The Woken Gods

The world after The Awakening is living in a reluctant truce between mankind and the gods. The gods must follow the rules of mysterious Society of the Sun or face execution. Once they knew they were no longer immortal, the rules changed. Kyra Locke is living with her father in the transformed city of Washington DC, accepting of the divine presence around her but more concerned with the current status of her relationship with Tam. That’s until two trickster gods corner her on the way back from school…

I’m a sucker for a story about gods and I wasn’t disappointed with The Woken Gods. The world-building is fantastic, and it completely makes sense that the gods would have set up shop in Washington DC. The lines of good guys and bad guys are blurred, with both the Society and the gods have differing motivations. It’s not a black and white world.

I liked how it wasn’t restriction to one culture’s mythology, although very Egyptian in flavour, it mentions that gods from Norse and Sumerian also came over during The Awakening. It also doesn’t feature the obvious gods that we all know about, which helps to remove preconceptions about how you think they should act. I did know about Set (or Seth) thanks to Stargate, which I feel had some influence on this world, although these gods aren’t aliens.

Any romance element is in the background to the important stuff. Kyra is a teenage girl and does have eyes, so you can forgive her a few pages of boy stuff, but I never felt it was the focus or got in the way. She was much more focused on her dad that impressing Oz. Like many of Strange Chemistry’s titles, it portrays the parents as lifelike people who are more than just constraints on kids’ lives or absent figures. It’s important that grown-ups aren’t always the bad guys.

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Also reviewed @ A Fantastical Librarian



Book Source: Won from publisher