This Eternity of Masks and Shadows

I acquired a copy of this arc through Netgallery

Carin is the daughter of a reincarnated Goddess, Sedna, the Inuit goddess of sea and marine life. For in Carin's world gods and goddesses walk among humans and are reincarnated into new lives and bodies. But Carin's world changes forever when another God murders her mother and she is left to pick up the pieces and sift through the mysterys of her mother's life. She discovers a journey took in her youth with other Gods may be the cause as the other members of that trip begin to die one by one, and she is left to seek justice not only for her mother but all of them.

I think the concept for this book is incredible, the idea of gods and goddesses walking amongst us as they are reincarnated into new bodies. I appreciated how Knight chose to focus on mythologies from all across the world instead of just one, as we all have seen too many books based soley on Greek mythology. I aso thought it was cool how this was set in our world and in modern times, so the author could explore how this may influence celebrity culture but also politics and therefore democracy.

However, I do think these ideas lacked some depth. I would have liked to have seen how the god's heritage impacted how they felt in modern society. For exmaple, Ahna, Carin's mother was a reincarnation of a goddess from Iniut mythology, but there was little mention or exploration of how connected she felt to that culture or heritage. As well as this, I would have liked to have seen a greater anaylse of how the knowledge of reincarnated gods existing in the modern world influenced how we behaved in a greater depth.

The plot was complicated and there were many reveals woven into the story, and whilst I think it was an extremely interesting idea I feel like most of it was rather told than shown to us. Many of the plot twists and reveals landed flat to me as I was told about them, and it often felt like there wern't enough hints left for the reader to be able to guess it, or understand where the plot twist had come from even with hindsight.

As well as this, I struggled to connect with any of the characters in any meaningful way as none of them felt complex or fully fleshed out. Carin felt like a blank slate so she could be read as relatable, but honestly it left me feeling largely bored of her character.

Overall, whilst the ideas and premise of this was ambitious and promising not enough of it was well executed enough to carry it off.

Read my full review here: https://moonlitbooks.home.blog/2020/05/28/thiseternityofmasksandshadows/