Godblind v Sumo

• Beer: Sumo
• Brewery: Mad Squirrel
• Style: American Pale Ale
• Strength: 4.7%
• Hops: SUmmit & MOsaic

I may be biased because the brewery is just down the road from me but this is one of the best APA’s I’ve ever had. Heavy and strong like its namesake, the bitterness slams into the tastebuds and rolls around on the palate. Good amount of tropical flavour as well which is ideal in this heat. Bought it from a great craft beer shop near my parents’ called Wishful Drinking. Check out their website and if you’re nearby I recommend a visit.

• Book: Godblind
• Author: Anna Stephens
• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Published: 2017

This book is criminally underrepresented on bookstagram and booktube in my opinion, or at least so far as I have seen. The plot is perhaps not the most boundary-pushing. An age-old enemy that hasn’t been seen by most for so long that they have become almost mythic, autonomous border warriors who know different, a god long thought dead rising up. It’s pretty standard fantasy fare, but that’s actually perfect for this book in my opinion. That’s because where this book excels is in showing the personalities of its cast in a fraction of the space of some other popular authors (no side-eye at Sanderson, no sir), f*cking awesomely choreographed fight scenes, and by not allowing itself to become bogged down in unnecessary fluff. That’s not to say the prose is as trimmed down as Hemingway, say. It is more like Hobb or Lynch I think, though the book is tonally very different to either of those examples.

There are 10 PoVs in Godblind though 3 of them are more prominent than the others. These are Rillirin, a Rilporian enslaved by the bloodthirsty, Red Gods following Mireces; Crys, a Rilporian soldier, scoundrel with a good heart but questionable morals for a soldier; and Dom, perhaps the most unique of the PoV characters. Dom is a Wolf – one of the previously mentioned border warriors – but more than that he suffers from visions. I say ‘suffers’ because although they show him important things, they also leave him more susceptible to the influences of the Red Gods, especially given the mysterious darkness in his past.

Fast-paced and brutal with great characterisation.