Gods of Earth

By: Craig DeLancey

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Against all odds, - A God has returned - to Earth.

Chance Kyrien is turning seventeen, and on this day he will be confirmed as a Puriman and learn the shape of his life to come. Young Chance is ambitious, rebellious, but also fiercely devout, and his only thoughts are about farming and wine-making - and marrying the girl he loves. But in a shocking burst of violence, Chance's dreams are shattered. Now he must survive against hellish forces to face his ultimate foe: a long-forgotten god whose destiny is intertwined with his own.

©2013 Craig DeLancey (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Worthwhile, but...

Gods of Earth is worth the listen, with some interesting characters, but it's not special. I recommend it, but not as a life-changer.

better the 2nd time around

listened to it a while back. not terribly impressed with either the story or the narration. However, I usually listen to stuff more than once and upon this listening I realized that the story is a lot more complex and involving than I first thought it to be. The narration is spot on. In general, a very good listen.

Pleasant Surprise!!!

Story was sort of start and stop for me. Would be very interesting then die off but overall it turned out nicely.
Nick Podehl was EXCELLENT.

Good book. Excellent performance by Nick Powel.

Book was good but left a few loose ends. The wrap up really leaves you thinking there should be more to the story....its almost like the ending was setting the ground work for a sequel.

A moving adventure

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

For me, it took a while to get into the story and relate to the characters - about a quarter of the way into the book. But after that, I was all in. I felt the losses the characters felt, and their passions and their plight.

Any additional comments?

The end was satisfying and left me thinking about the characters and the world for days after finishing the book.

Too much strange creatures

I bought this audio book during a promotion, which is a good way to try new authors. This is how I discovered Larry Correia, who became one of my favorite authors. In this case, though, I'm not sure I would jump on Craig DeLancey's next fantasy book.
I liked the basic idea of the story, because usually I'm interested in a quest type adventure. However, there were a few things that threw me off balance.
My biggest issue was that there were too many strange creatures, and at certain points it was hard to follow who was who and who did what and why. For example, what was the function of the modegast? (Sorry, if I misspell it, I write it after hearing.) It felt as if the writer wanted to include them only because he found them cool, and anyway, they could just chase the heroes giving some excitement. Also, a (kind of) vampire? Really? In this sense I think less would have been more.
Talking about writer's intervention - you know, when something isn't really consistent, but happens anyway to move the plot forward - I found a few events sticking out. For example killing the parents without hesitation (instead of only immobilize them) and kidnapping the girl just to have a motive for the hero to go on the quest.
At certain points I got bored, and tapped the "skip 30 seconds" icon quite a few times.
Besides that I found the writer's voice enjoyable, and the characters were drawn well enough for me. I also found the mythic base interesting and I liked the names a lot. (Though, after a while I half-expected Thor to appear, but it was just me, watching too much Marvel films.)

Interesting World... Meh Characters

The author clearly thought out the world.. Very very clearly. The world and history atleast appeared to be well thought out..
And it was crafted in an interesting fashion with a pace ticking clock that keep the story moving at breakneck pace which prevents the characters and in some cases the reader from asking too many questions that would neve be explained

Now if the main protagonists had been more interesting, I really might have liked this story better.. But unfortunately it's focal character was reason why no one likes teenage boys, his protector is reason why no one likes Adults and for the most part every other character is a cardboard walking cliches with the few nearly interestering characters getting next to No air time while getting the honor of horrible deaths, sidelining, and being lampshades.. It's like the author had 5 interesting characters but since they couldn't figure out how to get so they wrote 15 other crappy characters in the hopes that maybe you wouldn't notice cool ones.

I have probably given this review more thought than author gave to his story but I assure that both endings will be about as satisfying..

Great blending of lore

Love the dystopian future landscape and the depth of detail of intervening years. A quick and fun read. Looking for more from this author.

Unexpectedly well done!

Would you listen to Gods of Earth again? Why?

I purchased on a whim and was pleasantly surprised. The story was compelling, fully developed characters and a fantasy world that was easily acceptable.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Gods of Earth?

SPOILER ALERT.....when the protagonist becomes a demi-God and spends Eons learning to defeat his nemesis. I didn't see it coming and thought it clever on the authors' part.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

When you are destined to be a God and all you want is a simple farmer's life, you have some difficult choices to make.

A full throated defence of blind faith

Any additional comments?

but seriously this is so one dimensional its stupid. It starts off somewhat promising but it becomes pretty clear that what the author was trying to do here was promote a very specific view of the world. Brandon Sanderson said it best in The Way of Kings: "the role of a storyteller is not to tell you what to think, but to give you questions to think about." This is not that. It is very clearly telling you what to think, and bluntly. World building is very formulaic and in a way that feels like the author was just doing a scifi checkbox thing. A huge disappointment.