Faithbreaker is the third and final novel in Hannah Kaner’s well-received debut trilogy, concluding the story begun in Godkiller and continued in Sunbringer. I enjoyed Godkiller, and found Sunbringer moved away from some of the things that made Godkiller so much fun. Faithbreaker, fortunately, revisits some of what made Godkiller very enjoyable and adds some fresh elements. I confess I was worried about whether Kaner could stick the landing, but it works.
Set in a fantasy world where queerness is normal and gods range from horrifyingly powerful to dangerous nuisances that professionals are often hired to kill, the Fallen Gods trilogy has followed the travails of Kissen, a cynical godkiller with a prosthetic leg; Inara, the (part-god) teenaged daughter of a rebellious noblewoman; Skedi, the small god of white lies who’s been bound to Inara for as long as either of them can remember; and Elogast, baker, knight, former general and war-hero, whose love for and loyalty to his king, Arren, has been tested, betrayed, broken, and fundamentally changed. Godkiller brought these characters together. Sunbringer split them apart. Faithbreaker brings them together in new configurations.
War has come for the country of Middren in earnest. The rulers of Talicia have revived the fire-god Hseth as a god of war, terrible and unstoppable, hungry for burning and human sacrifice. They drive their army south into Middren, burning all in their path, summoning Hseth onto the field of battle as an unmatchable weapon.
Arren tried to become a god. He failed, but has supporters still. Lessa Craier, Inara’s once-distant mother, raised a rebellion against him from those Middrenites who wanted a return to Middren’s old ways and old gods, rather than the attempted eradication of gods that took place during Arren’s reign. Elogast also participated in this rebellion, while trying to keep Inara safe. But with the Talicians invading, unity is the only hope for Middren’s survival. Elogast agrees to join and to lead Arren’s army, wrestling with his feelings—with his love, with his betrayal, with his knowledge of the ways in which Arren will not change and with the fact that his affection for him remains. Kissen and Inara join Lessa Craier aboard her ship to seek aid from potential foreign allies. Inara is still struggling with her heritage, with her powers, with what it means for her to be who she is. Her relationship with Skedi has been tested and reforged, but Skedi is desperately afraid that their bond will not be enough to keep either of them safe.
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Faithbreaker
Kissen has no loyalty either to Middren or to Lessa Craier, but she loves Inara in a quasi-parental fashion. She wants to protect Inara, and she finds Lessa abrasive and attractive in about equal measure. (I appreciate how bisexual these novels are, I really do.) Also, Lessa’s vessel is travelling to where Kissen hopes to find her sisters, fled to seek refuge from the worsening violence in Middren. Kissen, for all that her relationship with Lessa is competitive and adversarial, flings herself into danger on behalf of Inara, and on behalf of Lessa, very readily. Especially when it turns out that the foreign allies they’ve turned to have been negotiating with Talicia, and it’ll take help, and some dangerous manoeuvering, in order to achieve any aid at all.
It is difficult to assess the third novel of a trilogy holistically. This one wraps up a number of threads in a satisfying way. I was not expecting Elogast and Arren to become lovers, but it’s a development that fits with both their characters. They have orbited each other, emotionally, from the beginning: consummating that relationship, despite everything, makes sense, in the face of a war to the knife. They aren’t thinking about having something lasting, and it shows.
Kaner writes a number of battle sequences here. Tactics aficionados will probably want to nitpick, but Kaner does convey a visceral sense of tension and peril while keeping tight focus on Elogast, much as she has for less full-scale action scenes across the trilogy. Meanwhile, while engaging in abrasive, acerbic flirting with Lessa, Kissen has a fair share of action scenes of her own. And discovers, or admits, that she does care about more than her adoptive sisters and herself: She’s willing to fight for Inara and Inara’s inconveniently attractive mother, even if that means facing down a god with fists made of lava, an entire ship full of enemies, or figuring out how to break the Talicians’ faith in Hseth to make it more possible to cast her down. Or, indeed, facing Hseth incarnate and aflame across the battlefield that will decide the entire war. As too will Skediceth, small god of white lies: He wasn’t meant for heroism, but he has it nonetheless.
The relationships that Kaner portrays here are imperfect, in a very real way, messy in the fashion of all uncontainable emotions, and richly drawn. Family—by blood or choice, lost or left or found or made—is as central a concern here as loyalty, betrayal, and love. What is sacrifice, after all, but an act of love? What is worship but love intensified?
With a good sense of tension and a solid grasp of pace, Kaner drives her narrative to its epic conclusion. Faithbreaker turns the Fallen Gods trilogy into a satisfying whole. I’ll be looking out for what Kaner does next.
Faithbreaker is published by Harper Voyager.
Read an excerpt.
