The individual strands of woven deftly together by the end of the book and seeing our fellowship assembled and proceeding with their task will be a major draw for the sequel. The tales of the Olympian gods, and before them the strange, capricious and harsh deities of Sumer and Akkad, have lingered in the mind of western civilizations through to the modern day, and arguably taken new form in the narratives of our modern deities and demigods: superheroes. I was very impressed with Cameron's The Traitor Son Cycle but was less impressed with his The Ill-Made Knight. It’s a well written and engaging story and I am very much looking forward to reading what happens next.

I get this guy’s gods accidentally killed his daughter and some nameless, possibility, evil god answers and the guy goes on a quest for enlightenment, but I don’t understand why I should care. It starts quite dark and brutal (rulers torturing slaves, an old warrior and prophet having his beloved daughter slain by the gods because he displeased them decades ago - actually she was slain by mistake as he was supposed to be the target but the god sent to do the deed was kind of arrogant and stupid and killing mortals has always been his hobby so it didn't really matter to him whom he was killing, this to the despair of Enkul-Annu, the nominal ruler of the gods who has his plans and examples to be made of, a sack or two of cities with grotesque acts of violence, a few live crucifixions and of course human sacrifices as that is how the city rulers commune with the gods etc) but then it sort of veers into non-stop action with a lot of dark irony and even humor (the machinations of various gods, the unabashed relaxed attitude of the drunken god Druku and overall the huffing and puffing of Enkul-Annu as his minions are either too stupid to fully implement his plans or clever but plotting towards their own ends, so doing Enkul's will only insofar as it benefits them, the multi-family of the pacifists vegan Hakran crew etc).

The landscape is beautifully depicted by Cameron, lovely, yet utterly bleak and brutal at the same time. This was done easily since so many people were meeting other people in different scenarios, so you got to know the individuals by being told what was good about them from the perspective of other individuals. Despite his previous work, Cameron is not just doing a riff on the Greek Bronze Age, there are hints of Mesopotamia, Anatolia/Syria, and Egypt here. Believe me though, it is most certainly worth the wait and you will be glad that you decided to start this wonderful journey. I was completely and utterly lost and confused by the plot of this book, or at least what I could read.

There are many POVs and storylines to follow, but Cameron leads you through them with fast-paced tenacity and joy that you miss each one as you move on. I am entirely conflicted about this, because I was baffled by some things, and then there were some parts I was absolutely enthralled with and wanted to know more. The gods themselves are all colourful individuals and whilst, as the villains, you can never quite feel sympathetic to them, you do find yourself wanting to at least understand them better.There is chilling foreshadowing however, that should the audacious mortals somehow manage to survive, and in fact succeed in their quest, will they simply become that which they despise, providing more of the same sort of cruelty and capriciousness, if they manage to supplant their divine masters? He tries to pull from Mesopotamian, Greek, and Egyptian cultures, and I applaud him for it, it just wasn't always coherent and melded into a fully fleshed world. The combination of ambitious, politicking gods with their plans within plans, and mortals learning to imagine a world without gods, makes for an engaging plot that, once it gets up to speed, delivers action and excitement aplenty along with some great questions around the mortals/gods dynamic.