No Gods West of Here
by Hanna Gaard
Blurb:
Talia Salaren is a brilliant scholar and obedient eldest daughter with a bright future decided by everyone but her.
Then she finds a dead god's salacious journal.
The secrets inside could unravel four centuries of empire. The gods were jerks, and their power was stolen, claimed by five families who built legacies on a lie. Families like hers.
With her life's work outlawed, Talia flees to Gateway, a frontier boomtown where divine magic is clawed from the earth like gold. She walks straight into a trap — a dangerous expedition led by a cult leader who is very good at making people want things they shouldn't. He has no interest in studying the gods. He plans to become one.
As their uneasy company pushes deeper into godforsaken territory, the myths she was raised to believe begin to fracture — along with the careful version of herself she's always performed.
The cult leader is wrong. She knows it.
For once, she wants to be wrong too.
If Talia doesn't choose what she stands for — and who she's willing to lose — she won't just have her heart broken. She'll become someone else's weapon.
My Review:
I have been sitting with this review for
hours because I genuinely do not know where to begin. This book was so much
more than I expected and I am still not fully recovered.
Talia is a scholar chasing secrets that were
never meant to be found, and in the process she walks straight into the orbit
of Lore, a cult leader with deeply concerning ambitions. From that moment
everything escalates, and it never stops.
The plot is packed with twists and
discoveries that constantly shift what you think you know. The deeper Talia
digs into the history of the gods, the messier and more compelling everything
becomes. I was completely invested from beginning to end.
The characters are where this book truly
shines. Dawn was my absolute favorite, her relationship with Talia and her own
story becoming one of the most compelling threads in the entire book. Riven
brings a steady, protective energy that grounds the chaos. Holloway, Talia's
childhood best friend and ex-fiancé, spends the book yearning and wildly out of
his depth in the most entertaining way possible. And Lore manages to be
charismatic, manipulative, dangerous, and completely impossible to ignore all
at once.
Now the worldbuilding. It is a bizarre and
brilliant melting pot of western frontier grit, high fantasy, fae mythology,
hints of science fiction, and full D&D adventuring party energy complete
with dragons and a little squirrel shaped companion. It should not work. It
absolutely works.
Spice, humor, queer rep, dragons, and
characters making increasingly questionable decisions. This is a masterpiece
and you simply need to read it.
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