Review: The Gods Below is a gripping start to Andrea Stewart’s next fantasy epic, The Hollow Covenant

Andrea Stewart is the author of The Drowning Empire fantasy trilogy, which marked her out as a powerful new voice in the genre. That series wrapped up last year with The Bone Shard War, but Stewart didn't waste any time resting on her laurels. Last month, she released The Gods Below, the first novel in a new fantasy series called The Hollow Covenant.

If you're one of those readers who fell head over heels in love with Stewart's writing (yes, I'm looking at you, Mephi stans), then The Gods Below is a book you need to have on your radar. This is a different sort of world than the drifting island chain in The Drowning Empire, filled with fallen gods, desperate mortals trying to escape extinction, and a magic system based on gems and magic-infused air that's inventive and interesting. It also has plenty of the hallmarks of Stewart's last series, like an atmosphere that fluctuates between hopeful and chillingly creepy, body horror, fun animals (a god fond of turning into cats, in this case), multiple points-of-view, and more.

I've read The Gods Below and am here to share my impressions. This will be a largely spoiler-free review, although we will be discussing a few overarching elements of the world, characters, and plot set up.

Review: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart (The Hollow Covenant #1)

Since The Gods Below is the first book in a new secondary world fantasy series, you'd probably expect that it has to do a lot of heavy lifting to establish the lay of the land, the various magics at play, and all the lore that makes the story work. And you'd be right — The Gods Below does all of that and more. But that doesn't mean that it gets off to a slow start; just the opposite. This book comes out swinging in its opening chapters, and immediately drew me into Stewart's next imaginative SFF saga.

The Gods Below is set in a world which is a shattered post-apocalyptic remnant of what it was once was. And I mean that literally; after an event called The Shattering, where gods were driven from their home in the hollow core of the earth and humans cut down the magical trees which sustained the planet, the world has been split into sections by barriers of dense magical dust which drive people to insanity, violence, and even death if they inhale too much of it. But those barriers aren't a bad thing, at least according to the lone beneficial deity to humankind, named Kluehnn. They just split the world into definable sections in order to make it easier for him to "restore" each land one at a time, turning barren landscapes into lush jungles capable of sustaining all sorts of life.

The big catch to that the restoration process also reforms all the life forms in each land, including the humans. Around half the population is lost each time, while the remainder are reborn as "altered" beings, with wings, scales, horns, and other bodily changes which bring them closer to gods than humans. It also unlocks the ability to tap into magic for many of these altered, and gives them far greater physical capabilities than a human.

The magic is a highlight of The Gods Below. It reminded me a lot of the system used in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, mixed with a bonding system reminiscent of Aes Sedai and warders from The Wheel of Time. Different people gain access to different types of magics — most altered can draw the infused magical air which originates below ground. Other characters are able to take in a breath full of that magical air, swallow a gemstone of a particular color (each color unlocks different abilities) and use them to execute great feats — so long as they hold that breath. Stewart uses this magic system to great effect, and it makes for some very cool set pieces throughout the story.

But at the heart of it all are the characters. One of the things that always stood out the most to me about Stewart's previous series was her use of both first person and third person perspectives, giving a different feel to different characters depending on their style of viewpoint. The Gods Below uses the same structure, with the two sisters at the heart of the story, Hakara and Rasha, getting first-person POVs, and everyone else getting the third-person perspectives commonly used in modern fantasy in recent decades. The result is a solid mix of characters, each of whom feels different on the page.

That said, I did feel that not all characters are balanced quite equally. Some, like Hakara, get a lot of development and have tons of personality. Others, like the disgraced noble Sheuan, have some really interesting and unique elements to them, but sometimes those developments came slightly out of left field because they didn't receive the same attention as Hakara or Rasha. In general, the characters felt a little thinner to me than in Stewart's previous series.

The pacing is another thing that occasionally tripped me up in The Gods Below. There were times that this book grabbed me by the throat and plunged me through chapter after chapter because I needed to know what happened next. But in some instances those moments were cut up, with set pieces having chapter breaks focused on other characters in the middle of them that caused them to stretch out. I don't mind that on the whole, but the way it was done here jarred me out of the immersion more than once, because the cliffhanger action chapters were all one compact set of scenes while time passed differently for the characters in the other chapters. For example, late in the book there's an abrupt chapter break with a secondary character after a traumatic scene. Weeks then pass for all the other POV characters as plot threads wrap up, but when we come back to that first character, it's in the very next moment after their traumatic event. It distracted me a little from what was actually happening on the page.

The world of The Gods Below is lush, vivid, and filled with mystery

Where The Gods Below shined the most for me was in its world, and there Stewart really outdid herself. The animalistic altered are just cool. And since we see them both from within their own closed groups as well as from the outside, we get a good feel for the various factions at play in the story. The long history of why the world ended is laced with mysteries which are gradually unraveled. Suffice to say, the story everyone believes at the outset turns out to have some immense holes in it, which are filled in as we learn more about the other gods who inhabit this world and the cataclysm which brought them to the surface.

That's not to say that everything is answered in this first book, thankfully. This is the first book of a trilogy and very much feels like one, answering some questions while opening the door to many others. We see many aspects of this world in The Gods Below, from the cities of a land yet to be restored to the cult-like den of Kluehnn's followers, and even the underground tunnels that lead down into the depths of the earth. Those tunnels are filled with the magical dust I mentioned above, splitting them into "aeroclines," naturally occurring shelves where the magic becomes denser and more lethal the deeper you go. There's just a lot to soak in about The Gods Below, and I'm very excited for my next trip to this fantasy world.

There's also some great romantic tension in this book. I won't spoil which characters get it, but I will say that one romantic plotline was one I anticipated, and another came about quickly enough that it surprised me, leading to one of the book's steamiest scenes and most fascinating relationships. The romance balances similarly in this book to The Bone Shard Emperor, the second book in The Drowning Empire, which featured a pretty prominent plotline of two characters circling one another while bound by duty. Except The Gods Below has more, and I'd be willing to bet those elements will move even more into the forefront as the series goes on.

Though of course, I could be wrong! We'll just have to meet back here when book two is out and see what happens. And I will be reading book two, because I need to know what's next for Rasha, Haraka, the winged altered Thassir and all the rest.

Verdict

The Gods Below is another solid fantasy book from Andrea Stewart. If you enjoy inventive magic systems, dark fantasy worlds, a healthy dose of pining, and lore so dense you can slice it with a knife, this is one you'll want to check out. Stewart has been on a roll these past few years, establishing herself as one of the preeminent new voices in the genre, and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. When we look back on the most notable fantasy books of 2024, it's pretty much a given that The Gods Below will be among them.

The Gods Below is available now from Orbit. You can find out more about Andrea Stewart's works at her website.

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