WHEN THE SAINTS FAIL, THE SINNERS STEP UP.
Cruel gods rule the steam-powered city of Chime, demanding worship and tribute from their mortal subjects. Kayl lost her faith in them long ago, and now seeks to protect vulnerable and downtrodden mortals from their gods’ whims. But when Kayl discovers powers that she didn’t know she had—and destroys a mortal’s soul by accident—she becomes Chime’s most wanted.
Quen’s job was to pursue sinners, until the visions started. Haunted by foreboding images of his beloved city’s destruction, Quen hunts soul-sucking creatures made of aether who prey on its citizens—and Kayl is his number one target.
To ensure Chime’s future, Kayl and Quen must discover the truth of Kayl’s divine abilities before the gods take matters into their own hands.
For a city that bows to cruel gods, it’ll take godless heathens to save it.
The Thirteenth Hour is the first book in The Cruel Gods series—a gaslamp fantasy featuring magical portals, gothic cosmic deities, quaint Britishisms, and steampunk vibes. This is an adult book containing strong language and mature themes that some readers may find disturbing. For a full list of content warnings, visit Trudie Skies's website.
COVER ARTIST: James T. Egan
PUBLISHER: Self Published
YEAR: 2021
LENGTH: 535 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Highly
Queer Rep Summary: Gay/Achillean Main Character(s), Bi/Pan Main Character(s), Genderqueer/Nonbinary Secondary Character(s).
THE THIRTEENTH HOUR is an intricate and emotional gaslamp fantasy of apostasy in a world where every mortal was created by a specific god in their own image, and everything is a sin to someone.
The worldbuilding is complex and detailed, with twelve domains plus a hub world (Chime), special characteristics and abilities for the various kinds of mortals, and gods with their own agendas, mores, and conflicting definitions of sin. In less skilled hands, this could be a disorienting mess of an infodump with no hope of salvaging an understandable story. Instead, almost all of the story takes place in Chime (with a few brief visits to one other domain), there's a tight focus on two specific characters and a relatively small assortment of enemies, allies, and political machinations. The types of mortals are described consistently, and more details are added gradually enough that I could get a strong sense of a few types before learning about a few more as they became more relevant. The Godless are a large enough group to have around half of the kinds of mortals, but they aren't some coincidentally complete assortment of all the types. Not every group is represented, which is consistent with how they have different experiences of their respective gods. The crueler the god is to their followers, the more likely it is that they wound up among the Godless, but it's not a strict correlation.
The Godless have rejected their deities, some of them due to a particular incident several years ago, but others with their own specific traumas, moments of disillusionment, and reasons to keep themselves apart from the divinities who shape their existences and treat them as playthings. One of my favorite parts of the setting is that within this focus on sin, redemption, and the divine, each of the gods has their own definition of what "sin" is. This emphasizes how unhelpful it is as a concept for those who spend their lives worried about sinning, and how useful it is as a tool for the gods to use the threat of damnation and divine displeasure to keep their mortals in line.
As the first book in a series, THE THIRTEENTH HOUR has its own story and a satisfying conclusion. It resolves several major plot points (both logistically and relationally) and ends with a paradigm shift which will have to be addressed in the following book. It's great as its own narrative, and as the beginning of the trilogy, and I'm very interested in what happens next.
The dynamic between Kayl, Quen, and Malk is not really a love triangle, and much more a story of Kayl and Quen figuring out their current relationships are abusive (to varying degrees) and going through the slow process of exiting them and trying for something better. Quen is nearly as emotionally entangled with Elijah as Kayl is with Malk. However, the fact that he has visions of each person's death when he touches them means he's not as physically intimate in that relationship, even as his internal life is frequently shaped by fears of Elijah's reaction to what he's doing. He's been removing his own memories in an attempt to keep control of his own mind, even if that control is at the cost of slowly losing himself. If you read THE THIRTEENTH HOUR hoping for a "girl picks between two guys" story, that's only technically part of what's happening and it might feel unsatisfying. It's a "two people pick between two other people" story, which is much clunkier to say and definitely not the point. Kayl's love for Malk is a constant motivation for her decisions with regards to Malk himself, but Quen's promise that they are partners in the investigation gradually becomes a stronger part of Kayl's choices and motivations. I did not read it as a love triangle, and so wasn't disappointed in any way by the narrative focus and how things develop between Kayl and Quen.
I love the characters and I'm deeply interested in the series as a whole. The world is changing and I want to know how they handle it.
Graphic/Explicit CW for grief, classism, religious bigotry, death.
Moderate CW for cursing, toxic friendship, toxic relationship, emotional abuse, physical abuse, intrusive thoughts, kidnapping, confinement, forced institutionalization, mental illness, fire/fire injury, injury detail, sexual assault, rape, torture, slavery, genocide, murder.
Minor CW for sexual content, miscarriage, pregnancy, excrement, vomit, incest, cannibalism, ableist language, suicide, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, parental death.
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