In fact, it’s been awhile since I’ve been so compelled to finish reading a book of this size in two days flat. However, it didn’t take long before the story took flight and it became immensely hard to put the darn book down. One could put that down as the author trying to set the scene and also establish his voice in this ambitious debut. I’m usually fine with head-jumping POVs in a single chapter because I grew up on fantasy in the 80s, but with so many new characters doing that at the beginning of a book it could get pretty jarring.

It also didn’t help much that the first several chapters constantly changed POVs and locations pretty quickly. Two of the main characters, Fiona (aka Fi) and Zeke, appeared in the second chapter and it immediately read like a cliched young adult urban fantasy with romance thrown into the mix. The first quarter of the book has some issues which would have put me off without knowing how much better the rest of it would be. Rise of Gods was overall an utterly entertaining read, but I would like to highlight something which had been raised by some other reviewers as well. The level of research that Ashton has poured into pulling this off must have been enormous. I think this was achieved mainly through the notion of how myths were created, propagated, adopted and adapted through the ages by different cultures and peoples. What truly amazed me was how well such an amalgamation of different lores worked in the story. From Greek to Norse, Celtic, Sumerian, South American, Russian, Chinese and Japanese myths, as well as legends of yore, all could be found in this singular UF creation which made me geek-squeal in delight many times during the course of reading this book. You need to read Paternus because somehow the brilliant Dyrk Ashton managed to take almost every myth and legend that we know and didn’t know of into a cohesive fantasy narrative that was incredibly fun to read. Published: July 2017 by Paternus Books Media (Indie)Īn excellent new take on urban fantasy, Paternus: Rise of Gods was fascinating, fun and simply fantastic.Ĭalling all fans of mythology, lore, legends, folk tales and all that jazz. Series: The Paternus Trilogy (Book #1 of 3)

Paternus series