That was a book. Written by Julia Spencer-Fleming. About Clare Fergusson and Russ van Alstyne. In a series of mystery books.

And that explains why I read it. Why I stuck with it until the end. Because the format of minute-to-minute or hour-to-hour detailed storytelling might have been an interesting craft choice, it made for a pointless novel. A futile episode in the middle of a series.

So I'm done and that's that.

*picks up the next book*

Things I liked:
• characters
• worldbuilding
• story

Things I didn't like:
• the prose

So that's that then. When the writing gets to your nerves, the characters start grating, the brilliant worldbuilding loses its shine and the story becomes one of those "why do I care again" tales.

I'd still recommend this to people wanting to read diverse fantasy, just not with the enthusiasm others have.

Skip the first part and its five chapters. That’s all you need to know about Hurley’s God’s War. Trust me.

Oh, you need more. I guess I could…

Imagine a futuristic world, a planet—not Earth, think Arrakis without the worms—where two countries are at a war with each other. And it’s a holy war that’s dragging all their neutral neighbours and people of the Kitab down with them.

Then imagine an alien coming down with an agenda of her own, a plan to win a bigger war at home—on Earth probably—a plan of genetic manipulation and extermination.

Are you picturing it?

That’s where the story starts. Nyx and her team are bounty hunters trying to scrape a living when the Queen unexpectedly sics them on to the alien. Rhys is Nyx’s middling magician, also Chenjan to her Nasheenian. Khos is the shapeshifter and Taite is the comms man. Anneke is… well, I don’t know exactly what she is but I’m hoping to find out.

They set out onto a bloody and dangerous trip to a warzone in search of a foreign woman. They win some and they lose some but mostly they lose. Things and body parts. Lives too. It’s called grimdark for a reason.

Which is funny, because the basic plot is that of a mystery whodunnit and there’s a strong thread of a slow burn romance between Nyx and Rhys carrying the story. They’re the perfect opposites. She’s strong and godless, he’s devout and sensitive. He’s black, she’s brown, and their countries are at war with each other. The one thing that they share is a deep denial, which only makes the understated longing that much better.

And the world building—well, that’s the reason why I asked you to skip the first part of the book. As wonderful as this world Hurley has created is, she also wrapped it into a huge infodump and glued it in front of a well written, perfectly flowing whole book. It’s like she added the prequel novella that usually comes out between books in front of the first book of the trilogy.

As much as I loved that first page, the following fifty pages or so were painful to slog through. That reading experience bogs down my rating, which is why I hope to spare you from it. It was so bad I was ready to give up on Hurley, and Nyx and Rhys are the only reason I’ll go on to the second book in the trilogy.

I liked it, just not enough to write a proper review:

Construct a three or four step murder mystery. Add a dash of red herrings and a congregation of suspects. Mix them up with a character driven slow burn—emphasis on the slow—romance and voilà. You've just mastered the recipe for a delicious book in a genre that has seen everything.

Serve in intallments. Dammit.