Thank you for allowing me to preview this title. Sadly, this was not for me. I didn't feel like I had enough backstory on the Gods to understand what was going on and did not connect with any of the characters on any level. I read 20% and decided not to continue. I wish you all the best and again thank you for the preview.

How do I even begin to describe the absolute dumpster fire that I just read? This book has got to classify as a hate crime. Like, I demand the two hours of my life back that I just wasted on this. Never, have I EVER rated a book 1 star. I don't think I've ever even READ a book that I despised so much as I despised this. So let's dive into the MANY notes I took while letting my poor eyes take in this trash.

The opening line to a story is one of the most important things to a book. It grabs the reader's attention, pulls them into the story and peaks their interest. My interest? Was more on the fact that there were so many grammatical errors on the first page it took me three times reading it over to even understand. For your own eyes to feast on, here's the first line.

^ "I'm done," Christian, king of the gods, yelled, his words echoing through every hall in the heavens. ^

OK... aside from the FOUR commas in ONE sentence, this line is terrible. My English teacher once taught me that no author should ever have to STATE what's happening in dialogue, they SHOW it. And yet... Smith had to literally say Christian was yelling. How would we know? His dialogue showed no capitalization, no exclamation mark, or any indication that he's yelling aside from us being told he is. Quite literally, a few lines from that, Smith writes:

^ The issue... were they for sorrow or rage. ^ Yes, this is legitimately an entire sentence. Talking about Christian's tears? Okay well... if they were for sorrow or rage, SHOW IT. It took me several re-readings of this line to comprehend it.

It's like that throughout the ENTIRE book. I'm not sure if Smith EVER took a writing course, but I'm convinced he's allergic to various forms of punctuation. If anyone was wondering, I did in fact keep track of how many of his dialogue sentences ended in a comma. NEWSFLASH. Literally EVERY SINGLE LINE. Throughout the ENTIRE book. It was exhausting to get through, let me tell you.

Now, writing aside, let's get on with the actual hate crime part of this book. I can't tell you what this plot is supposed to be about AT ALL. Some random gods in the beginning, Christian getting stripped of his title and being banished to Earth, and a bunch of random characters killing random mortals because the "have" to. That's all I got, folks. A few hundred pages of absolute... nothing.

Moving on... there's a "spice" scene quite abruptly in Chapter 2, though I'm not sure I can even call it that. Christian slaps this woman, Seren, then blames her for him having to do it. He then proceeds to justify rape because "it's not forceful if it's what is freely given to me." I'M SORRY SIR, WHAT. The amount of rage I felt in that moment is indescribable. The amount of misogyny is astounding. Truly I had to take a moment. Oh but it doesn't end there. We'll get to that later.

There's a random jump in time, of 756 years? Not sure how that helped progress the story at all because it seemed to be the same situation the characters were still stuck in. The gods are all trying to kill people because some dwarf looking goblins said so, and I didn't retain the entire middle of this book.

Now towards the end, when I thought I couldn't be more revolted and uncomfortable from this, Smith really said "hold my glass" and did a DOOZY of an ending. This man Steve needs to kill some people and walks in on these two people getting it on. How does the audience know that? Because of this gloriously hilarious line:

^ "Put it in the other hole... Ah." ^

TRIGGER WARNING SA for this next paragraph

I really burst out laughing, so I'll give Smith that. It was just so out-of-pocket but on with the point here. Steve offs the man then proceeds to try to rape the woman because of course a white male author has nothing else to write about then taking advantage of women. The real kicker here is when Steve can't seem to get little Steve up, and this woman offers to HELP him?! In WHAT WORLD would that EVER happen. Truly I have no words.

As if that scene wasn't bad enough, it continues with Steve getting mad that he's ill-equipped so he decides to shove his knife IN this woman. Yes. I was speechless once again. I'm not even sure I need to explain my disgust with this, it speaks for itself.

So, that's my review folks. My first ever ARC and I feel quite scarred. This book doesn't even deserve to be called as such. I can't believe I took the time to even finish it. Is there an audience somewhere that would enjoy this? Oh I'm sure. And they're all living in their mom's basement playing Skyrim with week old Cheeto dust settling into the keyboard. Now, I wanted so badly to like this book after the cover caught my eye. But it seems dear Kai Smith and I just don't have the same idea of what a good time is. I'll give a solid 8/10 for the cover though, and after looking at his other series, he definitely nailed it on that front.

I loved reading this book. It was well written, flowed well and really kept me interested.
I read the book in one sitting and just couldn't put it down.
The characters really grow through the story and the world building is fantastic.