This was a very interesting story involving a young girl, Hekat, who is born into slavery and sold to traveling traders who take her across the land (Mijak) to a place called Et-Raklion where she begins to free herself and become a warrior of sorts.

Hekat seems very cold and calculating. She loves the god and does everything for the god.

There are characters called godspeakers who are like priests who perform tons of sacrifices in the name of the god, who seems to be some sort of scorpion who desires a lot of blood. The god speaks to Hekat as well and seems to help her along to the bed of Raklion Warlord. Hekat gives birth to a son, Raklion's first after many failed attempts. Hekat helps Raklion become the one Warlord of Mijak, which was previously supposed to have seven warlords.

There are many who are either afraid of or wary of Hekat and as a reader I couldnt' tell if I was supposed to like her or not but I didn't care much for her by the end of the book. You begin to root for her son, Zandakar, as he ages and takes over as the warlord for all of Mijak after his father's death.

Zandakar has a brother Dmitrak who is not well-loved by Hekat. Zandakar is told he must go off into the rest of the 'godless' world and conquer everything. Toward the end of the book Zandakar and his weapon 'hammer of god' start to hate the constant bloodshed. Zandakar falls in love with a woman who is part of a race that is viewed as a slave race. The woman becomes pregnant and when Zandakar returns home to Mijak his mother, Hekat, is very unhappy with him.

not very well written. but entertaining.

Aieeee..... The first 20% scored about 3 stars for me, but the book rapidly devolved into "Me believer. Me do what god want. Aieeeeeeee..."

It gets really difficult to give a crap about the characters when they are just blindly following whatever they think that their god is telling them to do. I get it, maybe once in a while, whatever, but every single time and every single thing? Aieeee..... Come on. Instead of rich, complex characters who are spiritual or religious, we get one-dimensional nothing characters who try to convince you that they have no will or desires of their own save for what their god wants.

Aieeeeee, such a tragedy.

If you got annoyed by all the "Aieee..." in this review, you're in for an AWESOME treat in this book. There's probably like 5-10 different instances of "Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..." in every chapter -- or that's how it seems. If there weren't, then "Tcha!" was there instead.

This was not as bad of a book as I thought it was going to be. Or, to put it simply, as I was told it was going to be. Perhaps that is because I read the reviews to see what was going to happen and, for what it was, it was not bad. Not to say that I am clamoring to read the sequels by any means.

The main problem with this novel, as everyone basically has stated, is Hekate. Although, I found mostly all characters repulsive to the point where I wanted Hekate to have them all stung by scorpions.

And that's my main issue with the book. Hekate is supposedly the villain in this series and, as this book went on you can see why, I felt that the characters around her were just as awful as she was if not more. There was generally no one to cheer for in this book and as it went on, the reading became a chore with, not just the characters, but also the dialogue and the religion.

The religion was talked about a few times in the beginning then as the book went on the author decided to hit us over the head with it. I feel like praying to a scorpion my own damn self!

Then there's the ending, which I admittedly didn't think would come, it's abrupt. Something happens then it just cuts off. Now you can argue that this is to merely get anticipation for the second book, but there are better ways to do that. You can complete a story without just cutting yourself off in the middle of a scene. If Brandon Sanderson can do it in his Stormlight Archive books then why couldn't Karen do it?

All in all this is an average book, nothing overly terrible as I thought as was going to get, but not exactly good. Which rates on the "meh" scale with me.

Since I was fortunate, read dumb, enough to get the omnibus version, I read on to the second book. I have heard it is an improvement over the first.

[Quick review from memory until I re-read and re-review at a later date:

I've had a hankering to re-read this book for so long, it's almost ridiculous. I can remember some characters and some of the plot, but in general it's very vague.]

Despite seriously hating the protagonist, I really enjoyed this book. And with the cliffhanger ending... I will definitely be moving on to book two in the series.

Very different from her previous series, the Godspeaker Trilogy is raw, crude, and at times vulgar. The main character Hekat is psychotic, grown up in a life of pain, blood, and the secret whispers of her god. She is almost unbelievable and almost unlovable but she pulls pity and sympathy as she fights to reach her ambitions and those of her god.

Very long and at times confusing I enjoyed this book immensely for its vivided characters and twisted plot. If you want a challenging and simulating read I would definitely advise this.