Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Faithbreaker by Hannah Kaner Series: Fallen Gods #3
Published by Harper Voyager on March 13, 2025
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 416
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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War has come. The fire god Hseth is leading an unstoppable army south, consuming everything in her path. Middren’s only hope of survival is to unify allies and old foes against a common enemy.
Elo navigates an uneasy alliance with Arren; his friend, his enemy, and his king. Now they each must decide how much they're willing to sacrifice to turn the tides of war.
Meanwhile, Inara joins her mother on their ship, the Silverswift, to seek aid. Still grappling with her powers, Inara must reconcile who she is and where she belongs, while Skediceth has to question if their bond will be enough to keep them safe.
Kissen has no allegiance to the old ways of Middren. But, as she tries to find her family, she is forced to question what, and whose, future she is fighting for.
The Fallen Gods series has a unique world littered with Gods. Humans bring them strength. Their sacrifices, prayers, shrines and offerings build up some gods to be stronger than others. One god has been rebranded from a god reborn. She is fire, death pain and sacrifice and her servants are taring though the land of Middren, killing their enemies and feeding her power with human sacrifice. A found family is doing everything they can to stop Hseth, the fire god of pain, from taking over their kingdom and destroying all other gods in Faithbreaker, the conclusion to this trilogy.
The story is told from multiple PoVs carrying the reader through the feelings and motivations of the main characters of the story. Some unexpected and uneasy alliances need to be made against a stronger foe, at least for now. Kissen and Anara must put aside some of their distrust for the Sunbringer and use him and his followers against a bigger threat. Elogast is torn between the boy Arren, he used to know and grew up with, and the Man/God, Sunbringer, who tried to sacrifice him. But, for love of his home he will help in this war and lead the armies in hopes of surviving this threat.
One of the things I loved about Godkiller, the first book of the series, was the found family created between Kissen, Elogast, Anara and Skediceth. They all were from such different places in life, but the bonds built between them all burned bright. The struggle I had with Faithbreaker, is that the characters I loved seeing together were all separated and working on different aspects of building the army to fight in the war. While this set up added to the drama and fast pacing at the end, in the beginning it made the book a little difficult to get into as it was moving really slowly. I also cared about one PoV more than the others and sometimes became impatient with getting back to the part of the story I cared about.
The last 10-15% of the book was non-stop and action packed. It was everything I really wanted for the ending to the story, minus some of the thrown in sexual relationship aspects. The drama of the war and the fight was nail-biting and heartbreaking, everything I expected it to be. The rest of the book all seemed like it was just in a holding pattern to get us to the end. There are some interesting interactions as Inara travels to meet her father in hopes of gathering a few gods to their cause. Kissen and Inara PoV’s and storyline were the most captivating to me and the parts of the story I liked best. The relationship between Kissen and the girl attached to the god of lies is my favorite of the series. Kissen is mentor, substitute mother, sister and friend all in one and I enjoy the dynamic interactions they have together. I missed Elogast being with them as he was the tenderness and voice of mercy for them.
Faithbreaker will give the reader a strong conclusion to the story. It didn’t hold the magic for me that Godkiller did and part of that was all the extra time pushed on the romantic relationships. It was like Hannah Kaner was trying to jump on the Romantasy bandwagon in this final book, instead of focusing more on the greater plotting, in my probably unpopular opinion. I didn’t like any of the new romantic points of interest brought into this final book as I liked the relationship between Kissen and Elogast. The addition of romantic entanglements that were presented were not something I was interested in nor did they make a lot of sense to me based on the history between the characters, but I will probably be in the minority here and I will accept that. However, a character that either tried to kill you or sacrifice you in a previous book doesn’t seem like someone you’d want to hook up with, just saying.
“You can’t save him, you know,” said Skedi. “You can’t undo the things he’s done. To Inara. To you.”
Overall, if you have read the other two books of the series you should understand the world and what our characters are up against. This should be satisfying conclusion the story with some possible hopes for a book in the future, perhaps when Inara is older, at least that is my hope. I would like to see what this new world show to us at the end would grow into later.
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Sorry to hear it wasn’t as good as you had hoped.
Trilogies are really hard to end well. I liked it, but it didn’t have the magic for me that the first two books had. Still a good trilogy.
“minus some of the thrown in sexual relationship aspects”
I hate when they just throw aspects in for no reason. :S
Right! It was really unneeded and like they were trying to make a strong fantasy series into a romantasy in the final book.