I’ve been really looking forward to reading To Cage a God and it did not disappoint.
This book is inspired by Russian dark fantasy featuring gods and politics.

I loved the uniqueness of fantasy of how the Dragons being bound into their hosts. I like that each dragon had their own powers. I would have enjoyed learning more about this area too. I felt it would benefit from more depth and potentially helping me understand more.
I don’t think I’ve read a book with any kind of similar magic system.

The story is told from multiple POV’s but mainly between two foster sisters whose mother bound unwilling forbidden gods into them hoping the pair would overthrow an empire.Their mother was killed after being caught as a leader to the faithless rebellion.

I found the characters to be well written and had good depth to them. I loved the characters relationships between each other and found it came across well. I think my favourite character was Galina and I loved her relationship with the Princess!
I loved how the romance was written into the story and it didn’t feel forced. I felt they came together at the right moment.

I really enjoyed the authors writing style and found it easy to follow along. The plot did start off a little slow but that was to be expected with the book starting off. Once it got going I was hooked.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

3.5 stars rounded up!

I really enjoyed this one! I loved the two romances and the worldbuilding!

The book follows the POVs of the two sisters: Sera and Galina. Both sisters are headstrong and reliable, very loyal and very protective of each other and those they love. While Sera is more collected and strategic, Galina is more of the 'go with the flow' mentality. Both sisters fell in love with people very different from them and sort of surrendered to their feelings in an endearing way. I liked Sera more because I relate to her more *I'm a thinker lmao* but I enjoyed Galina's POVs too. It was refreshing to see the world through her eyes. While it's said that Galina is more traumatized by what their mother forced her to do, I felt like it was Sera who struggled more with having a god inside her, so I felt little disconnected to what the text was meant to convey and what it did convey to me.

The two romances was actually the best part of the book. Galina's relationship with Vasilisa was enthralling and exciting, as was Sera's relationship with Vitalik. Fiercely loving, wonderfully delightful with a bit of spice. Energetic and full of life and passion. Galina's relationship with Vasilisa felt passionate in a sort of youthful, new and fresh way. Sera's relationship with Vitalik was passionate in a raw, playful and biting kind of way, as in Sera: "I'll break your neck if you do something stupid again", and Vitalik is like "Please, threaten me more, you look so sexy when you do". I enjoyed seeing their relationships evolve in different ways and levels.

The worldbuilding was original. Some people, the alurea, caged gods (as in dragons!) inside themselves in order to use their magic and rule with wrath. But after having capturing dragons within themselves for centuries, things haven't been going so well for them. Actions have consequences, after all. I found the worldbuilding unique and refreshing.

It is Slavic inspired. It did take a bit for me to realize some parts that could have been explained better, but all in all, I'm not knowledgeable enough to tell if it was done well or not.

Overall, it's an exciting, compelling adult fantasy with one f/m and one f/f relationship, both sparkled with spice and delight!

I had been looking forward to “To Cage A God” since I heard about it and it did not disappoint.

I loved the Russian inspired world and the political background to the story interwoven with dragons and magic.

I enjoyed the female dominated main cast of characters and I found it easy to root for the two main protagonists. They were likeable and I loved their sisterly bond and how it was such an important facet of their characters. Their relationship was one of my favourite parts of the story and it’s something I hope to see more of in the next one.

I think the one thing the story would have benefitted from is stronger world building from the start. The pace was quite breakneck and I did find myself having to read back at points to understand the importance of some of the key plot points to get past some confusion.

All in all I really enjoyed and I’m looking forward to the next one. Really hoping that I get to see more of Galina and Sera’s relationship and that we get to delve into some more of the history and get to know the world a bit better.

Thank you to NetGalley and Daphne Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a review.

I've read a few books by Elizabeth May now, and everything I've read so fae is so different from the next.
I really enjoyed this book, I loved the writing style, the plot, Elizabeth Lim's take on fantasy in this book.
Also the cover is just beautiful!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is Imperial Russia with fantasy thrown in told from the perspective of revolutionaries. It's a lot more about the politics, power plays and resistance to bowing to the rich upper classes than it is about fantasy but the addition of god powers adds another dimension of separation from those in power and the poor.

The first 50 pages were a bit of a struggle as the scene was set but after that I was hooked. The idea of gods being caged within people and that only certain people in society house gods was an interesting one and added an extra element to a overarching story that has been done before.

I wasn't convinced by how many POVs there were at first (there are 5 throughout the book), but it actually kept the story going and ensured good pacing. Without these POVs in the narration, I think it would have been difficult to keep things moving.

It's also nice to see a sapphic love story get more focus than a straight love story. While both romantic relationships are prominent, the queer one is definitely more interesting and engaging.

I'm interested to see where the next book goes as this could easily have been a standalone fantasy story.

Loved it! Four women determined to take down an empire. A second chance romance and a forbidden love. What's not to love?

Generally, more than two POVs and multiple romances don't do it for me because I always prefer one character/storyline/romance over the other(s) but To Cage a God was an outlier in that I liked all the POVs and both romances.

A lot of the more recent fantasy romance tends to read like YA with smut, with insipid 20 year old who are not like other girls but have a tendency to make bad decisions. I'm glad to report that there was none of that with Sera, Galina, Anna, Katya and Vasilisa. All of them were intelligent determined women and I loved reading about them. Vitaly was a typical male romance hero in that he was an arsehole who cared nothing about anyone except for Sera but I stl devoured their romance. I wanted to hear more about their exploits pre To Cage a God. The series is crying out for a prequel novel/la. Galina and Vasilisa's romance was felt more emotion driven given they met on page and had no prior history but was equally compelling. I did want more of their flirty conversations though. I tend to roll my eyes at how unnecessarily long some fantasy romances are but I wouldn't have minded an extra 100 - 200 pages for the author to dedicate to the romance and more POV time to Vitaly and Vasilisa.

As well as good romance, I really appreciated the sisterhood between Sera and Galina as well as their friendships with Anna and Katya. I will definitely be reading the sequel.

It seems like 2024 will be a good year for Fantasy Romance.

I really wish I could of liked this a little more than I did, I found it really hard to connect with the characters and I think that’s mainly as it’s in third person PoV which I am not a huge fan off but did get use to. It started off very slow and I really struggled to get into the story, I found it dragged for a long time and had a lot of info dumping and fillers that I am afraid to say bored me. Though it did pick up towards the end I just wish it had happened a little sooner. I really wanted to love this book as I am a fan of the authors The Falconer series but unfortunately this one just wasn’t for me.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an EArc in exchange for an honest review.

This beautiful cover houses an unusual take on a fantasy novel where the magic doesn’t belong to the wielder, but a dragon bound into their being. Very imaginative and full of colourful characters. I could see this making a great streaming series.

In this Russian-inspired fantasy land, there is a ruling class called Alurea, whose bodies are inhabited with dragon gods which give them powerful magic and make any uprising for the subjugated classes almost impossible. Years prior to our story, the leader of the resistance found a way to bond the dragon gods to supplicants, using her daughters as Guinea pigs. They’re her secret weapon in the war. When she’s killed, her daughters Sera and Galina go into hiding, until war across the empire breaks out and they know they have to finish their mission and take out the alurea once and for all.

There’s a lot to be liked about this book. I really liked the Russian influence and the language. As a lover of language I was fascinated by the names, the nicknames and the pet names. I also really liked the way the dragon and the person were warring within one body, two souls in one cage and the cost of the power. I do wish the story would have elaborated more about how the two were bound together. Is it spirit? Is the dragon physically inside someone’s skin? I couldn’t quite get a handle on that.

I didn’t love this story. For me it had a lot of problems. Firstly, I feel like it started in the middle and all the interesting stuff happened before the book started. How did their evil (but clever) mother figure out how to cage a god? How was she caught? It felt like a really interesting character was marginalised. Same with the empress, we never delve enough into her.

There were multiple POVs which ordinarily I enjoy, and while I understand why the device was used here, I don’t think the characters were developed enough to warrant it. I even had problems with the two main characters. I found Sera and Galina’s plan (which is essentially the plot) really hard to follow. It was a strange blend of not enough happening to drive the plot forward and too much that didn’t take us anywhere. Also when something big did happen and we were in the action sections, I found it incredibly chaotic, I couldn’t work out how I’d gotten from a-b and found myself flicking back to see if I’d missed something.

This could comfortably be described as a romantasy but it actually doesn’t lean far enough in either direction. The romance is superficial and the fantasy is confusing. The breadth of the world was not clearly constructed in my mind, and neither were the actions of the characters, I understood the why but not the what.

This book has been recommended alongside books like Six of Crows, which I also did not enjoy and for similar reasons, so my read here could purely be user error. I want a book that makes me forget I’m reading and that was not this for me, but hopefully it will be for lots of other people.

Thank you Netgalley and Daphne Press for my arc

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC of 'To Cage a God' by Elizabeth May'

'To Cage a God' was not what I was expecting and maybe that is a good thing. The writing style was right up my alley and for the start of a duology, I was hooked. I felt like I sped through this book quicker than I do most books. However, my qualm is that I honestly felt like I missed a lot happening and that's probably my fault. I will be continuing this duology though in the future.

Galina and Sera's mother grafted gods into their bones. The Sisters, bound to powerful deities, have access to forbidden power and were raised to overthrow an empire. The sisters eventually take the reigns of a growing rebellion in an attempt to end the reign of a cruel royal family. Sera reunites with her estranged lover who is a rebel leader, while Galina infiltrates the palace.

I was hooked from the very first line. This novel has a lot of aspects which I enjoy: there are two sisters with very different paths, godly powers where the gods sort of have a mind of their own and compelling relationships. The magic system and the whole concept of gods being part of the character is also something which appealed to me. I especially enjoyed Sera's characterisation and her relationships with her sister, Galina, and her HUSBAND(!) Vitaly, as well as with her dragon god.

In saying so, when I was halfway, I started to feel disconnected from the writing style very much. I found that I was skipping a lot of pages because I wasn't interested in the other characters we were introduced to later on.

Overall, although I did not enjoy the writing style very much, this was still an enjoyable novel.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. Initially I was intrigued by the premise of the book - not to mention the incredible cover art! I liked the idea behind the story and in theory this book should have been right up my alley, however there were several aspecs of the writing that personally did not work for me. Firstly, this felt strongly like a firmly YA book desperately trying to force ittself into the adult category through the repeated and gratuitous use of profanity. The issue is not that I have a problem with swearing in books or that it cuases me any personal offence but the use of curse words felt unnatural and forced, it didn't come through as a genuine character choice - rather it felt like a fast and cheap way to 'age up' the writing. I also found the writing style to be not as clean as I was hoping, I continiually felt as if the reader is being told and not shown. Also the 'telling' was often overly detailed, every micromovement and every nanosecond of an action was painstakingly described to us, resulting in writing that felt slightly devoid of emotion and heavily undermined the impact of events in the book.

On the whole, this is not a bad book, just one that was not for me. I do think there is an audience of perhaps younger adult readers who still want a fun, fantasy adventure but also like to feel that the book is more towards the adult end of the spectrum, who will absolutely love this book.

I was so so excited to read this and so thankful to be given an arc copy to read.
But it kind of fell a little short for me. I felt that not alot really went on other than forming those founding relationships that we needed but it took a whole book to get there. I didn't buy sera and vitalitys relationship as I don't believe he could go from hating someone like sera to saying no no you're my wife it's fine, you're the exception, and then also accepting her sister. It was too quick and didn't feel real. There were a few relationships and characters I loved but as a whole I found that the whole book was just about forming those bonds and not much else.

This was okay. A mid paced dark political intrigue romantacy where two 'sisters' plot to over throw an evil empress. It was hard to get into at first as there were a lot of names being introduced that it felt as though we were expected to already know, even though it was the begining of the story. I actually stopped reading and did a goodreads search to see if this was actually the second in a series. There is also lot of telling in this story making it harder to connect with Galina and Sera and Katya or to understand why it is so important they take the risks they do. There is little emotional processing after some extremely traumatic events, the characters just plough straight on with their plan which lowered the stakes for me. From that point i never really thought any of the characters were in actual peril. The romances are well written and integrated well into the plot but the romances are also the only character development that occurs. Overall, I think that maybe we actually needed more context or backstory to help to understand these characters, maybe a prequel?

I found the story very cute and compelling, I read it with pleasure. I loved the descriptions of the places and characters and the reading was very smooth. The cover of the book is also very beautiful and definitely inspires reading.

I was so excited when I realized the author of this book is Elizabeth May, also author of The Falconer series. Those books were so important for me when I read them in my teens! I absolutely adored them. So maybe the expectations where too high from the beginning.

I love the atmospheric Imperial Russia inspired world. Also the magic system is something I haven't seen before so it was really exciting to discover how it works. Although I would have liked to see a bit more of insight of this dragon-god world, the book explains everything in a complete and easy way to understand.

There's power dynamics, evil rulers, dangerous rebels, secret labs, a world at the edge of war, and two sisters against everything. Sera and Galina's foster sister relationship was for me the best relationship in this book. Even better than their respective romance stories.

But for romantasy fans, yes, you can get your fair share of romance in this book. Each sister has her own romance story, and both relationships get a bit explicit at some point. And both romances were beautiful but I have to admit, they felt a bit plain at some point. Like it was repetitive and felt more of a tell but don't show. And I honestly would have loved for Vitaly to have a little bit of personally besides being in love. He doesn't think about ANYTHING else. Because yes, this is a multiple POV book. That was enjoyable.

I liked the pace of the story. I loved the world building at the beginning and how things get dramatic and urgent in no time. I liked the development of the story and it's conclusion. Even though the end promises big trouble to come in the next book.

So why do I have this feeling like I am missing something? Like the story could have given a little bit more and it would have been a wonderful read? I think some part (mostly toward the end) felt empty and with a lack of context, I would have loved more details that framed this story and less focus on the romance, which was already getting repetitive.

So, I don't even know how to rate this. Because I liked, I devoured this action-packed novel, and I want to read the next book when it comes out. But I still feel like I'm missing more details that would have made the story absolutely fantastic. Maybe its a 3 1/2 star reading.

The gods caged in question are in our main characters Galina and Sera's bones.
These sisters must sneak into the palace and help the rebellion end the reign of the royal family who are currently possessed by destructive gods.
However, both sisters also have romances going on that make life, and their plans. Much more difficult.
I enjoyed this, and there is Sapphic relationships, dragons, found family, magic and political and palace intrigue.
It was a little slow paced to start, but it picked up around the half way mark, and is such an interesting concept that kept me reading on!
I enjoyed the different POVs throughout, and they gave us good glimpses into the world and people's thoughts.
I will say, it's nice to have older protagonists, as 30-40 year olds aren't often read about, but they didn't read as that age. It didn't really read any different to the kind of attitude and mistakes YA protagonists make. Otherwise, really enjoyable, action and intrigue throughout!

*thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Oh wow this was different. It was a bit slow to start off with plus I’m not a big fan of third pov but eventually I got used to it. It had potential but I still think It needs some polishing story wise. Just felt a bit draggy and Info dumpy. I like multiple povs and the romance side of the story. Still recommend to give this book a go. Thank you!

DNF at 20%, this was a struggle to get through, stuffed full of dialogue and info dumpy without actually clarifying what the heck the plot was meant to be. Also extremely tropey and obvious about it.

*Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for an EARC in exchange for an honest review*

SCREAMING. I've not been reading a lot lately but this YANKED me out of my reading slump by the hair because honestly what the hell did I just read it was dark and romantic and original and just UGH.
Love.
This is me trying to put my jumbled thoughts into words so just bear with me yk.

The romance absolutely made this book so if you don't like romantacy... run away now. It was heavily enemies to lovers and like, enemies while lovers?? idk Vitaly just did things to my heart. I would absolutely go feral for him.

And the two protagonists, the sisters Galina and Sera oh my god. Absolutely powerful, morally greyish assassins with a mission to take down a corrupt empire? Say no more. And of course, the chronically ill and queer rep was just *mwah* as well (although I'm not an ownvoices reviewer for chronic illness rep, but other people seem to be complementary too!!).

Poisoner princess, assassin lover, god-sisters and a handmaiden tired of empirical evils, honestly the POV characters of To Cage a God were all masterpieces.

To make things even better, there was a complex (but easily understood thank god i was not in the mood for heavy fantasy) plot which was deliciously fast paced and exciting, definitely no boredom here- I raced through each page!

The ending felt slightly rushed, and I'm actually not a hugeee fam of a happily ever after (hence 4 stars not 5) but these are just personal preferences so.

If you want a fun, romantic, slightly gory, dark, new adult, etc etc book, and you loved Furyborn/Fourth Wing/NA fantasy in general, read To Cage a God. I'm sure you'll love it!!

I love The Falconer series with all my heart and To Cage a God was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024. So, I was very excited to get this ARC and dive into this new world. Alas, it didn't work for me. It pains me to give such a low rating but I really struggled, and more than once I had to force myself to continue reading. I couldn't connect with the characters, the writing style didn't captivate me and there were lots of fillers that bored me most of the time. I wanted to love this book so badly and I'm really sad I didn't.