Book Review: The Merciless Ones

“𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘴𝘰 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘺 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵.” -Deka

I will begin by saying that I was OBSESSED with the first installment of this book The Gilded Ones.

It was fresh the story was captivating and Deka, the main character, gripped my heart. Read my review here.

I wanted to love this sequel as much as I loved the first one but this one just didn’t hit in the same way. And if I’m being honest, I feel like that sometimes tends to happen with sequels. In any case here are my two cents.

Synopsis: It’s been six months since Deka freed the goddesses in the ancient kingdom of Otera and discovered who she really is… but war is waging across the kingdom, and the real battle has only just begun. For there is a dark force growing in Otera—a merciless power that Deka and her army must stop.

In this story we see Deka and her army fighting battle after battle. The book begins literally in a battle field and we are thrown into it and left to figure out what’s going on. 

We soon learn that Deka has been sent by the Gods to find and bring back this ultimate power that could destroy the Gods. And we also learn that there is another set of male Gods in Otera as well. Whew.

I will say that this book had A LOT going on. Although I enjoyed the story, this took me longer than usual to get through mainly because there were many moving parts and the characters were all over the place, there were so many people, it was a lot to keep track of.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱: I loved that Deka continued to find herself in this story and I appreciated the way her friendships continued to evolve. I truly enjoyed also how the world evolved and we learned more about the history of the Gods and the foundation of Otera. I think those details were important and added so much to the setting and understanding of the world we were in.

While I loved Deka and enjoyed her finding herself the book felt very confusing for the first 40% in terms of location and what was happening. I found myself continuously trying to figure out where the characters were in terms of location and that was frustrating.

The story seemed to not flow as nicely as the first one and I felt I never really connected to it at all.

Even so, I felt there were tons of good moments throughout the story and I will most likely read the third one, which I know is coming based on the ending.

What are your thoughts? Have you read this? Is it on your list

Trigger Warning– Murder, Abuse

Have you read this one? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.