Godkiller earns its hype the honest way. It hit No. 1 on the Sunday Times list, got marketed to fans of The Witcher and Terry Pratchett, and became one of the most-recommended fantasy entry points of its year — and reading it, you can see exactly why. It's fast, it's warm, it's brutal when it needs to be, and it's built on a magic system fresh enough to feel genuinely new. It is also, unmistakably, a debut and a series opener, which is where its limitations live. But as a first book and a launch pad, it's a real accomplishment.
The premise is the hook, and Kaner works it beautifully. In this world gods are made by belief: put up a shrine, whisper a prayer, and a god of the river or the hearth or broken sandals flickers into being, growing stronger with every worshipper and greedier with every gift. It's a conceit that turns faith into a tangible, dangerous currency, and Kaner uses it for everything from worldbuilding to theme to plot mechanics. Best of all, she refuses the easy moral. A world without gods loses the god of midwives along with the god that eats children; the king who banned all worship is as much a tyrant as the fire god who demands human sacrifice. That refusal to paint faith as simply good or simply dangerous gives a fast adventure novel a surprising amount of thematic spine.
The characters are the reason it lands emotionally. Kissen, the disabled, foul-mouthed, bisexual godkiller at the center, is an instantly great protagonist — competent, cynical, and carrying a childhood atrocity she's spent her whole life avenging. Around her Kaner assembles the reluctant found family that is the book's true heart: a sheltered noble girl, the scheming little lie-god magically bound to her, and a traumatized knight-turned-baker whose loyalty to his king is the story's slow-burning fuse. The pleasure of the book is watching four wary, wounded people become a unit almost against their will. That warmth is what elevates Godkiller above the many grizzled-mercenary-and-a-kid road stories it superficially resembles.
Two things stand out. First, the representation is exemplary precisely because it's matter-of-fact — Kissen's prosthetic leg is an asset as often as an obstacle, a Deaf character and a wheelchair-using character are drawn as full people, queerness is simply part of the world, and in the book's quiet thesis statement, Kissen declines the chance at a "fixed" body because she accepts who she is. None of it is a Very Special Lesson; it's just the texture of the world. Second, the King Arren plotline delivers a genuinely satisfying villain reveal — the god-hating peacekeeper with a stolen divine flame where his heart should be, willing to sacrifice his oldest friend to become a god-king, is a sharp piece of irony that reframes the whole book on the way to a strong climax.
That climax is where Kaner shows real nerve. The book's structure mirrors itself with real craft: it opens with a child thrown into the sea and saved by a sea god, and it ends with the grown woman falling into the same sea, begging the same god to save her again, having dragged her lifelong nemesis down to drown with her. Kissen's apparent death is a gut-punch that earns its emotional weight, even for readers who suspect (correctly) that a series lead isn't gone for good. It's the mark of a writer who understands that a cliffhanger only works if it costs something.
The complaints worth making are the debut-and-book-one kind. At under 300 pages, Godkiller is lean to a fault — the worldbuilding is vivid but sketched rather than deep, and readers coming from the density of a Sanderson or a Jemisin may want more room to live in Middren. The pacing is relentless in a way that occasionally shortchanges quieter character beats; the middle-journey stretch leans on repeated demon attacks to keep the tension up. Some of the reveals, particularly Inara's nature and the origin of her bond with Skedi, are deferred rather than developed, which is smart series architecture but can feel like withheld payoff in the moment. And a few readers will find the four-POV structure spreads a short book slightly thin. These aren't failures so much as the trade-offs of a propulsive, accessible opener that prioritizes momentum and heart over sprawl.
It settles firmly at four stars because of how much it gets right on a first outing, and because it does the one job a series opener absolutely must: it makes you want the next book immediately. The magic is fresh, the found family is genuinely moving, the villain reveal is sharp, and the ending detonates a small adventure into a continent-spanning war without feeling like pure setup. It's an easy, fast, emotionally generous read that also has something to say about faith, power, and grief.
Four stars: a big-hearted, propulsive, refreshingly inclusive debut that punches above its slim page count. If "grizzled godkiller and a magical kid on the road, in a world where belief literally makes gods" sounds appealing, it delivers — and it's the start of a trilogy worth committing to.
