No idea how i came across this, but it sounded rather good so i added it to my wish list and when it got put on sale for only 99p, i didn’t need asking twice. 
And for 99p i definitely got an incredible bargain.
I’ve no idea why this is listed in science fiction on Amazon, i’d definitely put it squarely in the grimdark fantasy section. I suppose i may be getting my genres completely misconstrued, but i don’t think i am.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a good bit of grimdark fantasy then this should be right up your alley. Who are the good and the bad in this and are they even aware that they are and why? The baddies, although doing what they do for completely nefarious reasons, are actually doing the good thing; while the goodies, thinking they’re being all altruistic and everything, turn out to be on the baddies’ side. And it’s all wound into a very well written story.
My only little winge is that Eolo’s gender thing is rather ambiguous and confusing and i think this could have been better defined. At the end of the book i’m still not sure what gender Eolo actually is: cis, trans or otherwise. Another character also mentions an aunt that had a gender thing going on, but again, no real information as to what. I just completely failed to see what purpose having a main character — and another character who wasn’t part of the story whatsoever — with ambiguous genders served: other then being a poor attempt by the writer to include someone with these issues in order to get some woke cred. Wouldn’t it be nice if we’re going to have characters with gender issues, dysphoria, trans, non-binary, etc., that they were made relevant to the story and explored further with a view to educating the ignorant masses on these issues while also helping and supporting those who have to deal with these issues in real life? A great example of a writer that did such a thing would be Jason Segel, working with Eve Lindley, in the series Dispatches from Elsewhere: definitely a must watch before you read another book if you haven’t watched it already.
Other than my little winge this is a great book with great characters, well written and it really plays with the idea of gods and how gods get, keep and use their power over people. We can see in our own world how a certain god has been allowed to overwhelm other gods and how this has ultimately turned the whole world into a shit hole of ecological disaster with a global plague while in a mass extinction event. This is what happens when you worship a god whose clergy tells you that you don’t have to care about this world because said god has got something better for you when you die — just keep breeding like flies and fucking the planet up, Armageddon will soon be upon us and the pious shall have their rapture.
