Gods of the Mountain

By: Christopher Keene

Narrated by: Justin Thomas James

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

“If that’s true, he’s returned from the grave, and you better believe he’s got something in store for this city.”

Accused of murder, Faulk is on the run after his chance at redemption went horribly wrong. He finds himself allied with the mysterious Yuweh, a woman sent by her gods to capture an assassin who is spreading forbidden magic.

Journeying across a land where all magic, cultures, and wars are dictated by its cycles in nature, they uncover a plot that threatens to destroy everything they hold dear. Faulk and Yuweh must reconcile their clashing cultures to prevent the chaos from repeating...as another attempts to use it for his benefit.

©2018 Christopher Keene (P)2018 Justin Thomas James

Good hard magic system, okay characters and story

This novel was enjoyable overall but did have some issues hindering my enjoyment. The over arcing plot is pretty good with strong pacing with the goals of various characters opaque enough to keep readers guessing. So I will be giving the sequel a shot.

The problems though broke my suspension of disbelief. There are several places in which a character acts out of character and a few spots in which simple solutions are ignored. These cases interfered with specific scenes. A much more general issue is the internal dialogue of every character that has some feels clunky and not like a though process at all. It was a poorly implemented means to explain characters emotional state and reasons for doing something.

A lot of fun, Nice performance

The novel is pretty good and the performance definitely helps bring it to life. I was slightly worried in the first few chapters that the pacing felt off, but it quickly picked up. The story takes place in a world where magic is done through concentrating on symbols and chaining them together into more and more complicated actions. A lot of the story follows the protagonist Faulk as he learns this magic first from a former friend who is seeking revenge, then from Yuweh who is a women from a religious devote people. The book is at it's most fun and compelling when Yuweh and Faulk are interacting and Faulk is experiencing the joy of learning new abilities.

A small not on the performance. The narrator is new to me, but his voice is really nice and he acts the characters well. I think that this is a book I enjoyed more in audiobook form than I would have written. I can definitely recommend this and hope the rest of the series makes it on here with the same narrator as it comes out.

Another great epic

For fans of Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Joe Abercrombie like myself, I couldn't not like this book. Keene seems to have taken the epic fantasy style and condensed it down without losing any of the awesomeness that goes with it. His characters were enjoyable to watch play off each other, his settings were gorgeously described and the twist and turns (particularly nearer to the end) were a thrill.

What really caught me was how everything linked together seemlessly. He has cultures that make complete sense once you see the areas and means in which they live. There are darker parts, and although they are described well, the atmosphere of the dark city and gritty characters are what mostly gives this effect. Oh, and the action, the combination of magic and fight scenes are incredible and I can definitely see some Sanderson-esque magic systems in the works.

My only criticism comes part and parcel with my second statement. Because it is a little shorter than your average bulking epic fantasy book, I feel I wanted to spend more time with the characters (some more than others) and some information could have been reinforced better. These were very minor things and seeing that is only the first book makes me look forward to the next. The one thing I can say about this book was that it never bored me, the events flow together very well.

For those who want an epic but efficient fantasy novel, this is a reliable new fantasy book to turn to.

Over all, not bad

I wondered for a long time if I should give this book three stars or four stars, over all. I did bump it up to four stars because the narration was incredible.
This book is a good mindless summer read. A High fantasy the grabs your attention and really doesn't let go. It isn't long enough for have any real character development, especially since we are dealing with so many characters in such a short book. The magic system is well thought out and I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.
I do have two major sticking points with this book. The first one is that the religious character is treated like a straw man. She is given stupid lines to say about why she believes in her gods, just so that another character can wittily put her down. This is a rather offensive way to deal with opinions that the author doesn't agree with. The second one is the "native" people who live in the mountains, and how they were depicted. It felt very much like their “primitiveness” was used as justification for their beliefs. It felt to me like it was on the cusp of noble savage and made me feel uncomfortable.
Over all, not bad.