influence from ancient mythology and societies like the Greeks.
Negatives are that the translation completely let this book down. The formatting and grammar were all over the place and phrases were translated too literally to the point of being non-sensical. Dialogue and attempts at humour fell completely flat as a result. I also felt there were too many points of view going on which affected the pace but also hindered the opportunity to develop characters, their relationships and the readers attachment to them. There were also aspects of individual regions that could have been interesting but were often skimmed over leaving less context to deepen the novel’s lore.

2.5 stars. An intriguing universe and plot with the potential for engaging characters but completely let down by poor translation. I write this review a couple of weeks after finishing and the details are very fuzzy because there weren’t many characters or scenes that stuck out in my mind as especially memorable.

FULL REVIEW BELOW. AVAILABLE WITH THE ADDITION OF HIDDEN SPOILERS ON GOODREADS

World-building:
Strong for the most part. We start with the culture of Bodvi-Ismet’s tribe - Bodvi being a prefix for members of the tribe’s names - which has many similarities to the Ancient Greeks. The tribe follows an ancient religion and culture which includes the unique fighting style of Bimbairi. Unfortunately it is never really explained what Bimbairi involves other than it being a sort of dance-like martial art that is only done amongst the Nomads. The God of their religion may also bless the most dedicated and gifted Bimbairi practicers to be even stronger, but this is an extremely rare phenomenon. We are shown the impact of the tribe’s degenerating commitment to their faith and tradition and the tension Ismet feels about it. Agus and Iskander’s world was a little less clear to me, with Agus being an archer - a soldier - while Iskander is essentially a library admin for scholars. I don’t really remember much of their world but they soon leave to travel. There is a lot of exploration of religion, with clerics of each God having a title. For example those who follow the God Larus would be Larusites, or those who follow Idris would be Idrisites. I don’t remember what these Gods were but I thought it was impressive that there was so much detail put into the world religions. I did start to get confused when the mages were introduced. I don’t remember where they live or how they lived, just that they existed and didn’t get on very well with all of the leaders of the faiths. None of the mage’s powers or the context behind their magic has stuck with me either after reading. There was also a whole region that was led by a Queen and had a clear class divide and whatnot, but I remember even at the time of reading that I didn’t totally understand its relevance. This was potentially where we meet the thief who joins the story later on, and I remember there being a whole thing with a royal daughter. But I can’t for the life of me remember what any of it was for. In the end all of the different parts of Ferandir had to join their forces together to face the automatons. There are details about politics, class, faith and culture which I thought was very imaginative.

Characterisation:

Very difficult to wholly praise because the dialogue of all of the characters and the formatting/grammar highlighting their speech or inner monologues was all over the place. Ismet was loyal, determined and dedicated to his faith and to the expectations of his family and tribe. But, I remember him being a bit boring. His dad does a complete 180 in the first couple of chapters going from being the harsh, unforgiving chieftain with impossible expectations for his son to being sensitive, compassionate and mournful. He ‘cries for the first time in his life’ twice in the book. This personality change was rushed and felt inorganic. Agus is the stuffy, overprotective older brother who seems to take pity on Iskander because he didn’t get into the military like he did. I found Agus too one-dimensional. Iskander is actually more talented than his brother if anything with an unclear past, and he was bolder and braver. The dialogue between the two brothers was very unnatural and with far too much exposition. One of the most influential characters is a Larusite cleric, whose name I don’t remember. He becomes a messenger for the God of Life - not even the God he follows - and becomes committed to helping her in the battle against the God of Order. Similarly to Ismet, the cleric had begun to feel the tension regarding the seemingly wavering commitment to Larus and his teachings by his peers. His work up to this point was predominantly translating ancient texts, and this becomes paramount to finding the Staff. He had the most development as a character, starting out as passive, meek and cowardly to becoming an assertive and strategic leader. I found the strength of his faith to be admirable. We meet a mage who leads the journey to the staff, but other than being moody and a bit entitled nothing about her stood out to me other than her powers being the narrative force. By far the most pointless character is a thief - again I don’t remember her name - who the mage brings along for her ‘talents’. She is a hard-done-by young girl with a Robin Hood complex and is supposed to be a bit of a comic relief, but her repeated exclamations of ‘fart bags!’ did not, in fact, make her funny or a character who warranted a dedicated point of view. She only ends up using her ‘talents’ maybe once. The Queen or Lady or whoever she was also didn’t need a point of view. The Gods and their personalities were pretty straight forward. Whatever they were the God of, that’s what they dedicated themselves to and it was reflected in their perspectives and morals.

Story:
Lots going on, and a shame that the translation was as poor as it was. We have action scenes, magic scenes, ‘who dunnit’, ‘The Chosen One’ trope, a pretty cool final Boss fight and lots of mythology themes. A big dose of politics in there as well.

Prose:
A good third of this book was non-sensical to me. Speech marks were placed randomly, the structure of italicised inner monologues was sporadically abandoned leaving me wondering who on earth is talking, or thinking, or not at all? Some of the translation was a little bit funny. A sentence along the lines of ‘she is probably the most beautiful woman in the world, she is unbelievable’ got translated to ‘she is probably the most flirtatious woman in the world, she is deplorable’. For context, the character was sat under a tree looking sad and the person saying this line was her brother… Flirtatious? Deplorable? What? There were many instances where a sentence just didn’t make sense. Dialogue was overly formal. There was also a chapter later on where an entire paragraph gets repeated midway through the next page. The formatting and translation was not to a good enough standard to publish, in my opinion.

The Staff of Karonos offers an intriguing premise and a rich fantasy world, but unfortunately falls short in execution. While the world-building is imaginative, the pacing feels uneven, often dragging in places that should be more engaging.

The characters, though initially promising, lack depth and development, making it hard to connect with their journeys. The protagonist's motivations and actions sometimes feel inconsistent, which detracts from the overall narrative.

Additionally, the plot twists are predictable, and the dialogue can come off as stilted and unnatural. Despite these issues, there are moments of potential that hint at what the story could have been with more polished writing and stronger character arcs.

It has remarkable potential to be turned into a series where there is more and direct involvement of gods in humanitarian wars and vice versa where the entire world shifts on decisions and disputes between the Gods. Looking forward for it to turn up better than ever!

Chaos rules in Ferantir.
Darma, god of order, intends to punish humans by means of an ancient evil. Fate will bring together a group formed of a maniacal thief, a warrior without a homeland, two very different brothers, an archmage lost in the forest, and a foul-mouthed cleric.
They will travel the length and breadth of Ferantir in search of a remedy to neutralize the evil.

This was solid. I didn't know what to expect going into it but it ended up pleasantly surprising me.

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with a copy of this book after the publishing date.

2.25⭐️ rounded down to 2⭐️ for NetGalley and GoodReads.

I really really really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

When I read the description I was so excited. Who wouldn't love a story about a god who decides to start a war against humankind? The world crafting was interesting but that's about that.

Here is what I didn't enjoy:
- Too many characters. There were just way too many characters and too few pages. Either this book should have been much much longer to really get a good character-building OR way fewer characters. POVs just kept changing at random and very short intervals. I'm used to reading books with multiple POVs, but it is an art in and of itself, and I think that unfortunately, it wasn't well executed in this instance.
- The dialogues. They just felt off somehow? I can't really put my finger on what was wrong, but the dialogue just felt so inorganic and just not naturally flowing.

Overall, this was a great idea but the execution was lacking. Maybe this book should have gone through a few more rounds of editing before publication. Or the author should have reined in the amount of characters.

So this follows a bunch (no like.... I lost count of how many) people all trying to defeat some, essentially, magic robots because one god has decided mortals are kinda stupid and he's gonna kill them all and become the best dictator to ever dictator.

This wasn't actively bad, and the premise is so cool - we get POV of gods even though they're certifiably insane and see their family discourse and all these kingdoms/people who hate each other have to work together to kill the unkillable??? um yes please.

But this just got lost in the sauce. there were just so very many people and kingdoms and religious sects that I genuinely could not keep track. Everyone blurred into one and we got about 2 single pages with each character before we'd jump to another one and so by the end (or if i'm being honest, 50%) I was no longer interested. I pushed through, because it wasn't a bad story per se, it just wasn't a compelling one.
The attempt to get into the personal politics of each country was just too many cooks, this could've been done with ONE country and ONE church and ONE military and been infinitely better for it.

I already have problems with multi POV books because I think there's too much jumping, but usually its at least every chapter, here it was genuinely every 2 pages and there were about 6 groups of people and then each group of people had like 3 that we could get the POV of... and it then just all wrapped up so very conveniently. No one had to work for anything.

A very interesting book. Well written, even if it took me a few chapters to get into it. I liked the gods pov, separating this book from others.

How do you defend yourself when the Gods start a war against humankind?

The book follows different characters in their fight and you'll see magic and battles along the way.
I also really liked the POV from the Gods - have always been a fan of mythology and enjoy seeing Gods making appearances in the books I read.
There are some minor translation mistakes ("y" instead of "and"), but it didn't bother me at all and didn't interrupt the flow of the story.

I'm gonna give this a 4/5 and will be on the lookout for more books from this author.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC. My opinion and thoughts are my own and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.