The Last Goddess was not an easy read. This grim story was hard to follow at times and I felt it difficult to not only keep track of things but also to connect with the characters.

I am not sure if this is because I am reading a translated version or if this just wasn't the book for me.

I do not know if it is the translation of if the coutnyr’s language is quite dry to begin with. I have to regrettably admit that this story and characters did not fully immerse me into the book making me feel more like an observer with not so much investment on how the plot line will follow up the harsh beginnning of the book.

A mix of fact and fiction and based on extensive historical research, this compelling novel traces a community of women healers over the centuries in the White Carpathians in the east of Moravia. Originally persecuted as witches, these healers, known as Goddesses in the area, came to be revered and trusted, even if some of them occasionally resorted to the dark arts. Their knowledge of herbs and remedies made them an integral part of the community until the Communist regime tried to eradicate them. Dora, a scientist and ethnographer, and a direct descendant of the Goddesses, begins to explore her family history and the legacy bequeathed to her and this takes her into some dark places indeed. A combination of regular narrative plus government reports, which are particularly chilling, make this a multi-layered story which expertly weaves the fictional and non-fictional elements together into a satisfying whole. The story of these Goddesses is one that drew me in completely, vividly recreating their lives in this remote part of the former Czechoslovakia. An excellent read.

Translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland, Kateřina Tučková’s novel brings the story of renowned women living in a village called Žítková in the White Carpathian Mountains, straddling the border of Moravia and Slovakia. These renowned women are known colloquially as “goddesses” (or bohyně in Czech) and they were known mainly for their healing prowess that was passed from generation to generation. Our main character in this story, Dora Idesová, was raised by her aunt Térezie “Surmena” Surmenová, who was the last of the goddesses, along with her brother.

An incident in 1974 caused Dora to be separated from her aunt, who later died while still captive in a mental institution in 1979. Later on, Dora would grow up resisting the practice of the “goddesses” as superstition, choosing to view it from a scientific point of view as a researcher in ethnography and anthropology. “Goddesses” become a research topic for Dora, with literature spanning from the witch trials in the Middle Ages into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic which denied the “goddesses” existence as it contrasted with the state’s communist ideology.

Kateřina Tučková is a writer that pays a lot of attention to details. The first half of the book consists of many correspondences and archives that construct background information for the story. Dora, as a researcher, naturally makes various attempts to track archives to understand the “goddesses” phenomenon. Fictional archives from the Czechoslovak secret police, ŠtB, fill in the pages here and there, with fictional accounts that mirror the real archives, putting testimonies on various observations made over the years on the practice of the “goddesses”, also complemented by their earlier Nazi’s counterparts which viewed the “goddesses” as the last remnants of the Germanic pagan practitioners with their knowledge and customs.

The fictional archives provide complete context on the state’s persecution towards the “goddesses” from the early 1950s to the late 1980s when Czechoslovakia was under the communist regime, in a similar practice to the witch trials in the Middle Ages. They were looked upon as different, as black magic practitioners that brought curses upon people and bore ill will towards others, while denying their abilities as healers. The persecution happened despite the fact that ethnologists viewed the “goddesses” as an ancient art that dates back to the Slavonic times, even before Christianity arrived in Europe, and various people’s reliance on the “goddesses” to heal their illnesses.

While I have to say looking at archives, albeit fictional, might sound like boring stuff (except if we’re really invested in the subject matter), the fictional archives certainly provide backgrounds for the latter half of the story which focuses on Dora’s relations with her family of “goddesses” from her mother side. They’re interesting because they look at history through various lenses. The Czechoslovak communist government might have denied the prowess of the “goddesses”, but the Nazis under the SS-Hexensonderkommando (Special Witch Commando) looked at them as a way to advance their political agenda, producing findings about German woman priests in ancient times. The settings are believable (there was actually an SS commando under that name carrying out research on witches in existence between 1934 and 1944) and it has elements of a detective story while still engagingly discussing a fading cultural phenomenon.

This is my first experience reading anything like this, I don't even have anything I can compare it to. As much as I wanted to enjoyed, I didn't enjoy the world building enough to get lost in the story.

This book has been out 10 years and has many helpful ratings and reviews, so I'll just recommend it to those that like literary fiction with a some mystery. Good writing and story. I may have to check out some of the author's other work.

I really appreciate the free review copy!!

#TheLastGoddess made me dread having to read it so much, it put me off reading entirely.

It suffers from a few equally important issues, its narrative language being one. There’s no way for me to know whether this is how it was written, or how translation made it, but it ended up being too flat, too impersonal, too lacklustre as opposed to a lyrical, passionate, magical narration befitting for and as one would expect from such an enticing premise.

Not only does this ruin the chance to create atmosphere, it also makes it impossible to connect with the characters. I couldn’t care about any of the (too many) characters . . . which is partly due to the sheer volume of characters, of course. This creates an underdevelopment problem, none of them are fleshed out; even the main character remains two dimensional. It’s also difficult to keep track of them, especially when you do not (read: cannot) care about them. I had long given up by Chapter 15, when I finally stopped taking notes altogether.

The way the chapters are cut makes the book totally disjointed. This doesn’t even serve a literary purpose, the book continues being flat and boring. It only makes it impossible to get into the story, exacerbated by the failing narration.

Due to the inaccessibility of the subject matter The Last Goddess reads, feels, is extremely local. I rarely witness such an accessibility issue — in fact, I can’t remember the last time I encountered one before this book.

On top of all this, the author commits the cardinal literary sin: telling, not showing. She introduces a document format that is intriguing the first time it’s done, and she holds onto it for dear life. It gets too old too fast, becomes frustrating by as early on as Chapter 7. Not only can you not connect with the characters and the subject, you also cannot connect with the story. You might be wondering, what is left then?

Absolutely nothing.

DRC provided by #NetGalley and AmazonCrossing.

This book wounded my soul. False advertisement at its finest.

The premise made me so excited for the ARC. There were so many components from the description that drew me. Plus, an insatiable curiosity for cultural history I'm unfamiliar with. It was devastating to read this book. While the writing and translation are impeccable, and I didn't mind the academic inclusion to the storytelling, the brutality was disruptive.

I continued to push to make the effort of finding out what happens with the big secret, but after the third brutality for no reason whatsoever, I was done. I started to read the reviews now the book has been published for a month and realized that there is no cathartic ending. If I push myself with this novel, I will only wound myself further. So I'm done. I tried. I hoped. I lost.

I'm still not entirely sure how I should review The Last Goddess. On the one hand, it was interesting to read about the folk beliefs and the work of the herbalists in the White Carpathians, which continued through to the middle of the twentieth century, finally halted by the advent of communism. But there were also times my attention started to drift, especially when I felt bogged down by another slew of 'official reports'. In a way these worked well as a device for the reader to discover the truth alongside Dora, but at the same time, there were so many of them it began to feel a bit repetitive towards the end. If you like historical fiction that is based on true events and which incorporates a family-history-type investigation, I am sure you'll find something to like here. For me, it was a good read, and something a bit different, but it was not mind-blowing, so I am giving it 3.5 stars.

Beautifully weaving together fact, folklore, and fiction, Kateřina Tučková draws on the stories of her ancestors to explore the extraordinary history of goddesses who walked the earth. Kept me up well past my bedtime, I could not put it down.

Plot: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Characters: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ease of the book: ⭐️⭐️
Overall : ⭐️⭐️.5

The Last Goddess is a translated work that delves deeper into the stories revolving around the women who were healers and called the Goddess by the local people. This novel is based on the folklore, facts, myths dating back to the first Goddess and her lineage thereafter.
Since it is a translated work, it was a bit hard to grasp the content of the book. A glossary, a map and a timeline would have helped me get into the book better. The book is set in Czech and Slovakia and the names were really confusing. Maybe shortening the names for the English translation and a lineage map would have been better too.
This book is grim and lot of the content would be upsetting to some readers. A difficult story to get into and not an easy one to read. I had an extremely hard time to read this book.
Thank you Netgalley and Amazon Crossing for the advanced reader copy.

I couldn't get past the halfway mark of this book. It was just too complicated a deep dive into a subject I guess I wasn't that interested in. The reliance on academic documents made it very dry.

When I start reading a book, I always like to give it the benefit of the doubt and allow myself a few chapters before I decide to continue or abandon. This book started out interesting, but when I came upon the chapter with the letters and notes I just lost interest.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the ARC but it isn't for me.