A Sword of Shadow and Deceit

Mortal Gods, Book 1

By: Lucinda Dark

Narrated by: Allie Shae, Benjamin Sands

Desperation makes warriors of captives.

The Gods split the skies and rained down tyranny upon the mortal realm long ago. Ever since then, the only thing worse than being human is being of Divine Blood.

For someone like me—an undocumented God child, indebted to the Underworld Assassination Guild—that means only one thing: A life in the shadows.

Or so it should have been . . . until Mortal Gods Academy. Until them.

The Darkhaven Brothers are truly the worst of all the Gods' spawn. Arrogant. Wicked. Violent. To them, I'm nothing more than a human plaything meant for torment. For me . . . they're the path and the key to my freedom.

But if any of them find out who I am, what I am . . . even the shadows won't be able to save me.

Contains mature themes.

©2024 Lucy Smoke LLC (P)2024 Tantor Media

Great book ❤️

Great book. Great performance and great story. I really liked it. It is very interesting and it wasn't dull in any moment.

S’okay

It was pretty good. It goes down the twists and turns that brought the main character to this point in her story. It goes back and forth between the main and her three mortal gods. No one is doing all the parts. That’s sometimes a good thing. Now for my opinion: As for the male characters, I didn’t like them at all. I hope she kills them in the next books. I really liked how strong she was and her resiliency. I do think it would have been far more interesting if the god of imprisonment liked her, or the one of prophecy. Oh well. Hope it goes well for her. It ended on a cliff hanger and unless the next one is free with my monthly sub. I’m good.

Gives a dark Throne of Glass meets Blood of Hercules vibe.

I definitely am loving this series and look forward to seeing what happens to our FMC Kiera. This book left off in a bit of a cliffhanger and answers are definitely needed! My only complaint with the Audiobook is that it was not recorded in duet. As well as the female narrator did with her voice changes it just always adds to the story when a male narrator speaks for the male characters and vice versa for the females. Overall I really enjoyed this book and will continue on with the rest of the series.

Loved it

This book was the perfect blend of romantasy with a badass fmc and 3 unhinged hot demigod brothers. I loved the story line and can see that it set the perfect stage for book 2! Looking forward to the rest of the series

Fine

Honestly, ALL the stars I gave this book are a round of applause for the author—who gave the heroine (Kiera) equality of power from the first paragraph. Knowing, as we do from the blurb, that she’s going to be interacting with mercurial, cruel gods, it was such a welcome relief to finally get a heroine that wasn’t completely helpless, or disgustingly goo goo over the heroes (Theos, Ruen, Kalix).

I was kind of annoyed when I found out this was a deception book (the heroine is lying about who she is for all of it). People can’t be emotionally intimate when there are a bunch of lies between them, and romance depends on intimacy. But on reading it, I found that the heroes deserved to be lied to. The gods were not decent or sympathetic characters. So it was all good. Of course that means there was a lot of 👀 sexual behaviour but absolutely no romance, so be prepared for that. In fact two of the heroes have active ON PAGE sex lives with people who aren't the heroine.

There’s also a lot of talk about this book being similar to Trickery (Curse of the Gods series), and it’s true there are a lot of points of similarity, but IMO Trickery was a steaming pile of trash. This book was light years better even with a 3 star rating.

The writing was fine, not great. This book is supposed to be plot driven, but it's not. Instead it's dragged down by bloated prose: boring flashbacks, a CRAP LOAD of setting, tons of internal blah blah blah, and the worst crime: repeating one idea in multiple ways for impact—instead of condensing it into one powerful sentence. The only sex scene (with the heroine) even got tiresome, because it was so fragmented and slow. That’s the only reason this book is 14 hours long.