There are books that touch your heart, have you kicking your feet and bring a smile to your face. Then, there are books that are journeys—that drench you in emotion, shatter the ground you stand on and carve a permanent space into your heart. While books of the former kind are extremely important to experience, because of their warm and enjoyable nature; books of the latter kind are like air. You need it to breathe, to survive, to feel, in the same way you’d need something that’s a part of you and can never been separated from your being.
Kissed by the Gods is one of those books in my life; an unforgettable journey that has the capacity to scatter your thoughts and take over your mind. There is something about feminine rage that can be felt to the very marrow of a reader’s bones. It ignites and wrecks destruction, but somehow the very nature of it only ever results in the sprouting of newer, healthier, stronger and better growth. I would say, that’s what this book is about. Yes, it’s about feminine rage, social injustice, power and corruption; but it’s also about one woman’s desperate, but determined, steps towards a better future.
Kissed by the Gods begins with a scene smouldered and beaten with pain, injustice, desolation and poverty. The writing in this book establishes so much of those emotions and the reality of the world created by Rogan, in just the first chapter. This first chapter also lays the very base and foundation upon which the protagonist’s world catapults into a kaleidoscope of chaos and change. Every sentence in this book—from the very epigraphs—winds its threads around the reader, ensnaring their minds and emotions in alternating weaves. I can hardly remember when I started, I can only recall drowning, feeling and finally surfacing when the book finishes. To say that Rogan’s writing is the strongest, most important pillar holding up Kissed by the Gods is to say the least.
I personally greatly enjoy when the worldbuilding in a book expands in the most natural way; much like how it would when any person enters an unfamiliar environment. There’s some initial confusion and unfamiliarity, then soon with each interaction with aforementioned place and its people, there’s a slow but steady increase in understanding that results in clarify. This is the most natural path good world building takes—usually it’s when this doesn’t happen, that readers struggle with relating to the world, and find there to be overwhelming information thrust upon them at the same time time.
However, despite how unfamiliar the world is to the protagonist and how vast it is in its rules and structure, the author has excelled at making it wonderfully immersive and perfectly balanced in all the aspects of it that we know, and those that are yet to be revealed. A special mention to all the epigraphs that feature nearly throughout this book, adding subtle but significant details to the plot throughout. I’ve noticed them a lot more recently in books and I’ve started enjoying their presence and greatly respect how much planning it demands from the author.
Plots that run in parallels with one another, with multiple sub-plots buried beneath them, are complex to execute. However, I do believe the author has truly wielded every bow in her quiver to ensure the plot in this story unfolds neatly; with perfectly concealed hidden doors opening to reveal devastating truths that also further the story along. I enjoyed how much of the world and the plot was revealed in this book, ensuring that it both, stands on its own and at the same time is a perfect foothold for the next book in the series to take off from. A foundation and a stage all on its own. Beautiful, truly.
If writing is the blood life of a book, the characters are the heart. Rogan has not shied away from writing a book with several important characters, most of them new, and often introduced nearly all at once. Paired with the world building, this type of introduction is usually difficult to retain as a reader, however the author has allowed her protagonist to interact individually or situationally with nearly all the new secondary characters in a way that helps the reader understand and recognise their unique personalities and purpose within the story. Many of the scenes between these characters are a large part of what moves the readers’ heart and allows the book to be placed comfortably under the trope of found family. The interactions between nearly any character that apply to this trope are heartwarming, gut-wrenchingly vulnerable and will always remain in my mind and heart as memories of friendship, love and shared pain.
The primary characters… I think every reader should experience them on their own; walk the path of finding their own unique connection to the pain and grit that is evident in the protagonists and love them at their own terms. So I choose to keep quiet about them, even though they were quite possibly one of my most favourite aspects of the book.
The pace of this book is so wonderful even, even while being brutal. It never relents and it absolutely never stumbles; portraying a sense of urgency, even while making space for the many other elements that are a part of it. There’s something addictive, drugging, and enthralling about this book that has you rooting for the characters and injustice in it and for the purpose of the story being told. Achieving this in a book that is as big as this one, is nothing short of a Herculean feat, in my opinion.
Kissed by the Gods is a wonderfully executed piece of work that is beautifully written, artfully crafted and peppered with surprises—both in scene and otherwise. I believe this book has stitched itself into my heart, so I can carry it everywhere with me.
Ten out of ten. I absolutely highly recommend this book. Please do check content warnings as some of the themes in this book can be triggering for some readers. The author was kind enough to list them out for her readers.
Kissed by the Gods is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis
Leina has spent a lifetime submitting. Kneeling. Enduring.
Then soldiers come for her brother, and divine fury surges through her veins. She expects execution for the bodies she left in her wake. Her people have met bloody ends for far, far less.
Instead, Ryot, a godsworn warrior born to privilege and raised in order, drags her into a world that was never meant for her. One of divine armies and death demons, winged war horses and monsters, sacred power and royal secrets.
A kiss from a goddess changes everything.
No longer a criminal, Leina is a prize. The kingdom’s most powerful men want what the goddess touched. Leina wants only one thing, though: freedom for her people. And she’ll trade herself for the strength to destroy the kingdom that broke them.
Conscripted into a war she never asked for, fighting for gods she doesn’t believe in, Leina must decide how far she’s willing to go and what she’s willing to lose. Because her power is more than a threat to the kingdom’s buried secrets.
It’s a death sentence.
