Hall of Smoke - Becca In A Book

Summary

Hessa is an Eangi, a warrior priestess for the Goddess of War. She was given a mission from her goddess that she couldn’t complete. When she goes to ask for forgiveness, everyone in her village is either killed or taken. Now she is out for revenge.

My Thoughts

So this book was definitely an impulse buy that I made when I was a little tipsy on a Friday night. DAMN RED WINE. I mean this book is interesting and I don’t regret reading it at all, but it was definitely not my cup of tea. There was no romance and there was no humor. If this was a comic book, it would be dished out by DC and not Marvel. I’m a Marvel girl when it comes to fantasy and this was not what I wanted.

Although I struggled to finish and almost DNF the book, I did like the book. However, I really had to change my perspective of what the book was and from other books I’ve read. The fantasies I’m used to reading have a lot of steam, humor, and lovable characters that I can’t live without, this fantasy was much different. It was a very basic fantasy where a hero goes on a quest and the gods play games with mortals. It’s bloody and the gods and their traditions are very interesting, but not much else. I compare this fantasy more with an epic poem from Greek or Roman mythology than to the fantasy I’m used to reading.

The book world was very complex and very interesting, but the characters were honestly meh. Hessa was young and very very VERY naive and it caused her to make so many mistakes that I could not really forgive her for. She very blindly worshipped her goddess and even when she did some VERY SHADY stuff, she just kept on believing. She reminded me of the girl in the scary movie that goes down that dark alley by herself and you keep screaming at her to not do that. I felt bad for her because this was all she knew, but at some point I wanted her to let it go and smell the poop her god was obviously feeding her.

These characters for me really lacked emotion and I honestly felt like a lot of them reminded me more of a robot than a human. The gods and goddesses were much more human than others like many gods and goddesses from Roman and Greek mythology, but THERE WERE SO MANY OF THEM. I kept getting them confused and I really wish I had gotten an explanation of them. I was just so confused. A highlight of the book was there were many strong female characters that shared a very powerful bond that I admired and enjoyed even though I didn’t bond with them as much as I wanted.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, but I felt like this type of fantasy wasn’t for me.