Interesting world building with the retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the myths of Inanna. Set in the ancient world of Sumer (now modern day Iraq), we get a glimpse at the first hero of literature, every day life in Mesopotamia, and the added lore of the gods, the Annunaki!

We get 3 different POVs from our main characters who are all different but connected which kept me intrigued. I also liked the occasional sarcastic sense of humor from Gilgamesh 😅 Most of the main characters had some decent development, although for some it took a really long time to get there. 

I enjoyed the first and last thirds the best, they were well paced and kept me more engaged. The first third had a nice set up for the story and I genuinely enjoyed all 3 POVs. However by the middle, I only liked Ninshubar and then in the last third I came around on Gilgamesh but Inanna lost my interest for a looong time until the last couple of chapters 🙈

Although it was easy to read and engaging enough to finish, I had a lot of issues with it that make me unsure if I want to continue the series or not:

1. The characters are pretty flat-we don’t get to know them all that well and I know it’s book 1 of a trilogy but for a 400+ page book where we spend all of our time with these 3 characters, I feel like we should know a little more about them by the end? Their actions and internal dialogue is just constantly repeated, and we don’t get a deep dive into their psyche/motivations with the occasional exception of Gilgamesh. Plus their voices all sounded the same so at times I questioned whose chapter I was reading.
2. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural, it felt so disjointed and forced at times. There were also times where an exclamation point was used for every! Single! Sentence! (I know I text and write captions like that sometimes but for a serious character that has never used them before that point, it felt wrong)
3. Too much telling over showing and repetitive-at one point Ninshubar is speaking with a man who says “I am the gatekeeper of Kur.” And she replied “I have heard of you. In temple stories. You are the gatekeeper to the underworld” NO FUCKING SHIT HE LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT!!!! 😫
4. Inanna bored the hell out of me for a majority of the book, she was the flattest character of all until the last 30 pages in which her character makes a huge shift without any lead up 
5. Inanna is out through some horrible things but it’s brushed past and doesn’t affect her. No one acknowledges it, I feel like the grooming and SA was poorly handled and shouldn’t have even happened 
6. Lastly and this is something I found out from reviews upon finishing; the trans/queer rep from the original texts has been removed from the novel (which to each their own). But the author kept only part of it in which she demonizes the androgynous/gender non-conforming nature of the minor characters, which is untrue based on the OG texts (back then being gender non-conforming wasn’t “strange” or “unnatural” at all and was quite normal and accepted, so the author made it negative just for fun and perhaps shares those views)

Overall it was entertaining and I really liked getting to know some mythology outside of my usual Greek or Egyptian cultures! I would recommend if you want to explore more world mythology purely because there’s a huge gap of mythology retellings that aren’t Greek based, but do be warned about the anti-trans twisting of the original texts 

TW/CW: blood, body horror, war, infidelity, death, grief, torture, slavery, transphobia (brief), infidelity, incest, pedophilia (brief), rape (off page)