Jesse Hajicek - The God Eaters

Imprisioned for 'inflammatory writings' by the totalitarian Theocracy, shy intellectual Ashleigh Trine figures his story's over. But when he meets Kieran Trevarde, a hard-hearted gunslinger with a dark magic lurking in his blood, Ash finds that necessity makes strange heroes... and love can change the world.

Comment: I was very curious about this book for a long time and even more after reading similar books, meaning, books featuring a sort of epic fight before the happy ending. I knew this wasn't an erotic book and I am glad because in the end I thought it was so sweet, too much sex would just make it look cheap.

This story presents us to two different young men. Ash is timid and innocent and Kieran has done pretty bad things in his life. They meet on a train going to the prison where they'll also be cell mates. While in there, their relationship starts to intensify but they're more concerned in surviving the prison and in figuring out what ways they could use to escape. When everything seems hopeless, something happens and they do run away. From that moment on, they get closer because it's best to go forward while having company and the best way to fight an enemy is to be a unit.

I liked this story, in particular the tone of it. It wasn't harsh or simple, it had layers of meanings and even the most obvious things could have more than one way of interpretation. The world the author created was a sort of dictatorship where everyone was forced to worship the same God or be punished. People were forced to put aside their culture and memories and rituals but there's always those who resist. Ash was part of that Resistance and that is why he went to prison. In this world many people has magical Talents, heritage from their ancestors. The ruling people wanted to control those with powers so they would mind rape them if they wanted. Things are pretty bad, but after running from prison, both Ash and Kieran decided to do their best to stop things and make them better.

I liked the characters, of course they're very different and sort of complement each other, they need the other one to make them stronger as well, so in terms of team work, they were OK. They also fell in love and their romance was more sweet than passionate and I liked how apparently simple it looked like. There were many good scenes where we got to see the feelings developing between them.

Ash was innocent and timid but her showed an inner strength later on that was one of the most important things in the fight to battle the villain. His courage was wonderful and happened because he knew he had the power to love and to believe in the goodness of things.

Kieran had had an awful life and thought he deserved nothing good but after meeting Ash things changed. He started to convince himself it was OK to be in love. They both discovered more magic in themselves than what they thought possible and this too was a key plot line, which allowed things to end well.

I really liked the feel of the story, I was eager to keep reading and didn't want to put the book down.

My only issue with the book is the unfinished business, the author has inserted some things but didn't explain some of them or didn't offer a finality to them, and I think those things should have been explained, like what happened to one of the characters, what meaning has the powers the characters showed, exactly what was going to happen in th near future for them..simple things, apparently unimportant, but that would make the story feel more...complete, I guess.

So, in the end I liked, it was a very good read, but it could have been perfect. It was an incredible voyage through feelings and emotions and I was very glad to see the good guys having the happy end they deserved.