Review: God Tokens

God Tokens | Book 1: Phelen the Cycle by Emily Bellman
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

God Tokens Book 1: Phelen the Cycle by Emily Bellman took me straight into a world where the old gods still whisper through the trees, and a quiet young man is pulled from the comfort of his village into a tangle of ancient schemes, secrets, and the kind of politics that no one ever really talks about openly.

There is a crackle in the air right from the opening, a sense of waiting, as if something is always about to happen, but never quite does until the last possible moment. I could almost feel the tension between the characters, that hush before the storm, with their nerves stretched tight. Bellman knows how to let us settle into unease, always giving us enough time to feel the weight of it before letting us breathe again, only to tighten things once more.

This story is pure epic fantasy, not simply because of its gods and quests, but because myth clings to the very bones of the world. Still, it is not all about fate or prophecy. Bellman is interested in how belief itself shapes lives, how the gifts and burdens handed down by the gods twist people into forms they never expected. The familiar tropes are here—hidden bloodlines, long journeys—but she turns them over, pays more attention to the strain of faith and the mess that comes with power.

The characters, at first, seem to follow the paths I thought I knew, but they are changed slowly, as water wears away stone, until I realised they had become something else altogether. It never feels forced. What I found most striking was the way Bellman balances the pull of the gods with the messy, honest bonds between people. The story keeps circling back to the question of how much of our striving for freedom is just a shadow of the gods’ own stories, played out again and again.

I was taken with the treatment of faith here. It is not only a comfort, but a trap as well. The book returns often to the way shared stories hold communities together, yet those same tales can strangle anyone who does not quite fit. There are times when the politics twist themselves into knots, and I lost my way a little, but the relationships always seemed to draw the threads back together.

The pace begins gently, with time enough to sink into the world, and that patience is rewarded. When all the different parts finally come together, it feels wholly earned. There was a patch, somewhere in the middle, where the plot grew a bit tangled and I lost track, but soon enough Bellman brought the pieces back into place.

By the end, I found myself thinking about how loyalty and fate rarely move in step with each other, and how our choices grind against the weight of all that was decided before we were born. The story feels like a living myth, yet there is a warmth to it, a sense that these lives are real and not just figures in an old tale.

For those who enjoy sprawling casts, divine plots, and a world that feels built from the ground up, as in The Will of the Many, there is so much here to enjoy. If you are after a single hero travelling a lonely road, though, you will not find that here.

Thank you Netgalley and Emily Bellman for this ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

MY WEBSITE.
Read all my reviews.