This was a long book that became quite confusing. It focuses on a lot of characters, was also heavy on the infodumping. I did not really see the Priory x Stormlight comparisons, except maybe with the length. The prose is good, so are the character relationships; plot-wise this could be stronger and the worldbuilding much more profound. Though, I did like the Ownvoices aspect of this; a nice touch.

This had a very interesting premise - which was what prompted me to pick it up - in the end though, it was an average read for me. Not bad, but could be better. My expectations might have been too high.

I wasn't able to get into this book. The writing style and perspective in the first few chapters is so distant and so incredibly off-putting that it's hard to follow, which made me dread the thought of reading it. That doesn't mean it's not a good book, it just didn't grab me. The premise was promising and the representation mentioned in other reviews is encouraging, but from what little I could get through of it, it wasn't for me.

✨Arc review✨

Release Date: October 14, 2021

📖Goddess of Limbo by: Lea Falls

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Falls brings to life a stunningly new cast of misfits in this adult high fantasy novel!

In truth I struggled so much getting through this story. Like not just a section or a half but the whole thing and with a whopping 670 pages, I really just wanted it to be over by the end of it. To be fair, I am not sure if this was the writing or the format of the arc.

Though I struggled through the writing, I absolutely fell in love with these characters and this world! We have Insane Princesses 👸🏽, blood hungry rebels🥷🏽, hopeless romantic snipers and all kinds of monsters👹. It’s definitely a story packed with morally grey characters faced with overwhelmingly difficult decisions. Who wouldn’t love a story where the little guy goes up against the Gods!!!

The world Falls built is MASSIVE and so detailed with its new magic systems and politic quarrels. Absolutely beautiful! Definitely a world that readers will want to come back to,

I would be willing to reread this when the book comes out to see if it was in fact the format and my rating changes!

*review also on Goodreads


General thoughts:

The world and the characters are very richly-imagined, and this seems to me to be very much a character-driven story. The first half of the book was quite long and could be trudgingly slow to get through at times, but things picked up and got more interesting in the second half... till it reached its conclusion, around the time of which (the last 20% of the book or so) I was starting to get confused. It felt like there was so much buildup of characters and intrigue yet it didn't go anywhere, or perhaps just didn't go where I expected it to. I kept vacillating between thinking it a strange, whimsical story, and a pointless one, though by the time I finished it and realised there would be a sequel and that it could possibly address all my unanswered questions regarding plot elements, characters, etc., I felt more appeased. Overall, it was a beautifully, beautifully-written book with an intricate cast of characters to become invested in, though the seemingly-meandering plot left me feeling like I'd just run a gauntlet by the time I finished the book.

What worked for me:

• Characters and their relationships; Multiple POVs. This was very beautifully-written and well-handled, and I had a particular fondness for Robert and Ally. Other characters were really interesting as well, though not as compelling for me as these two in particular. A very diverse and complex web of characters.

• The writing - absolutely gorgeous, adept prose.

• The issues tackled - there were a lot of important social issues that were delved into here, lots of allegories that parallel issues that we face in our reality, that were written and handled well. (TWs apply, which the book provides a comprehensive list of.)

• The strangeness of it all. It can definitely be confusing at times, but in a good way (for me).


What didn't work for me:

• ..... The conclusion. While I like the strangeness of the book, the conclusion was so confusing in a way that didn't really feel good, because I had no idea what was happening and so I couldn't really get into the action, or feel any real stakes.

• The plot. It felt like it was going nowhere and left me with so many unanswered questions (that will hopefully be addressed in the sequel).

• Having so many characters is a great thing, but it can also be a weakness when you aren't really interested in/invested in some or most of them; that just makes their POVs really hard to get through. Some characters also didn't feel as if they had any real importance in the story, and some were forgotten by the end of the book.

I'm sad that I do not feel like finishing this. I did not feel the Priory x Stormlight comparisons at all. Maybe it was an error in the marketing, but the worldbuilding felt so convoluted to me. It started off strong, but the next chapters put me off with the info dumping and introduction of many characters. I was not given enough reason to care about the characters and they felt like caricatures to me. I appreciate the inclusion of people with mental illnesses though. The writing style is alright and the plot is okay. It was, however, very challenging to follow. Again, the worldbuilding really put me off.

Goddess of Limbo by Lea Falls

3 ⭐️
(thank you to NetGalley and Lea Falls for the opportunity to read this eARC, in exchange for a review. All opinions are mine, and mine alone.)

The premise of this book is what hooked me - hook, line, and sinker - and the prologue really just grabbed me in. “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.”

Lea Falls does a wonderful job tying in individual character storylines together and has created a unique magic system. The LGBTQIA+ representation is outstanding, but she also represents Neurodivergence, Disability, Mental Illness, and Racial/Ethnic identities. And that’s all just in her first book of the series!

However, the story itself gets a bit confusing as the book goes on. And, as the title suggests, you seem to get stuck in a bit of a limbo. It was easy to get the characters and their storylines mixed up, and, overall, I believe it was too many POVs for one book. With that, I also feel certain storylines just seemed to drop off (I’ll be intrigued to see if they are picked up in the next book of the series).

This was a hefty read that I felt I was trudging through, and it lacked organization, therefore creating a lot of confusion. Because of that, I can only give this book three stars, but I will be picking up the sequel to see if it gets any clearer!

"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 REALLY LIKED THIS! I truly thought this was on the scale of The Priory of the Orange Tree, it has wonderful LGBTQIA+ representation in it. I would highly recommend to any fantasy reader!

Goddess of Limbo is a great addition to any fantasy reader’s bookshelf.

Lea Falls does an amazing job of weaving individual characters’ storylines together to leave the reader wanting more. I was completely obsessed with the magic system she has created, and I can’t wait to learn more about it - it’s so different from other systems that I’ve been reading lately. While there are many different POVs that you read from, you really fall in love with them and their growth throughout the novel. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series to see how the story continues to develop.

Be sure to check content warnings as this book contains quite a few potentially triggering topics.

It has a very interesting story and a very different way to tell it. It was not my writing style but if you want a detailed and new story, read it!

"Goddess of Limbo": 3.5⭐

(Unpaid Review: thank you to @netgalley, @leafalls and the publishers for allowing me to read this eArc copy in exchange for a review.)

Wow! Just wow! The premise of this book got me hooked, so I just knew I would really appreciate it and enjoy it! This book is really good on the grounds that it has multiple povs, with enriches the story so much more and creates such a powerful concept around fantasy world, you'll be enchanted from the very first page.

However, changing between time periods really got confusing, which, as you can imagine by the title of the book, it becomes kind of a limbo itself, because you really get stuck between those times.

However, this is such a good book to get you out of a reading slump! Grab yourself a copy!

This book was not at all what I was expecting.

Goddess of Limbo is told in multiple POVs, there are so many characters and each chapter is a new characters POV.. The writing itself was well done, the story was just hard to follow with the constant change each chapter and all the other people's names and info.


Now, this is not to say the book is bad, it was ok to me, but not entirely my cuppa.


Thank you to Lea Falls for the opportunity to read your book.

Thanks, Netgalley for the e-ARC n exchange for an honest review.

This was not at all what I was expecting, but I mean that in the best of ways!

I’m not sure what I liked most, the lyrical writing? The borderline obsessive mood or the incredibly detailed world-building.

The vividness in the details was fabulous, the world-building rich and the characters interesting.

The alternating POV felt a little chaotic and confusing in the beginning before it balanced out and the different stories began to weave together.

It’s not a quick read, leaning more towards a detailed fantasy series with an ever-building plot. Very intriguing!

I love the premise of the book. The characters were interesting and the setting was beautiful. I had trouble following the plot.

I want to thank netgalley for this free ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was a 3 star book & that is being generous. The kind of reader I am in EXTREMELY lenient with reviews but I trudged through this book.
The writing and the character development was good but besides that I honestly cannot tell you what the plot is. It was a 670 page book that felt like nonsense to me. The overall beginning made no sense to me, we were jumping from character to character, then we jumped to 10 years later, which I was fine with but then we got a whole other set of characters. There was no mention of Alames and who the goddess of limbo was until 60% in. I didn’t even know the plot until 60% in. The writing itself was really good but the plot and organization needed a lot of work, I know what the author was attempting to do bc I have seen it done before but it fell flat and I just felt bored & confused.
I considered dnf-ing this book the whole time. If it wasn’t because I hate dnf-ing I would have. Despite wanting to dnf I decided to finish it in order to give it an honest review. Which was: even after finishing it I am clueless to what just happened... so many things were not even addressed and it doesn't feel like it was left open for a sequel it just felt sloppy, as if the author was trying to accomplish too much in one book.
I give this a 3 star because the writing itself and how the author writes I liked but it needed a different organize or plot lay out. The book was also different in its magic system and it's world, which initially pulled me in but I just felt throughout the book there was an unnecessary amount of bad things happening to the characters and information I did not need. Maybe I’ll need that information for the next books but it was unnecessary to info dump that much in the first book. I did not enjoy this read because I felt that I was reading a bunch of characters with minimal connection and little to no plot and it wasn't until 80% that half of these characters connected. It was too long of a book to read with no plot or connection, nothing of substance happened until 80%. It was extremely confusing and I really struggled to read it, I’m not sure if I’ll read the next books. Which makes me sad because I was so excited to read this book.

Couldn’t finish this. The prologue was beautiful and really interesting. The rest was long, dreadful… and just never ending. Ended up not being able to finish it. Which is maybe for the better because this book is nearing 700 pages!! That’s insane, and such a waste of time for me.

The premise and characters of this book are really interesting. The setting is really vibrant and delightful and overall it's a really good read.

When I read the blurb for this book I was really excited about the premise, a new fantasy series that is similar to Game of Thrones in both scope and wealth of characters/storylines. With gods, goddess, humans, orcs, fae and elves you have a variety of species to pick from.

The problem with this is that it was quite confusing when you jump into multiple storylines (and time periods) within the middle of action happening, it led to me not knowing who each of the characters were without constantly flicking between pages. Or even building a relationship with them until much later in the book.

Having said that, once I pushed through I did find myself enjoying the different storylines and how they interacted with each other. I thought that there was good relationships built between the characters.

I think the main problem with this book was that there was too much, even for a book that has 670 pages! It felt like too much history, characters and story were tried to be squeezed into it and the pacing suffers slightly for it, especially at the beginning like I have mentioned. The plot carries on into the second book just as it finally gets going and there is so much action and POV jumping it takes a second to track who is doing what.

A very positive point to add is that there is great representation in this book for the LGBTQIA+ community, there are hardly any heterosexual characters and I do not think the book suffers for this.

I commend the author for building such a vivid world as well as a wealth of different types of characters. The list of TWs are also very helpful for those it can affect.

Unfortunately this book just didn't grab me as other series have and whilst I am intrigued as to where the story will eventually end up... I am not sure that is strong enough to get book 2.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for an advanced reader copy.

Well, to say it's different is an understatement. It's a compelling story full of interesting characters and ideas.

Once you get used to the places and characters you feel like you fit in. It really is a fantasy epic, and I found the story easy to follow once I got into it.

I must warn you that the book is quite extensive. But you understand why once the plot starts to expand. It is very well written. And although slow at first it soon picks up pace. After the first few chapters I found myself unable to put it down as I always wanted to know what came next.
The characters draw you further in. Some are complicated, some are easy. But all have a place in the story as a whole.

Yes,m I would recommend this book. I also look forward to book two.

Enjoy!

Goddess of Limbo was, for me, a difficult book. It’s a very ambitious debut novel, not only including an expansive cast of characters and sprawling world but leading into a series, and that’s perhaps its main downfall as well. Though its main selling points intrigued me, it ultimately failed to follow up on them in a personally satisfactory manner, and the positives were outweighed by the flaws.

If I could summarize my main problem in a single sentence, it’s that this is a book you’ll want to keep notes on due to the sheer amount of things happening. Relying on memory (or at least, my very bad memory) alone, it’s difficult to keep track of the characters and their relationships/allegiances as well as the places, politics, creatures, and deities of the world. This isn’t helped by the fact that many of the characters’ lives are pretty disconnected—you have to wonder why all of them are even included in the same book—and the jumps in time and location mean that a lot of plot threads get left by the wayside and not picked up again until much, much later, by which point the details have been forgotten. A lot of chapters and events ultimately add nothing to (or even detract from) the overarching plot, and some characters and their plotlines outright disappear for chapters on end, and in some cases for good.

There’s a lot, in general, that hasn’t yet been resolved by the time the book ends. Presumably, this will be solved in later installments, but as it stands, Goddess of Limbo unfortunately didn’t captivate me enough to follow up on that. The setup is interesting, but the proceeding combination of awkward pacing—I found it way too slow for 80% of the book, then way too fast near the end—and a cast too wide to adequately juggle make for a disjointed, confusing read. There’s no real overarching plot, or at least one so muddled by the amount of subplots that it’s difficult to follow.

The writing style intrigued me at first, but as time wore on it started to drag and lose its appeal. The type of punchy syntax used throughout isn’t really compelling to me, and it especially feels jarring in combination with how purple the prose can be at times. There is a balance of showing and telling, but it’s not really a clean one; lengthy, dry exposition runs hand-in-hand with lush descriptions, and in my opinion, a lot of sections should have gone in the opposite direction than they did on that scale. Some descriptions are also repetitive and cumbersome; for example, there’s a lot of unnecessary adjectives thrown around when it comes to the ears of characters already known to be elvish.

As for the world, there’s a lot of potential there. I can definitely feel the inspiration of D&D and preceding epic fantasy, and as a fan of both I appreciated the elements that reminded me of that. What’s there of the pantheon, though little is explored in detail beyond the two main plot-important gods, is interesting, as is the expanse of cultures and views in the setting. However, the only aspects that really end up explored in detail are those that didn’t personally interest me. That D&D inspiration also is something of a double-edged sword in that there are some weirdly modern edges to the setting, like one offhanded mention of, of all things, a Labrador.

Other things I did appreciate include the themes of moral ambiguity and freedom from trauma as well as the breadth of representation, which is detailed by the author on her site. That said, much of that representation felt clunky. The only nonbinary character* is repeatedly deadnamed (presumably, as their mother refers to them as an extended version of their name) and misgendered; even though it’s challenged, it’s still uncomfortable to read, and the only trans male character is self-loathing and fairly dysphoric, with his characterization at least partially centered around those aspects (and his arc ultimately involving medical transitioning). Those things aren’t inherent negatives, but when that’s the only explicit trans representation here, it stands out a lot more. In general, the homophobia and transphobia in the setting feel a lot less cathartic than I think they were intended to. Slurs—one in particular—are repeatedly used, and though it’s treated as a bad thing in-universe it’s never really actively addressed. The arcs of internalized homophobia are short-lived and flaccid, so much so that calling them “arcs” doesn’t even feel accurate. External homophobia and transphobia are sort of just... there, as is racism, to the point where it’s honestly kind of unnecessary.

* There’s kind of a strange case here where a situation with another character, or at least as much as I could understand of it, would make me inclined to classify them as nonbinary as well, possibly genderfluid/bigender, but nothing of the sort is explicitly stated or even touched upon. To be fair, at that point of the book I had started majorly skimming, but...

I’d like to comment on the psychotic representation as well. It’s fairly well-handled, but it’s primarily dependent upon auditory hallucinations and specifically distinct voices (which again isn’t an inherent bad thing; a very high percentage of psychotic people experience them), and it seems implied that the source of it is magical/supernatural, which is always something that bothers me with fantasy and sci-fi. The representation page on the author indicates that it’s meant to be schizoaffective disorder, which frankly I wouldn’t have read it as without that explicit statement. “Delusional” is also, if I remember correctly, used as a derogatory term against other characters. This is something I’ve sadly come to expect from a lot of media in general, but not a book that seeks to portray even “scary” mental health struggles sympathetically and deconstruct the “mad queen” archetype.

I did like that the physically disabled character used mobility aids and wasn’t derided for this or anything (as far as I recall, and however much of an issue it is that they’re again “the” physically disabled character), and I didn’t have any other glaring issues with the disability representation as a whole.

Trauma and recovery are generally portrayed well too, although I must say that some aspects felt very surface-level. The aftermath of physical domestic abuse is shown in detail, but no consequences seem to come to the abuser; I would fully understand if centering the survivor was done in place of this, but even that isn’t really present. I’m pretty sure the injured character never has another perspective chapter after that event, nor are the psychological ramifications really covered—this is also partially true of the character who was made to marry an adult man as a child, and unless I wasn’t paying enough attention due to the aforementioned skimming, that man never faces any major consequences either. Perhaps this is something else to be followed up on later in the series, but from someone who has lost interest in reading following works, it makes their inclusion questionable. There’s also an early scene where a parent slaps their child hard enough to draw blood, but it’s never mentioned again, and no repercussions come of it.

The portrayals of teenagers are also uncomfortably sexualized. Varying aging rates between species are touched upon, but not covered in detail; flirting (often with sexual undertones) between adults/characters of ambiguous age and sixteen-year-olds, then, is uncomfortable from any angle. It would be so no matter what, but when paired with pretty blatant critiques of child marriage and abuse, it especially stands out as something odd and unsettling.

Some additional nitpicks: The font size is very small, and the format provided keeps it from being adjusted on my device. Some of the fonts used for letters and hallucinations are difficult to read as well; this is probably not a huge issue for a lot of people, but when you’re dyslexic and nearsighted it detracts from the experience quite a bit. I also noticed a couple of minor typos (and when I say “minor,” I mean, like... to/too/two mixups), but those are overlookable enough.

In the end, Goddess of Limbo possesses a lot of potential, but I think it could have really benefited from some additional polishing and a more cohesive narrative. It tries to do too much at once, and though that drive is admirable, it’s unfortunately its most glaring problem.

This book is told from two POV’s Subira and Robert in 3rd person narration. The story is about reaping souls and is set in a completely different fantasy world with a map. I did enjoy this and I liked Lea Falls’ characterisation. I have read epic fantasy before and this was unlike any I have read before. My only criticism is that this book is too long and the story does begin to drag.