A review by cj_jones
The Gospel of the Knife by Will Shetterly
4.0
Caveats:
I read an ARC, and things may have changed in the final presentation.
Second person makes me itch because I hate being told what to do.
There's mention made that this is a sort of sequel to Dogland. Ignore that. This story will go more smoothly if you do; the tone is different enough that it'll throw you off, and there's enough going on that could do that already.
We start off in Book One with a hippie kid growing up in a small town (big enough to have a 'black quarter' though) full of... for lack of a better term, rednecks, in the late sixties. That was an interesting enough story.
Book Two starts a Chosen One trope where he's sent to a special academy and discovers he's weird and very powerful, and that puts him in danger. Plus the usual 'new kid at a boarding school' conflicts. Also interesting, but it feels detached from the previous story.
Book Three is a fifth gospel on the life of the Christ. You'll recognize similarities, but it's different enough that the devout will probably find it offencive. This was really weird, and several times I wondered if my copy had been corrupted and I'd accidentally gotten a second book that had overwritten the last half of the first book.
Book Four ties us back into Books One and Two, and gives us a conclusion that I kind of understood and am uncertain about the aftereffects of. But it felt like a satisfying ending that fit the rest of the book.
I spent a lot of the last half of the book feeling like I mostly understood what was happening, which was a little frustrating, but I came out the other side happy I'd made the trip.
I read an ARC, and things may have changed in the final presentation.
Second person makes me itch because I hate being told what to do.
There's mention made that this is a sort of sequel to Dogland. Ignore that. This story will go more smoothly if you do; the tone is different enough that it'll throw you off, and there's enough going on that could do that already.
We start off in Book One with a hippie kid growing up in a small town (big enough to have a 'black quarter' though) full of... for lack of a better term, rednecks, in the late sixties. That was an interesting enough story.
Book Two starts a Chosen One trope where he's sent to a special academy and discovers he's weird and very powerful, and that puts him in danger. Plus the usual 'new kid at a boarding school' conflicts. Also interesting, but it feels detached from the previous story.
Book Three is a fifth gospel on the life of the Christ. You'll recognize similarities, but it's different enough that the devout will probably find it offencive. This was really weird, and several times I wondered if my copy had been corrupted and I'd accidentally gotten a second book that had overwritten the last half of the first book.
Book Four ties us back into Books One and Two, and gives us a conclusion that I kind of understood and am uncertain about the aftereffects of. But it felt like a satisfying ending that fit the rest of the book.
I spent a lot of the last half of the book feeling like I mostly understood what was happening, which was a little frustrating, but I came out the other side happy I'd made the trip.