Stormsilver

by Raven McGory

Overall: A jam-packed dark fantasy romance set in modern-day Washington, DC. Except instead of congressmen, lawyers, and lobbyists, the characters are gods, demons, grim reapers, and wolves (OK, I admit there might be a little overlap in those two categories). Young, a dragon god who’s been demoted to demon status, spends his days killing ghouls, musing about why his memory has been erased (he no longer knows he used to be a god), and generally trying to annoy everyone in his vicinity. He has a sword called Stormsilver that transforms into a coin that he keeps in his pocket.  Then one day he runs into Arella, a young human woman, and she ends up with his sword.  Will he trick her into returning it?  Will they fall in love?  Or will she keep the sword and become the ghoul-killer?

Likes: McGory has an amazing imagination: the sword-coin idea is fantastic, and there is a lot of intriguing world-building.  Animal god characters, ghosts, and reapers, who each have their own jobs, rules to follow, and characteristics, abound; many of them are Young’s roommates in a magical condo, Calamity Cave. There are several strong female characters, some LGBTQIA rep, and a totally off-the-wall married couple who inhabit the same body (!).  Arella’s backstory is compelling.

Dislikes: there is A LOT going on.  I would have preferred for this book either to be shorter, shedding several of subplots, or to be a lot longer, in the style of overstuffed fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire or The Wheel of Time.  At the beginning, every character’s physical characteristics are described in minute detail, which I found tedious.  My sense of humor runs towards dry whimsy, so I didn’t connect well with the humor.  It reminded me a lot of movies like Deadpool and Venom, or the tv series The Boys, so if you like those, you will likely enjoy this a lot.

FYI: murder, attempted murder, suicidal ideation, sexual assault, demonic possession, loss of a child, loss of parents, terminal illness.