The Broken God (The Black Iron Legacy, 3)

I love the ingenuity and the depth of the storytelling, I dont love the characters. Way to much time is spent seeing the story through unpleasant eyes with very little outside of Cari to root for. Its a trap writers fall into nowadays, falling in love with their villains or painting their protagonists so dark that they become impossible to root for and a slog to listen to. So much promise here wasted, its has some great writing that is just joyless to read. I cannot recommend this book or the series. I would give it a hard pass if you haven't already started it.

I absolutely loved the first book in this series, The Gutter Prayer. Gareth brings a completely fresh and inspired take to the setting of Guerdon and his lead character Carillon is always active which makes reading about her so much fun.Although I didn't enjoy the second book as much, this one, the third in the series was a return to the same level of page turning enjoyment of The Gutter Prayer.Excellent trilogy!

Read the earlier books and keep a notepad handy to note characters and locations. Intricate plot, I would categorize as high fantasy. If you have a taste for very imaginative world building and complex characters, I would recommend it.

This won't be a long review. There were a lot of words written that, in the end, did not say much. This book was 300 pages too long.

A most interesting series. The characters are fascinating and very well developed. I enjoyed it very much. The only negative is the alien names are somewhat difficult to follow.

I'm finally managing to catch up on some of this year's fantasy releases, and this latest installment in The Black Iron Legacy series has been one of the series I've been most excited to continue.One of the best things about The Black Iron Legacy series, in my opinion, is how incredibly unique and distinctive it is. Each one of the books in this series so far has been pretty unpredictable for me. A lot of books tend to have either a plot where you can see a general sort of typical plot direction, with tropes, etc., or a plot that just feels entirely unpredictable where I genuinely am just along for the ride because I have no idea what's going to happen–and The Black Iron Legacy falls firmly in the latter. The Broken God has continued this trend and proved to be yet another incredible installment with some amazing world-building and characters, although I will admit that this has not been my favorite book in the series.Each book so far in the series has had different main POV characters, with some familiar faces thrown in as well. In The Broken God, we had a return of Cari (the infamous Carillon Thay) as a main POV character, which we haven't seen since the first book and was easily a highlight for me, as well as newer characters Artolo, Baston, and Rasce. We also get to see Spar, Eladora, and handful of other recognizable (and new) characters to meet. And although this may be a slightly unpopular opinion, I really enjoyed getting to check in on Eladora and see what she's up to, as I find her an intriguing character.Cari was, of course, a joy to read from again. I think my opinion matches pretty well with other readers when I say that Cari is a favorite character and I love getting chapters from her perspective. Her story is such an interesting one, and I also find her personality compelling as well. She's a bit of an erratic character with a rather large chaotic streak, but she also has a lot of determination and heart that I think is what makes so many of us readers like her character so much. The Broken God really gave us the opportunity to focus on Cari a bit more and learn more about her background and how she came to who and what she is today. And since we're talking about Cari, this feels like a good place to mention Spar as well, who I was really glad to see again in this book. I don't know exactly what it is about him, but Spar is also a character I love to see, and it was hard to see that him and Cari weren't together much in this book.Artolo, Baston, and Rasce are the newer POVs we followed as more main protagonists, and I had some mixed feelings about all of them. Artolo was a great general antagonist figure for Cari, but I have to say that, overall, I didn't find him as compelling as I might have expected him to be. His singular drive and focus–to get Cari–was both admirable and annoying, at times in how it influenced his every action and personality. Baston and Rasce were hard for me to connect with as well. Rasce is a favored dragon rider of the Ghierdana, and the entire Ghierdana focus in this book was really interesting to learn more about. He was placed in Guerdon with politics in mind, but his begins to form a connection that I didn't exactly expect, and I found this entire development really interesting. Baston is one of those characters that I found myself admiring for his strong dedication to his moral values and personal feelings. I found myself a bit more interested in Baston's personality and individual motivations than Rasce's, though in contrast I found Rasce's general storyline and plot events more compelling than Baston's.The Broken God is a novel that is undeniable action-packed and never really has a dull moment. Even the times of political discussions or any other religious or philosophical or involved discussion feels fast-paced and exciting. This lends itself to a nicely paced novel that, in general, makes for a pretty quick read. There were a few spots in the plot that I felt dragged a bit, such as when characters seemed to be forced into some action scene or other that didn't feel entirely necessary to the plot. This book felt like a middle-of-a-series novel in that there was considerable plot movement and some incredibly important things happened, but it also felt like it was sort of working quickly to progress and set up the plot for the future books, while also trying to simply fill in more world-building and background. I liked all of these elements, but I have to be honest that I didn't end up enjoying it as much as the previous two books. Still, I have no doubt I'll continue to enjoy this series and still had a great time with this book!That ending was also entirely unpredictable, and I can't wait to see where Hanrahan decides to take this story next. I'll be anxiously awaiting the opportunity to find out!

This is the continuing story of the city of Guerdon, among other things, and some of its various residents. In this volume, tensions in Guerdon are high, because the city is split between several factions. In this case, the New City is currently occupied by the Ghierdana, a group of dragon-worshiping pirates who are hell bent on shifting the trade of a special alchemical ingredient through them and them alone. And in their efforts, there are many shenanigans.I enjoy New Weird, as a genre, and this series definitely qualifies in my opinion. It reads somewhat like Miéville’s Bas-Lag series. It has some fantastic vocabulary, to start, but that’s not why Guerdon reminds me of New Crobuzon. It takes place in a city that is dark, grim, rather corrupt, and full of monsters, gods, and miracles. A plague that turns men to stone, candle-men made out of the corpses of thieves that patrol the city for other thieves, and underground ghouls who eat the dead are just some of the daily sights in this city.The characters have come a long way in the last few books. My favorite character is still Rat, who has become rather important as a ghoul since the first book. I still love reading about Spar and Cari, and this book definitely left me with feelings about the two of them. It also introduced a new character, Rasce, who is the Chosen of the Dragon. Basically, he is the guy that the head of the dragons in the area has chosen to lead their people. Rasce develops a lot over the course of this book, and I went through an entire gamut of emotions about him from start to finish.It was well written, paced very well, and full of all kinds of creepy adventures. This, like Bas-Lag, are the sort of creepy, gritty, and very unique stories that I can’t stop reading even when they get a bit gross. Hanrahan has made these characters that I can’t stop cheering for even though I know that they are mostly quite morally grey. I just want more and more and more.I definitely can’t wait to see what is next in this series, because this one left me with questions.Thanks to the author, as well as Orbit via NetGalley for the review copy.

Fantasy fans complain when the likes of Martin, Lynch and Rothfuss take ten years and counting to write the next volume in their fantasy series, but if this is the alternative, I'd rather wait. There is a real problem in genre fiction that authors can take years writing the first book, trying to find a publisher, honing the prose over and over trying to get it perfect, write a stunning debut only to have the publisher tell them that they want the sequel on the shelves in 12 months time and by the way, you have to spend 6 months of that doing publicity and signing tours. This is a classic example of that problem.Gareth Hanrahan's The Gutter Prayer was a stunning fantasy debut, full of original concepts, great characters and edge of your seat action. The follow up, the Shadow Saint, was unusual in that it actually kept up the momentum of the first book. This is a genuinely impressive series and I've been waiting for the third...This reads like a first draft, and not a very good one. Half of the story is set in the city of Guerdon, with characters we don't particularly care about doing things with for no discernible motivation. The only charcter we do care about, Cari, is off on some pointless quest that only seems to exist to give her something to do. So far, so dull. But the turgid prose makes this an impossible read, and the latter chapters suffer from typos, characters being called the wrong name, missing punctuation, etc that just jars you out of the already badly told story. If only the publishers had given Mr Hanrahan a bit more time to do this right we could have been on to a good book here. This is badly written first draft - I do hope they publish the finished novel some day, because this isn't it.I can only assume all the positive reviews are from the authors friends and family.

The world introduced to us in 'The Gutter Prayer' and 'The Shadow Saint' becomes larger in the latest instalment in this great series. The characters see more than the main city Guerdon whether they like it or not. We are introduced to the Ghierdana who are 'a family' that have closer similarities to the Corleones than the Lannisters. I loved/loathed this group in equal measure and Great Uncle is ... a great character.There's more of a shift back to the main characters from 'The Gutter Prayer', though they have to contend with the consequences of what happened in the 'The Shadow Saint'. In summary 'The Broken God' offers more of the same as the previous books (in the best possible way), while also offering glimpses into the more terrifying aspects of this universe.These are the kind of fantasy novels you can live inside of, while you're reading them. I'll be reading something completely different next, to wash out the Fate Spiders, Gutter Miracles, and murdering Saints of this wonderful world.

This is a very well written novel, that holds your interest from the beginning to the end. The two previous be in the series were just as riviting.

This is the third part of a trilogy. The other two books in this trilogy are also very good. I'm not usually into stories with dragons and so on, but I have made an exception here.

The books are still ok, the story just seems to be dragging, you can jump whole sections of the book and not truly lose anything in the intervening gaps. Just not as tight as the first book.