Ok. First, excellent book. If you read it, you’re not going to understand what’s going on for awhile and that’s by design. 

I think there’s some amazing ideas at work, this is in many ways a meditation on trauma/PTSD and the way it shapes people. The structure is very different as a result, and I really like that instead of having a big superhero ending, the book has a weird, reflective ending instead. It feels like a more mature ending to the ideas the book plays with.

All that said, I’ve seen reviews that genuinely confuse me. It’s ok if you like a book or not, but, as an example, I saw someone mention pedophilia and be angry about it and to the best of my memory, that never happened. 
I saw someone else claim the point of the book is that extreme suffering is good actually, because it makes the best version of a person—and no. No, I’d even argue that the book is almost the exact opposite of that. It’s arguably more about accepting how trauma can turn you into essentially a completely different person. 
As someone with a lot of trauma, I found how this was handled to be moving and empathetic. Not perfect maybe, but I don’t think anyone writing about trauma can be perfect.

I will caution that if abuse is a hard trigger for you, you probably don’t want to read this book yet. I’ve tried to include trigger warnings for what IS in the book. Take them seriously. 

Also, I see a lot of people getting upset about a POV chracter named Erwin who is your hardened older army type. He is a complex character who has multiple functions in the story. I think he needs to be there, and while he wasn’t my favorite character, he fits into the themes of PTSD (I think for obvious reasons). I don’t think the author intended him for any type of propaganda and the book intentionally stays away from anything political. I think the government and military are not idealized by any means in this story. But I see that he’s triggering people, and I understand that a military POV character could be a trigger so, if you’re upset reading this review, again, avoid book.

That said, I do think this is original and I really liked some of the bigger reveals near the end and how they developed Carolyn and Steve specifically. And the lions are amazing, best characters.

This book was a wild, wild ride. I first want to say it was a fascinating, plot and very well written. I think a lot of people would really enjoy this book. It’s about a man with God, like power and children that he’s taken in to teach them different things. The children are all crazy and not very likable, but part of the charm of it is understanding them and their traumas. The hardest part of the book for me was that there was a lot of animal violence. There was violence against dogs, and I cannot handle violence against dogs and violence against tigers. There was also beautiful connection with animals as well, but , it was too much for me and I had to skip large portions of the book due to it. Other than that, I would say it was a very brilliant buck, and a very unique book. There was a lot of nonsensical things, and a lot of questions that never got answered, but it all works somehow. One thing that was really interesting. was that there were always storylines and you would learn the entire storyline and feel so confused and then at the last possible moment, you would get an extra litigation and it always was kind of cool. As someone who really hate surprises and not understanding things, I thought that this was done super well. But I gave it a three star rating due to the animal abuse. 

Bizarre, bloody, and a serious page turner. A dark tale of what and why are humans with lots to say on the nature of power and vengeance. The violence and gore are too much for me at times, but still a great book.

HEY, NO THANKS??
The central idea is inventive and captivating, I was fascinated to know more, and I vehemently disagree with the ending so hard that I simply cannot recommend it. To the point that actually, I'm just going to say it:
This book makes the argument that horrific cruelty & abuse are justifiable means to motivate someone to achieve their full potential.
I think that's simply so awful that it's not worth reading the rest of the book.
Against the dark landscape of slaughter and pain and rape and torture and killing and resurrection and killing again, there are oddly funny moments, joking lines that have absolutely no hope of landing. Any goodwill the interesting premise created curdled, soured, and died.

In fact, this book has caused me to rethink my standards for audiobooks. I listened to this for free and I still want my money back.

Fuck this/10

I don't know where to start...

Everyone seems to love this book and everyone says how weird this book is. I was very excited to read it. I love weird, unhinged fantasy.

As soon as I started reading it, it was painfully obvious the book was written by a man. So now I'm cursed with the knowledge the author is a leg man.

Moreover, the book is extremely, painfully American, both in terms of tone and how it treats the outside world. Plus it is somewhat republican-coded. I would like to ascertain the whereabouts of the author on January 6th.

For a book that has SO MUCH going on, it manages to be really boring for a big part of it. There's definitely bad pacing issues, and what could have been a very interesting plot suffers.

Not a single character is even remotely likeable. Except the lions, of course, but they always feature in the most boring parts of the book.

The whole book features too much gratuitious violence, and violence towards women, and then it's excused as 'oh she needed to become who she's meant to be' and extreme violence is good, actually. 

All I can say is that I like the idea of this book, but this book is one of the worst things I've ever read. I almost DNF-ed it multiple times, but the only thing that kept me going was trying to understand why does this book have such positive reviews. I genuinely don't understand the praise it receives. It's not like with other books where I could just admit okay it's not for me, but whatever, could be someone else's thing. The praise for this book concers me.  

I couldn't put this down when I first read it, but it should be noted this book is dark, and goes to some dark places (see content warnings) The story does jump around time wise, which I know can be confusing. The stereotypical climax for a book does come a little early compared to the end of the book as there are still character developments and story wrap up that occurs after. 

A very slow start. I didn’t really care about Steve’s chapters to begin with, but as the story started coming together everything started feeling more interesting. The epilogue was perhaps unnecessary, but it still felt like it added a little something to the end.

Could not stomach all the torture of the children by Father as well as too much gore.