Teo finds a man bleeding out in her barn and thinks little of it, until he implodes a room full of men (to defend her, mind) with as little effort as sneezing. As it happens, the unnamed man has the powers of a god, although so does his pursuer, who just punched a hole through his stomach. Now the denizens of their small town are tearing each other to shreds, and Teo and her best friend Huw must flee with the strange man, somehow caught up in an oncoming apocalypse of godly proportions. Oh, and Teo can turn her skin to stone. That’s a thing that happened.

I’m obsessed with this book, it’s too good. Every few pages I was highlighting a phrase, or sending friends a snippet, or simply just squealing into my own hands about how much fun I was having.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a lover of epic fantasy, and a pantheon of gods meddling with the poor mortals is pretty much my kryptonite. But the worldbuilding and traumatised immortals aren’t even the jewels of this book. The prose… the prose!! It’s delicious. It’s beautiful and vivid, switching effortlessly between poetic imagery and crude wit. Every character is laugh-out-loud hilarious, and every anguish is so devastating it shattered my heart.

Teo, Huw, Filiki and their good pal Skabby make for a wonderful motley crew. Teo and Huw’s lifelong friendship is instantly believable, with their inside jokes and their intimate knowledge of each other (not like that you weirdo!). The gods themselves are filled to the brim with the dreadful heartwrenching grief of an impossible unending life, cursed to see everyone they’ve ever loved wither and die before their eyes. There was no character, protagonist or antagonist, that I didn’t enjoy reading about.

The overall worldbuilding is subtle and perfectly paced, you only realise halfway through the book that you’re worrying they haven’t absorbed enough heat to get through the nightfrost, and then you immediately question where that vaguely intelligent thought came from. I’m supposed to include criticisms in my reviews to keep them balanced, so I’ll be honest, the one thing I didn’t follow (which is almost certainly my own fault) was where all the towns, cities, countries were, and pretty much all the stuff about why Joy hates the gods to begin with… I was having too much fun to be worrying about long-past wars.

If you like epic fantasy, gods who are human and awful to each other, enjoy laughing, and reading some of the best-formed sentences I’ve had the pleasure to read, you’ll enjoy this book. There’s even a tiny bit of eldritch horror, just as a treat.

5 stars; E. A. Rayner, I’m already desperate for the next one.