The Fury of the Gods – Indifference Of Mortals

John Gwynne’s The Bloodsworn Saga has come to a close with its epic finale, The Fury of the Gods. This completed trilogy takes on Norse mythology and incorporates it into an epic fantasy filled with blockbuster qualities like huge monster fights, intense sword fighting, epic twists and betrayals, dragons, and good old-fashioned Viking shenanigans. Unfortunately, this list of pros has a backside as well. We also have: a really weird take on slavery that became harder to ignore the closer we got to the end of the book, a POV that continued to be completely terrible despite now being in the third installment and flat-out running out of runway to land the metaphorical plane, and a general sense of hollowness that pervaded Fury that made me feel like I was reading DLC to the first two books. I suspect that my review of Fury is going to be a bit controversial. The book is sitting at a whopping 4.6/5 on Goodreads at the time of writing this review, and it is very clear that most of the people who continued on with this series really liked what Gwynne was throwing down. I, unfortunately, can fully acknowledge that there is a ton of good here, but I simply found myself bored and uninvested as this ‘epic’ story came to its ‘explosive’ end.

As always, Gwynne is a juggernaut of pacing and action and this momentum continues through Fury. Short punchy chapters, lots of POVs spread around conflicts, several cliffhangers stacked on top of each other at any given time, and visceral combat prose make this book a really exciting read. Except, I couldn’t help but wonder from time to time, “What are we doing here?” Book two also had huge Norse gods come to life, epic combat, and all of the other good stuff. What has meaningfully evolved in the story since the second book to close out the story? The answer I found is not a lot. The objectives of most of the characters remain the same, then just do bigger cooler flips as they fight. Part of my issue could be that I find myself slightly jaded about this style of storytelling at the moment. It doesn’t feel like a good time to kick back, turn my brain off, and watch some characters do cool flips. I was looking for some grander commentary about the world we live in and a sense of direction and this tale did not provide that for me at all. Yes, there is some high-level commentary about things like the fragility of life, the bonds of friendship vs. family, self-belief, and more. I don’t want to say that this book contains nothing, but all these things felt too far removed from the characters and didn’t feel like it meaningfully affected their choices or agency. Some of the characters learned nothing (we will get to Elvar in a second) while others seemed to just “learn” that doing sick kickflips while stabbing a man is a great way to work off steam. Especially given how popular Norse-inspired stories are at the moment I wanted to read something fresher.

On a second note, I really hate Elvar. Now this may just be “nobles as perspective” in fantasy fatigue, since I couldn’t help but scream “eat the rich” anytime she showed her face. From day one, this Hindenburg-shaped character needed a reckoning, and Fury offered some hope in its role as the conclusion. But instead of meaningful change within the character, she is given a cheap redemption arc that offers no lessons learned or continued desire on Elvar’s part to do good for the ones around her. She gleefully and greedily opens Pandora’s box in Act 1 and spends the rest of the series punishing everyone who attempts to close it. Her traumatic childhood intermingled with her desire to prove herself in a man’s world doesn’t excuse her burning down of the world around her in a quest for attention. The case for Elvar being a feminist icon is particularly hard to grapple with because Orka, the coolest motherfucker to ever walk the lands, is still standing near Elvar and makes her look like complete garbage by comparison. Here is a perfect example of where we could have dove deeper into the themes, such as ‘hurt people hurt others’. The core is there, I can tell that Elvar is acting the way she is because of how she was raised. There is the scaffolding for a lesson and some insight in place, but the narrative itself refuses to have her meaningfully improve. At a certain point, my sympathy for someone who has undergone deep trauma turned to disgust at a character who refuses to look inward a single time. Maybe this is the lesson here, maybe we are supposed to hate Elvar and Gwynne planted her as a lesson that just because you have had a hard life does not excuse you of responsibility to your fellow man. But given the context of the trilogy, I doubt it.

As for huge conclusions…sure, I guess it was awesome in a vacuum. If you have any, and I mean any, knowledge of Norse mythology you knew where the climax was going. There was a world-sized, snake-shaped Chekov’s Gun hanging over this entire narrative like an orbital laser so it wasn’t really satisfying when the end stages of the conflict were revealed. Yet, it was super cool to see a whole lot of people murder something that big. I give it a pass.

Usually, John Gwynne’s work fills me with excitement and adrenaline and keeps me glued to my seat as I read his stories. Instead, The Fury of the Gods left me feeling tired and hollow as I dragged myself through the end of The Bloodsworn Saga. I will take the blame for part of this, as it doesn’t really feel like a good time to be reading entertainment-focused stories. However, there are a few issues with this book that even cultural context can’t explain, and I struggled to get past them.

Rating: The Fury of the Gods – 5.0/10
-Andrew

An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.