Mark Lawrence's Reviews > Rise of Gods

After a shameful delay I have finally read this book sent to me by the author with its fancy new cover all the way from the US of A!

Indeed he could have saved the postage and handed it over when he came to Bristol.



Anyway, to the book!

Out of the 300 fantasy books that entered my self-published fantasy book contest #SPFBO Paternus came 3rd. That's top 1%!!

Dyrk breaks a lot of writing rules in Paternus. Well, not rules, but he rides roughshod over the advice given to writers learning their trade.

He writes in the present tense. He head hops so that sometimes on one page you will see things from three different character's eyes and hear three sets of thoughts.

He info dumps, regularly, in large quantity.

The net result was however eminently readable. Which goes to show that if you have the knack for writing and a good story then you can pretty much get away with anything.

Paternus is set in the modern world and everything is "normal" except that super-beings walk among us, not all of them friendly.

It is the establishment of this large and varied pantheon of super creatures and the simultaneous plumbing in of them into pretty much every mythology you've ever heard of (and many you may not know) that requires so much info be imparted. Also, Dyrk likes to describe things! He does it very well but there is no denying that there is a lot of description, and in addition to all the varied settings you will have a very good image of what all these crazy demi-gods of varying power look like.

At one point we get (and I guess/exaggerate considerably but not wildly) five pages of history and insight into a super-being who is then killed almost immediately. I kinda have to applaud that. And it isn't all wasted because a lot of that info is useful world building.

The thing is that if you do a thing that normally annoys me well enough then it ceases to annoy me.

There is a ton of imagination at work in Paternus, and although the story seems to move quite slowly at first in this fairly long book, the imagination/wonder of it was enough to keep me happy and sure that it would all pay off in time.

Things do heat up and we get a whole bunch of fights where vampires and werewolves are the cannon fodder in battles between gods, angels, devils, crocodile monsters, buffalo demons and all sorts. Things explode!

Saving this from being a slug fest of super powered but hard to care about monsters is the fact that Dyrk does a great job of giving them their own personalities and ambitions, AND throws two regular people into the mix. The main 'normal', Fi, is built up very well and shows the author can exercise a light touch when not dealing with fifty thousand year old eleven foot tall bear-men.

The head hopping is something I would normally complain about but it really didn't bother me. We spend long enough with each character in general to grow close to them so that the hopping doesn't make them seem too distant to connect with.

I really enjoyed the book and it left me wanting more (like book 2!).

It won't work for everyone but if you want a bunch of fun and enjoy mythology then it's the book for you.

I've now read the top three books of SPFBO 2016 and they have all been very good reads.



Check out the SPFBO contest results here, there are other great titles clamoring for your attention.

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