In the Shadow of the Gods (Bound Gods #1)

This is the first book of the Bound Gods trilogy. This one takes a bit getting the gang together, telling their back stories. Scal, a quiet fierce Northern warrior who is working on his fourth "life", after some brutal and bloody tragedies struck his previous three. Rora and Aro, twins trying to avoid the grisly fate of other twins by fighting and killing from within the lower classes. Vatri, some strange priestess who gloms onto Scal for reasons unknown and annoying to Scal. Anddyr, a mage who is drug tied to the leader of this rag tag band, Joros. Joros is a real piece of work - cruel, impatient, violent and temperamental - a real asshole, to be honest. They come together in a bit of a haphazard way and try to track down and interrupt a mysterious rite.

As you can see, this is a weird fantasy novel. Of the entire group, only Rora is at all likable and she is kind of a heartless killer, albeit for obvious reasons. Her brother is basically a wastrel and a drunk. Scal is a real warrior, but man, is he scarred, both physically and mentally. And what else can I say about Joros? I mean he starts the book by throwing someone off a cliff and he gets meaner!

It is also strange because Dunne somehow manages to have 2 fantasy tropes I viscerally hate - plenty of magic and a quest - and yet I still enjoyed the book a lot! She gets away with the magic by having the magic user be an abused slave of Joros and we don't really know too much about the magic "system". It isn't horribly overused and the magic user is a someone to feel sorry for. And the quest doesn't really kick in until the final quarter of the book and she basically just has them start out and then skips to the finish, which avoids the "one damn thing after another" part of fantasy quests that make me crazy.

I'm really curious to see what happens next to this woefully mismatched "team". Definitely one to try if you're interested in a dark, violent world.