#The Cruel Gods

[a-m-pyra]

A Women's Game

Men fight wars. Women win them.

—♫♫♫—

Before and after:

[autumn2may]

Today our judges review Trudie Skies' The Thirteenth Hour, first book in The Cruel Gods series, for this year's Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) finals! 🐉

[lishakayrylantcook]

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAYS 14TH IN 2024

[geethr75]

Review of The Children of Chaos (The Cruel Gods 2) by Trudie Skies

Blurb When the saints call, the sinners answer.Chaos stalks the steam-powered city of Chime and threatens the existence of the gods and their domains. Kayl swore to protect Chime’s mortals from their gods’ cruel whims, but when she agrees to represent the mortals of a god long thought dead, Kayl is thrust into a political role that goes against everything she’s ever stood for.As the newly…

[beneathathousandskies]

Domain Reading Challenge

Hello!    It’s me again. Yesterday Trudie Skies the author of the amazing Cruel Gods series came up with a new reading challenge based on the Domains that feature in that series. (I couldn’t not share the map again) This looks like a fun challenge and has made me go hunting this morning, and below you’ll find my pick for each Domain/Month. I believe the challenge has also been set up on…

[hinamie]

new official illust of them with puppies healed something in me

[biblionerdreflections]

Cover Reveal - The End of Time

Today I have the absolute privilege of participating in the cover reveal for the forthcoming final novel in The Cruel Gods series by Trudie Skies. I loved the first book in this series (my review) and have been meaning to read the second installment. I’ll be bumping it up my TBR now that I know the final book is on its way soon. 🙂 Let’s start things off with a little information about the…

[drenched-in-sunlight]

i love the DLC man

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[zennesaph]

angel

[a-m-pyra]

You know what? Enjoy. That's it, I need to go to sleep.

Besos.

[gavfleetout]

I love how holly black took the ‘brooding and mysterious love interest who is a jerk but is secretly in love with the mc” and instead of making a charismatic asshole with a six pack she made a pathetic loser boy who is drunk all the time, can’t fight, and wants nothing to do with the main plot.

[alleyesony0u]

literally cannot stop thinking about how intentional it is in pvp civilization that people refer to evbo as "kid" or tell him he is "just a kid". it isn't just a headcanon that he is probably a teenager he IS a teenager. he's impulsive like a teenager, he's naive like a teenager, he doesn't understand romance like a teenager, he's materialistic and looking for anything that will give him comfort or happiness like a teenager because he IS A TEENAGER. he's a kid. he's a kid cursed with immortality, and what do people do with that? abuse it. evbo is a kid in a horrible, violent society, and he knows nothing else, but he still believes, naively, like a kid, that there are people who are better than this society. he tells zam that he and the iron swords don't need to farm him, that it will do them no good. what about his life? what about tabi's? and he forgets where he is. what he is.

in this society, evbo is not a child. in this society, evbo is not the "chosen one". he is a tool. he is an object. what do you do with tools and objects? you use them.

and yet evbo still stands there, a kid. and the adults of this society exploit that. he is just a kid, he doesn't get it. he is just a kid, he doesn't realize how many lives he's saving. he is just a stupid, naive, vulnerable kid with too much love and too much hope in his heart. we can use that.

he is a calf standing on wobbly knees born knowing it is destined for the slaughterhouse.

[tinkkles]

I really do love the fresh take on the dead wife aspect in scavengers reign like. She didn't die in some terrible accident or at the hands of an evil third party, she died because of you. Because of your ambition and carelessness and because you didn't prioritize her enough to even look for her as the ship was going down. You will carry this guilt for the rest of your life. She will haunt you forever. Pray that her ghost is enough to change you for the better.

[beneathathousandskies]

Cover Reveal: The End of Time (The Cruel Gods #3)

Hello! Late in the day because this has been a week (I have literally, figuratively and in every way possible been buried with books this week). But today I am delighted to be joining the cover reveal for The End of Time, the third and final book in The Cruel Gods series by Trudie Skies. I have loved this series from the beginning and I am very excited to see this final installment. However,…