The Traitor God, part 1 - chapters 1 to 7

[ScarletBea]

Please add your comments about chapters 1 to 7 here.

[Peat]

Huzzah! I get to christen the thread.

I'm only about 30 pages in but I immediately really liked the prose. Cynical ageing down on their luck 1st PoV narrators are my jam to begin with, but Mr Johnston's just got a nice touch in general.

Pretty straight set up for the adventure to come. Should be a nice break from my Feist-mania.

[J.R. Darewood]

Yeah my local bookstore said it would come on Thurs... but then they said it would be Fri, but when I went in they said it was "upstairs" and that it would need to be processed along with the 100 other books in the shipment.  But the people who do the processing don't come back to work until Monday... soooooo.... still no book for me.
But I'll be on it soon!

[JMack]

Am I really he first to reach chapter 8? Or are the rest of the readers holding back? 

Ok, so, this is going to have spoilers. I guess that’s understood for read-alongs, but just to be sure:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Traitor God (TG) grabs right away, then does a whole bunch of info dump. Quickly and well; but if not for the immediate action it would have been a bit unwelcome. I like the prose and the attitude. The MCis engagingand fun. The whole thing is a great romp so far, and I love the forced amnesia and mystery aspect.

One thing I particularly like is how magic is a part - not apart from - the wizard’s physical nature. In the smell, the cells, the brain. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that makes magic so... sweaty and basic.

Meanwhile, what is it with brothels and fantasy genre? I’m not fond of the trope and I keep running into it. I will say that it’s done well here so far.

And black, evil, soul-stealing blades that cut the hand of the wielder and beg to be fed blood? Another standard trope, and again done well, except that I don’t quite get the consistency between the horror of blood magic that our MC loathes and his willingness to use an object so blood/death-focused. That the MC found in the catacombs he doesn’t want to go into. I’ll let this play out and see we’re it goes.

Overall, TG is chockfull of interesting stuff and a fun read so far.

[Peat]

Spoiler for Hiden:

Meanwhile, what is it with brothels and fantasy genre? I’m not fond of the trope and I keep running into it. I will say that it’s done well here so far.

Spoiler for Hiden:

That's a really good question that I've never really seen addressed - possibly deserves a thread in its own right.

[Lady Ty]

Spoiler for Hiden:

Meanwhile, what is it with brothels and fantasy genre? I’m not fond of the trope and I keep running into it. I will say that it’s done well here so far.

Spoiler for Hiden:

That's a really good question that I've never really seen addressed - possibly deserves a thread in its own right.

Done.

[Peat]

You could always create the thread yourself leading with that post  I'll marshal my thoughts for said thread but for now, while there's a lot of sensible reasons for including them, there's a lot of things not included in fantasy books where there'd be sensible reasons for including them too.

I too am beyond Chapters 1 to 7 - I have to say, I'm a tad muddled by everything and vaguely wish there'd been a good old fashioned info dump - a lot of information is given, but its all woven in and it makes everything quite dense. We'll see if I think the same come the end of the book.

[Lady Ty]

@Peat You could always create the thread yourself leading with that post 

I was on my phone at the time  Posting was hard enough. See above   

[Lady Ty]

Spoiler for Hiden:

First impressions on these chapters are that The Traitor God is fast, fascinating and fun.

Straightaway get clear idea of impressions of Edrin Walker, definitely enhanced by the cover, but also a feeling of empathy for his character and intrigued by all the hints as to his past and his Gift-bond with Lynas. Liking the fact I can say all the names easily and all the characters, even minor ones, took shape well. The various different areas of the city were well described and easy to visualise and place in relation to each other.

Smooth enjoyable prose and appreciating  some particular phrases here and there. "..slimy grey lump of surprise meat" ". Exploded with laughter at fight on page 11. Absolutely agree just wrong. The Glaswegian insult from the Clansman " you dirty wee bawbag".   "I tsk'd."  Really enjoyed seeing that written again, haven't heard it in a long time.

Appreciate the fast moving action, that is easy to follow, but have felt rather swamped with details of Arcanum and magic users and Edrin's elusive past actions, as well as a other mixed descriptions in these first chapters. Hoping most will fall into place as we get further into the story. Sorted out that the Gods are no longer apparent in their towers and are named Derrish, Lady Night, The Lord of Bone, Northair the Thief of Life, while it seems Edrin believes he killed Artha the God of War.

I am intrigued by the magic swishing around and like that residual magic in the sewers is used to feed the crops and keep the city supplied. Seems as though Dissever may become a character in itself. Now happily on to the next chapters.

[Peat]

Dissever definitely has my favourite line of the opening chapters, that's for sure.

[J.R. Darewood]

Wow I fell way behind!

Just finished Ch 7.  I have to say my favorite thing so far is Charra.  I really like her. And now that I think about it, she's the only one Walker has had a genuine conversation with at all 7 chapters in.

The book moves fast-- explosive action from the first chapter-- my head was spinning for a moment--was it too fast?--but it definitely wasn't boring.

One thing I noticed is that Walker takes great pains not to use magic, even with daemons hunting him, or, you know, in the middle of a brutal invasion.... but then he uses it twice when it's really not necessary on people inside Charra's circle of influence: the smile gang girls on the street, and the bouncers outside her brothel.  And in both cases, he seemed to be using it to make lifelong enemies by threatening people with their secrets, a price that doesn't really seem worth the minor inconveniences he's evading. I'm not saying this is something bad about the book, I'm just saying Walker strikes me as kind of a dick and doesn't seem to make the smartest choices. I'm getting a very detective-noir vibe from him. He's got that sort of slinky threatening macho PI thing going on, and he's actually trying to solve a murder mystery! When he speaks I sort of imagine a hard-boiled grovelly 1950s detective but way better dressed. If someone asked if this was grimdark I'd be like no it's grim-noir.  (ok fantasy noir makes more sense but grim-noir is more fun to say)

I'm really looking forward to learning more about the gods, where they come from, what they are, and seeing if they deserve to die.

@Lady Ty the magic shit really stood out to me too! there's a lot of intriguing things to explore here.

[ScarletBea]

(without reading the previous posts)

I finally finished chapter 7 today, and the plot is really picking up, I'm quite enjoying it.
At first I found it a bit hard to understand everything, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, hehe

I'm not sure I liked much the way of introducing worldbuilding when you're writing first person POV, but maybe that was just because it was the beginning.

I know there was lots of discussion on the other thread about brothels (and I'll read what you said here afterwards), but I thought that was a magnificent building And I guessed the young woman was their daughter way before silly blind Walker

Edit (after reading): yes, I really like the way magic works in this world too!

[cupiscent]

After having an epic wrangle with my bookstore to actually lay hands on a copy, I feel very sheepish to be saying: I'm going to be setting this one aside. It is just not my thing. (Sorry, Cameron!)

But I persevered further with this book than I usually would with something that felt not-me (all the way through to the end of this first section), and I thought about it a lot more as a consequence, so I thought I might note down some of those thoughts.

Broadly, it boils down to something that I've been observing in a lot of books that have me putting them down somewhere in the first one to one-hundred pages: they're focusing on things I don't find particularly intriguing. Which is no fault of the book's; it's just written for an audience that isn't me, and I wish much joy to both them and the author. To be precise:

• Things that interested me about the first seven chapters: the hole in Edrin's memory, the bond with Lynas, how both of those things shape him as a person; what happened with killing the god and that memory-hole; Charra; sentient murderblade.
• Things that didn't: viking attack; Edrin dickslinging his way through the slums.

(I vividly remember the first mention of the hole in Edrin's memory being the bit where I literally sat up and was interested for the first time in reading, heh.)

But mostly, at the end of the first seven chapters, I'm quite happy to say that this looks like a rollicking revenge tale of mystery, consequences and badasses in ridiculous coats, but the character and emotional stuff has really just been tucked offhand into the nooks and crannies, and I prefer books where that stuff is more central and explored.

[CameronJohnston]

Aw, thanks for giving it a shot @cupiscent - definitely go read something that's more you than trying to persevere!  It's such a chore when you try and force yourself.

[eclipse]

I’m liking this I think it’s because like  Mr Darewood says I’m getting a  detective noir vibe from it.

Mr Darewood talks sense about Walker using his magic all of a sudden when his back home I thought he be more on the down low. Protect from daemons.

I get a British vibe from the book too with some of the expressions used.

Oh is this book where we discuss brothels in fantasy settings ?

I like the sentence  Dickslinging through the slums it sounds like a start of a poem.