Aching God (Iconoclasts, #1)

by Mike Shel

[HekArtemis]

This was just refreshingly fantastic. It drew me in almost immediately and had me hooked from the start. It was immersive, which I want in a book, and I cared about the characters and outcome of the story. I found myself holding my breath a lot of the time, in anticipation for what was coming next.

This book is a mix of good old dungeon crawling adventure quest but with full on horror. But it isn't a horrific story, it isn't super dark, it doesn't make you feel like everything is awful. This isn't grimdark. Honestly, it is almost hopeful fantasy, you expect everything will turn out okay in the end. Sure, probably some people are going to die in a blood filled mess, because the end will include something horrible, but most people will probably survive and everything will be good. Good will prevail, or something. It's a weird thing to feel like everything will be great at the end, while you are spending the whole book holding your breath wondering what will happen next. It was really well done.

The main character, Auric, is fantastic. He is older, so this isn't your typical coming of age story. He is experienced and his experience has given him PTSD, which you don't see often but it isn't overdone to make the whole story about his self-doubts or anything. He is mature and experienced enough to not just try to bull his way through the world, but adapt to each situation as he needs to - though like a human he makes mistakes occasionally. He isn't a total arsehole either, he is nice and he cares about the people around him, the people he is travelling with. He feels bad when he says and does things that might upset or hurt people.

The other characters did feel a bit like side characters though. It was also pretty obvious that the characters existed exclusively to fill their RPG roles in the adventure party. But I honestly didn't mind the rpg aspect of the group, it was fascinating to read. The world was super interesting, I really want to know more about the history of this world and I love how the existence of so many dungeons is explained. The story about the queen is fantastic and I can't wait to see how that ends, I mean, hopefully we will get a resolution to that part of the story at some point!

I could go on, but I won't. Suffice to say, this is a great book and it seriously surpassed my expectations. I can't wait for the sequel.