The Orphanage of Gods book review [ARC]

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Orphanage of Gods by Helena Coggan
Published by Hodder & Stoughton on February 21, 2019
Pages: 416
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

Twenty years ago, the humans came for their gods.

In the bloody revolution, gods were all but wiped out. Ever since, the children they left behind have been imprisoned in an orphanage, watched day and night by the ruthless Guard. Any who show signs of divine power vanish from their beds in the night, all knowledge of their existence denied.

No one has ever escaped the orphanage.

Until now.

Seventeen-year-old Hero is finally free - but at a terrible price. Her sister has been captured by the Guard and is being held in a prison in the northern sea. Hero desperately wants to get her back, and to escape the murderous Guardsmen hunting her down. But not all the gods are dead, and the ones waiting for Hero in the north have their own plans for her - ones that will change the world forever . . .

As she advances further and further into the unknown, Hero will need to decide: how far is she willing to go to do what needs to be done?

The Orphanage of Gods is another Netgalley read and one that I was really intrigued by the premise. I love anything to do with Gods and their offspring, like Percy Jackson is a fave and Strange the Dreamer makes me swoon. This book has the added bonus of the “godspawn” being in a precarious position with a lot of added politics and drama. I loved the fact that this book had so much going on within it and that you were never really sure what the heck was going to happen next. I really wanted to give this book 5 stars but I felt there were certain aspects of the story that didn’t get as much attention as I would have liked and made the story feel a little jumpy and disconnected.

The main characters in this story are mainly the children of Gods. I think it was a really interesting concept to have all these hugely powerful children being so powerless within their own country. Each of them had a backstory that very clearly influenced their motives as characters and I was so thankful for that. I really wanna touch on Kestral, Hero and Joshua’s relationship real quick without spoiling anything, this confused me and is probably the biggest reason that The Orphanage of Gods didn’t get 5 stars. This whole breakdown seemed to happen so quickly I got whiplash and I won’t even get into Kestral’s relationship with Eliza, I’ll save that for further down. All in all though taking my issues with certain relationships out of it I think the characters were definitely interesting and I would definitely love more books about them as people.

I think my best bits of The Orphanage of Gods would have to be learning about them all as characters and the different powers they all had. I also really enjoyed the confusion aspect that comes into at the end. I think what makes this book so good is the fact that the back stories very much feed into the ending and everything that happens there. Hero’s character development is one of the best arcs and I love where she ends up and how everything boils over for her. I just enjoyed the politics in this book, both within the actual world and also within the god children’s camp, they were both really interesting factions of the story.

I mentioned above that the worst bit for me was how disjointed this book could feel at times, especially when it came to relationships with the different characters. Nothing seemed to flow as nicely as it should have and I was always sort of caught off guard when things started happening. I wanted for there to be a more natural growth and development between the characters and for it to blossom over time. Another thing that made the worst bits would have to be the ending, I found it to be super rushed and I wished that there had been just a little more explanation about everything. It just felt really disconnected from everything and extremely anti-climatic, I wasn’t really sure what the end point was aiming to be.

I definitely would recommend The Orphanage of Gods. I think the premise is interesting and although the story is a little disjointed at times reading it was actually enjoyable. I’m so glad I picked it up!