I'm actually surprised I finished this book, considering the dislike I feel for it now I'm done. But I wanted to see where it would end, and whether it would actually get any better.

Hekat, a slave, rises through the ranks of an army, catching the attention of the warlord himself. Hekat is awful - arrogant, manipulative, psycopathic - and for the most part, she's the character we follow throughout the novel. The world Hekat lives in seems to revolve around blood - the religion involves animal sacrifice, and bathing in blood to commune with the god, the warriors in the army barracks use animals for target practice, and because apparently the amount of meat used to feed the army is so great, the army needs to employ slaughterers to kill yet more animals. Honestly, the sheer number of animals killed in this novel is ridiculous - I wouldn't have minded if there was some explanation or mention of where these vast herds of beasts are coming from, and where the money comes from to pay for them. But there's no explanation, and after a time I began to roll my eyes when yet another pure white goat kid was sacrificed at the temple.

So, putting that inconsistency to the side - we have Hekat, "godtouched and precious", or "beautiful and precious", as both she and other characters call her monotonously throughout the novel. "I am Hekat, beautiful and precious!" she will bellow. "She is Hekat, godtouched and precious!" the warlord will say in reply. Bah. Also, too much use of the word "smite".

"Godtouched" means that god speaks to Hekat, and it certainly appears to - Hekat believes it does, and the godspeakers (priests) believe it does. The god of this world demands a world-conquering war, and endless sacrifice. And there's no opposition - every character in the book is eager to do god's will, and slaughter thousands of people because they happen to disagree. Right at the end, one character appears to move away from this, but only because he heard a voice he believed to be god telling him "Enough". It's boring to have a book where all the characters do things only because god tells them to, even if that god is a lunatic. But then we have these two completely inconsistent voices - one bloodthirsty, the other kind. WTF is going on? I don't know - there's never any explanation for it. Presumably that might come in later books, but I have no appetite for them - I've had enough slaughter for now.

I read this as the first of the three books in the Godspeaker Trilogy omnibus. But I was dissatisfied enough with it that I won't be reading the other two books in the omnibus -- and will post my review here, instead.

This book is problematic, because I had a hard time engaging with the principle character. Hekat, at first the scrappy heroine, morphs into the titular character: a rabid religious fanatic of little dimension, but with plenty of reasons for the reader to hate both her and her animal- and human-sacrificing ultra-violent empire. Her foil is her godspeaker and her son, but they are immaterial to her dreams of world domination.

I don't always want a "happy-happy, joy-joy" ending -- and maybe this all plays out in the 2nd and 3rd books to a more satisfying conclusion. But with this book, there is no pay-off and no comeuppance for her bloody fanaticism..., and the entire book left a bad taste in my mouth.

I am proud. I am defiant. I am Hekat, precious and beautiful. The god sees me. I am seen by the god.

In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader.

But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her god, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak.

She did not want a beautiful face. Not if that meant she was precious to Abajai, and Yagji, to all the men who sold beautiful girls for gold.

Wowee, how to rate this one? DNF @ 30% (which, mind you, is page 218). Mijak is a brutal and savage world. Hekat is a brutal and savage girl. The god is a brutal and savage god that connects everything.

He was like Retoth, a small nothing perosn who left no footprints on the world.

Let's start with Mijak. Miller has done a phenomenal job fleshing out this society, as reflected in the cadence of the narrative and the dialogue (that not every reader will be able to handle) as well as the events that transpire. It is a man's world with no place for women other than the breeding of more men. It is founded on the ruling of seven warlords, where warriors die with honor. The only break in it's very stringent rules is the fact that women can become both warriors and godspeakers (and aren't treated as lesser) for no apparent reason other than perhaps providing a way for Hekat to advance in power.

His fear was food, his fear was drink. She ate and drank him as she danced for the god.

Speaking of Hekat...let me be clear: you are not made to like her. She is a sociopath. Her characterization is how cruelty begets cruelty and how repeated cruelties can be internalized in horrible and fractured ways. In the beginning you are lent some empathy for her circumstances. She is the unnamed, unwanted spawn that is sold for some coin which is the only good she could be used for her father. With her slavers she is shown kindness for the first time but internalizes her specialness as being above the rest...of being on equal footing as her slavers. It's understandable given her circumstances...it made me think about grooming in our society. However, when she eventually finds out she is a special slave but a slave none-the-less she renounces her slavers and instead decides to be a slave to the god.

I am Hekat, godtouched and precious. What do I care for the friendship of men?

Perhaps following Hekat further would have been enough to disabuse me of the book. However, it ultimately came down to the fact that the religion saturates every character's thoughts and actions...so much so that it scrubs them of any real personality. It became a litany of the god wills, the god thinks, follow the god, honor the god. Having a strong religious presence is fine but not to the point of having all the characters become automatons.

This is not for everyone. If you need a light in the darkness or a character to whom you can give some love and feel good about, this book is not for you. It wasn't for me.

For something similar but done infinitely better...I'd recommend [b: And I Darken|27190613|And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga, #1)|Kiersten White|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1449153532l/27190613._SY75_.jpg|41682914] instead. Emily May's review here.

Was not a book for me. Did not personally enjoy what I read of the book.My review is based on my personal enjoyment of the book and not the quality of writing. I'm sure the author did fine.

A well-written book about an extremely brutal world. Miller does an excellent job of describing the setting of this story, although some of dialog and descriptions can be a bit tiresome (nearly every object is prefixed by god-, since it's a very religious society).

The story follows the life of Hekat, a young girl whose society initially places more value on life of the family's goats, as she changes her fortune and travels throughout her land of Mijak. This society is completely dominated by very bloodthirsty religion that features a VERY active deity, so faith is quite literally rewarded with visible results.

Plenty of sex, language, and buckets upon buckets of blood, so be forewarned if that sort of thing bothers you ;)

Quick summary: It was very easy to be sucked into the story, and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

I particularly enjoyed that this book gave a coherent and sympathetic voice to the people who are usually dismissed as "savages" (in fantasy as well as in history/reality). It was a little unbalanced in terms of pace: a long build-up and then a great deal of significance happens in the final 100 pages. I think it is a pity that Lilit was essentially one-dimensional and only a tool of the plot, when I had come to know the other characters in-depth, created with nuance and credibility, more so than usually found in story-driven genre fiction. I am looking forward to the remainder of the story, and hopefully meeting a few more interesting characters.