I received this as a review copy from the author, at no cost.

This is the third and last book in the Children trilogy (see here and here) by Ben Peek. It does not stand on its own because it is building on, drawing together, exploding, and generally messing with ideas and characters from the previous two books. If you enjoy epic fantasy with rather grim repercussions for its characters, detailed world building and surprising twists, then just stop reading now and go grab the earlier books. Seriously, it’s worth it; this is the sort of trilogy to read when you really want to get your teeth into a set of characters and be thrown completely into their lives. And look – the series is finished! So you don’t have to worry about being left in the lurch!

So, when we left the series last time the new god had just broken through properly and was causing some havoc. Where ‘some’ is ‘a significant amount’. And following through with our newly-named god, as she tries to claim paramount status in a world that’s not really sure if it wants her and what that would actually mean for the world, is the focus of the whole book. The looks different for different characters of course: Bueralan has his very personal struggles as well as being caught up in the politics of a new god, while Ayae isn’t particularly happy about being an intermediary between different groups and the other immortals are largely unknowable and definitely have their own agenda. And then there’s Heast, and the other characters we’ve come to appreciate over the earlier two books… the ones who aren’t dead yet, anyway. Well, mostly the ones who aren’t dead. Death has a somewhat… permeable… nature here.

I’m not going to lie, there are some unpleasant things that happen to characters throughout this  book, and I was never sure who was going to survive and who wasn’t. It’s a measure of the books, though, that I cared about that fact. And I did. I really did. When the Innocent, murdering sunuva that he is, appeared on any page I was worried (and he appears quite a lot in this book, so I spent a lot of time chewing my [metaphorical] nails). And the new god, who has definitely shown herself to be largely reprehensible… well, continues on that track but of course maybe she’s not all that bad and ARGH how do I figure out what to actually think? Curse you Peek and your morally grey characters and novels!

You will probably find that this series plays on your emotions. You may find yourself yelling at Peek (I’m sure he can handle it) and various characters (most of them deserve it). If you buy just the first one… well, I am not to blame if you have to go and buy the next two in short order.