The Hunger of the Gods
The Bloodsworn Saga • Book 2
by John Gwynne
Why You'll Love This
A resurrected dragon goddess is building an army of monsters, and the heroes from book one are badly outmatched — Gwynne makes sure you feel every inch of that gap.
- Great if you want: Norse mythology weaponized into full-scale epic fantasy warfare
- The experience: relentless and kinetic — momentum rarely lets up across 600 pages
- The writing: Gwynne juggles multiple POVs cleanly, keeping tension tight across every thread
- Skip if: you haven't read book one — the payoffs depend heavily on prior investment
About This Book
The dragon-goddess Lik-Rifa is free. After three centuries of imprisonment, she has returned to the world of men with a hunger for ruin and an army of creatures answering her call. Against her, a desperate alliance of mortals scrambles to awaken gods of their own — because steel alone will not be enough. John Gwynne's second entry in the Bloodsworn Saga takes the escalating dread of the first book and throws open the gates. The stakes are no longer local or personal; they are cosmic, and the characters caught in the middle carry wounds that make every choice feel genuinely costly.
What distinguishes this as a reading experience is Gwynne's discipline with momentum. He juggles multiple viewpoints across a sprawling, frost-bitten world without ever losing the thread of tension that pulls you forward. His prose is lean and kinetic — built for scenes that hit hard rather than linger prettily — yet he finds space for loyalty, grief, and the specific bonds that form between people who have survived terrible things together. At 633 pages, it never sprawls; it accelerates.
