God’s Eye: Awakening is what you might expect from Aleron Kong, but with higher stakes and with zero fucks given, much like our nascent god, Zero Fell. Until volumes seven and eight of The Land, we didn’t really see much by way of consequences for the protagonist or his closest allies. This is clearly not going to be the case with the Labyrinth World novels. As much as Zero Fell begins his journey on Telos with generous sponsors and an appearance of a potentially–charmed–new life, that illusion is thoroughly shattered by the end of this first volume in the series.
Where the story of The Land is firmly rooted in a basis of standard RPG fare, God’s Eye establishes just as much of a basis in RTS as in RPG gaming. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as future volumes are released and Zero more firmly establishes himself as a god in this new world.
Aleron Kong infuses this story with the same irreverent wit, pop-culture homage, and character-building you’ll be familiar with if you’ve enjoyed his previous work…but with a lot more violence and with a faster pace than the slow build-up to a major conflict we experienced with The Land.
This book manages to be darker, coming off the heels of the eighth book of The Land (which was substantially darker than the earlier installments, though that darkness really started taking root near the latter half of volume seven)…so that should serve as a warning for anyone who’s just looking for a fun read with light-hearted fantasy excitement.
The audiobook is competently narrated by Luke Daniels and I look forward to hearing more narration from him as this series progresses.