3.5 stars

I always enjoy Novoa's books and with the addition of a deadly competition, I knew this would be a fun read. I appreciated the disability representation, as well as having so many LGBTQIA2S+ characters and different forms of romantic relationships.

This was pretty well paced and easy to fall into. The different gods and their abilities were cool and I found the competition to be pretty fun, if a bit too easy for the main character.

I will continue to keep the author on my auto-buy list and look forward to more stories!

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All opinions are my own. Thank you to Random House Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for the copy.

1⭐️

DNF: 16%

Because These Vengeful Gods appears to be a dystopian fantasy fiction, I am going to have to end my reading journey here at 16%. Me and dystopian novels do not get along. Between reading about a government that is controlled by this person and that person and how past dystopian novels tend to lack dialogue, I often find myself falling asleep in the middle of these types of books. Honestly, I maybe the only person who might have rushed through The Hunger Games Series due to the lack of dialogue and how monotone the audiobook narrator was. I much prefer the movies of that series anyway. My other reason for DNFing These Vengeful Gods is that I could not connect with Crow. After chapter 11, my mind started to wonder and I found myself not to truly caring about Crow. I do feel really bad about this. Now, just because I couldn’t get into this doesn’t mean this book won’t find its audience. Any and all fantasy lovers as well as dystopian readers will eventually find this book interesting and come to love it, especially fans of Gabe Cole Novoa, who are already established.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Books For Young Readers for granting my request of an Advance Reader’s Copy in exchange for my honest and personal opinion!!!

This book gives Hunger Games vibes. Good world building and interesting class system. Good representation. Recommend!

The trongest parts of THESE VENGEFUL GODS were the voice and the action scenes, but everything else fell flat. The characters were one dimensial and served little purpose beyond furthering Crow's story. The plot was derivitive of many other dystopian fantasies (rich people live up, poor people live down, simplified and often undefined culture). And the villains were evil for the sake of evil. I think it has a lot of promise but definitely needs more work to bring it out.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest thoughts <3

Get in loser we're overthrowing the government and the gods!

I feel like I say this with every single dystopian book I've read recently, but dystopian is so back baby! From the second I hit play on the audiobook, I was invested in Crow's story. What works so well for this story is the nearly instant plot development. There isn't a ton of heavy handed exposition to slog through; you meet Crow, get a brief introduction to the Shallows and the genocide of Deathchildren, and then boom you're in the Tournament of the Gods. I love that with the resurgence of dystopian works we get more diverse characters and stories. Crow is a disabled, nonbinary transmasculine teen struggling through life in the Shallows with his uncles. He only enters the tournament to save them from being executed for their crimes. He's not trying to be a hero, until he is.

These Vengeful Gods is overtly political. It doesn't shy away from calling out the inequality of wealth, deliberate mistreatment of lower income folx by their goverment, the cost of climate change on the poorest in society, or the brutal genocide of Deathchildren by several of the gods. I'm glad that this book exists amidst everything happening in the world right now. I'm glad that teens and young adults have a book that is so clearly anti-fascist and queer normative. I find myself yearning for a million more books in this world. I want the aftermath of the competition and all the big reveals.

Even in the darkest, grittiest, most awful moments, this book is still full of joy. Crow's polycule with their dear friends and romance with Lark their childhood enemy add moments of love and comfort that bring them through this deadly competition. I just love this book so much!!!

These Vengeful Gods is a queer dystopian YA fantasy by Gable Cole Nova. Crow (he/they) is a trans teen with a magic he is forced to hide because he is one of the few survivors of the genocide of the children of the god of death. He supports himself by fighting in illegal matches, and while small in stature, he is quick, scrappy and cunning. This draws the attention of Chaos, an over privileged god who wants to sponsor Crow in the Tournament of the Gods, but Crow is a reluctant hero and only until their uncles are arrested for helping young refugees escape do they accept. The winner of these trials (the last one NOT dead) receives an audience with the gods, so Crow plans to plead for the release of his dissident uncles.
Many powerful themes run through the novel, but for me, the one that struck home was the fight for environmental injustice especially in these days when the tech bros and AI are dumping on marginalized communities.
This page turning novel concludes with a surprising yet tidy ending, but I want more!

3.75

I don’t pick up a lot of young adult books anymore, but ever since I read Gabe Cole Novoa’s take on Pride and Prejudice in Most Ardently he’s been one of the authors that I keep an eye out for. Unfortunately while I think this is good for what it is, it’s my least favorite of their work.

These Vengeful Gods, is a YA dystopian following Crow, one of the few survivors of the Deathchild massacre who is now an underground fighting champion. They end up the chosen competitor for one of the gods in a tournament as a way to save their uncles and plot ensues. I think my biggest complaint was that there was so much going on that the “important” plot beats didn’t really have room to breathe. Like the central plot is that Crow is trying to win this Tournament of the Gods yet I as the reader didn’t care at all about the competition because there was so much else happening.

That being said, I love the way Novoa builds diverse queer relationships in his work and I absolutely loved Crow as a main character. The relationship was a little harder to buy into because it was so fast, but the friendships were solid, and on the whole I enjoyed the reading experience.

Not only has Gabe Cole Novoa done it again, he has knocked it out of the park with this one. I fell so in love with our main cast of characters that I need more of them immediately. I hope there will be more stories about them, because this polycule quickly became one of my favorite book families ever. The way their relationships were built and how they grew with each other and helped each other had me squealing and kicking my feet. I love them dearly.

3.5 rounded to 4 stars

As an adult reader, some of the social commentary messages feel heavy handed, but I think they're perfect for teen readers. Crow was an interesting protagonist and I love that readers are given a main character who has an autoimmune disease... but who is also a badass. I also really enjoyed the contrast of having a child of Discord named Chaos not being particularly chaotic.

I would have loved to have had more scenes showing the action during the Tournament of the Gods - I wanted to know what the other matches looked like! Overall I thought this was a good read with great social and political commentary within that should be food for thought for most readers.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, Random House Children's, and Random House Books for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great YA fantasy and felt really well rounded. There is some great themes of classism, privilege, disability, and corruption. Found family is a trope that I really, really enjoy when it's well done! I think this is a perfect recommendation for a YA dystopian novel. I accompanied the ebook with the audiobook and the audiobook was fantastic as well! I highly enjoyed it and highly recommend!

I absolutely love anything Gabe Cole Novoa writes and These Vengeful Gods was no exception. The world Novoa created was really interesting and I would love to see more books written in this universe. A lot of the plot points are very relevant right now in our world and that is one thing I appreciate in dystopian books (even though this book leans more fantasy, it still is dystopian in nature). The found family in this book is beautifully written and I loved all of our main characters.

If you're looking for a Hunger Games style dystopia with way more queerness, this might be the book for you. It's a quick read with believable teen characters, excellent friendship dynamics and developments, and a broad spectrum of queer representation. The world of gods and magic was an interesting twist on a typical dystopian world, while still rooted in real life problems. A great gift for the queer teens in your life.

Dedication: "To My Disabled Comrades, We Get to be Heroes Too"

I'm a fan of Gabe Cole Novoa's work since reading Ardently, Yours and I was SO excited about These Vengeful Gods.

I genuinely enjoyed this book and it's uniqueness. The dystopian elements were bleak (in the best way), grungy, and evoked all the anger in my body as any well-written dystopian story should. I found Crow's character loveable and their arc perfectly paced. The twists in the story were also a fun surprise despite having guessed the outcome early on. I found all the side characters loveable and thought that they brought value to both the plot and Crow's arc. Almost the entire cast is Queer which I'm always appreciative of, and the conflict between homophobic gods and the fight for a Queer-normative world was an interesting plot point. The disability rep is AMAZING in my humble opinion, because even magical beings have physical hindrances that they must overcome and are still just as worthy of their abilities!

I did have some gripes about the magic system, specific to Crow. We learn early on that they some from a rare magical race/god classification but their "chosen one" trope felt too pointed at times and dimmed the validity of each character and their magic. While it is VERY cool that Crow is able to magically alter their testosterone levels, it just brought up several questions for me regarding how other Queer folks in this universe choose their presentation with magic. I can't decide if this was a world-building shortfall or simply an imperfect magic system possessed by imperfect beings.

With the current online discourse in "heavy-handedness" in fiction, specifically fiction that tackles social issues, I would say that this books leans more toward heavy and less toward nuance. This may or may not be a problem to most folks, but I think I appreciate how straightforward themes of genocide, caste/hierarchy, power and control, rebellion, and oppression are. With an ongoing literacy crisis in this country, I think YA books that make these topics accessible for young folks who may not yet have to tools to dissect more nuanced takes on these topics is essential.

I still think this book is well-worth the read and I especially enjoyed Milo Longnecker's performance in this audiobook. I'd recommend These Vengeful Gods to fans of dystopian fantasy that does not shy away from heavier themes.

I absolutely devoured this book. When I first opened it, I wanted to read the opening line, and I think I literally didn’t look up from the pages until twelve chapters later. So, yeah, this one is pretty immediately engrossing.

The story world is rich. A class system divides the people in Crow’s world, with levels ranging from literal gods to the poor barely scraping by in the Shallows. Crow’s one chance to escape the Shallows and rescue his family from prison comes in the form of a game in which competitors battle, often to the death. This part has a little bit of a Hunger Games vibe. Crow and the other fighters are signed up to compete in this tournament, and there’s all this pageantry surrounding them. And yet, essentially, their potential deaths are part of the entertainment.

Crow becomes part of a team who help each other within the competition. I enjoyed the way those relationships developed and the balance it brought to the story. Crow is the kind of character that gets pretty lost in his own head, so it worked well for there to be allies that drew him out.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced, tournament-focused fantasy novel, I highly recommend this one.

These Vengeful Gods by Gabe Cole Novoa
A system of tyranny also dominates the world of Gabe Cole Novoa’s newest YA novel, These Vengeful Gods. In a magical dystopia ruled by the rich and god-gifted, Crow is just trying to survive without revealing their secret: their entire existence is illegal. Years ago, the gods determined that Death was too powerful and so decided to kill all of Death’s children. The minor gods and the humans of Death’s lineage were all slaughtered—except for those who escaped. If anyone knew that Crow can practice deathmagic, their life would be forfeit. As it is, Crow makes a living as a gladiator, identifying people’s weaknesses but never, ever revealing the truth of their lineage.

So when minor god Chaos offers to sponsor Crow in a gladiatorial combat destined to grant fame and fortune, Crow is quick to refuse. Until, that is, Crow’s uncles are arrested for harboring Deathchildren. Crow’s left with one choice: they must fight in the Tournament of the Gods to bargain for their uncles’ freedom. All they have to do to get there is survive.

Finding justice is beyond their hopes—but genre readers will hope Crow can take the entire system down with them. If you imagine Aiden Thomas’s “Sunbearer Trials” duology and mix it with the vibes from Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Between Earth & Sky” trilogy, then add something that’s a dash of Novoa’s alone, you’ll be close to imagining what picking up These Vengeful Gods feels like!

4.5 rounded up!

If there's one thing Gabe Cole Novoa will always deliver on it's a trans boy fucking the establishment up. These Vengeful Gods was such a unique story, it is a fantasy but had such hallmarks of a dystopian to make it such a wild ride. The world was so immersive and the anger I felt as Crow moved up the levels was mirrored in his own. Gabe wove a story of revolution that so mirrors the current world we live in while also making sure queer and disabled folks were not only included but at the forefront, which can't be said of our own world. Parts of this story broke my heart while other parts gave me such hope and joy which I think I'll find in every book I read by Gabe.

I think I’m going to have to concede that this book isn’t my favorite.
Conceptually, and in some of the follow through, I did enjoy it. I always love disability rep, and a transmasc MC is always right up my alley.
And I was intrigued by the plot of the novel. But that’s most of where it lost me. In some ways this book was different, which was a nice attempt, but a lot of what made it so also made the other plot points predictable, and thus lowered the stakes at the beginning which made me immediately uninvest. The games plot was also very reminiscent of so many other books that I just wasn’t pulled in.
I was also very disappointed by the romance. There’s not an inkling of it over a third of the way through the book, and there wasn’t enough space in the rest for me to really believe it. In a lot of ways, this was classic YA dystopia, and there’s been an oversaturation of that.
I do generally like Novoa’s books and I’ll definitely read more, but I think the YA dystopian novel is a little bit overdone in my brain and I’ll probably read less from here on out. I truly do love social commentary in books, but less heavy handed.
Thank you to Netagalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

So here’s my very late ARC review! This book is out now! Go get it! If you love a Pantheon full of gods and demi gods and their children, a competition with deadly games, trans rep, cats named Mouse, and EVERYONE having chemistry, this book is for you. Seriously 5 stars. I loved Crow and Lark’s banter, Chaos being… well… his namesake, and Mouse being a needy kitten baby.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! This was such a fun, high-stakes read. Think The Hunger Games meets The Sunbearer Trials. The story is full of action, mythology, and rebellion, with a world that feels dangerous and alive. I especially loved the trans masc rep. It was authentic, powerful, and woven seamlessly into the narrative. Fast-paced, emotional, and empowering. I couldn’t put it down.

Oh man. This book was so good. And it feels so timely. This is the first book I’ve read by this author but I will be reading more for sure.
Crow was an amazing character. I loved Chaos, Maddox and Lark as well.
This was heartbreaking and inspiring. I cannot wait for the sequel.