Review: Well Worth a Try
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 30, 2013
This novella is a great beginning to Mr. Siregar's career.  The Black God's War has it all:  interesting characters, mysterious gods, warring kingdoms, and twisting and turning plots. For those reasons alone, you should pick this book up and give it a try.For me personally, my favorite parts of the novella resolved around Rezzia and her pantheon of gods, especially Lucia's haunting by the Rezzia God of the Underworld.  This plotline caught my attention from the first pages and held it throughout the rest of the work.The other major conflict in this book is Rezzia and Pawelon's eternal war with one another.  Two, opposing cultures clashing together for generations at a mighty fortress.  One nation bent on the annihilation of the other.  While Mr. Siregar spends a great deal of novella presenting this conflict, the "war" serves more as a canvas upon which he can sketch the main characters personal conflicts, rather than a earth shaking struggle such as Lord of the Rings, so the battles before this Pawelon fortress never rise to the gripping drama of Tolkien's Helms Deep.  I personally believe the major problem here was that a reader is told the two nations hate one another, but you never understand why.The only other complaints I had with this novella were that Pawelon magic was not explained sufficiently, and that the ending was too neat and tidy a wrap up of all problems. I personally hate plots or character conflicts left danging, but you can't fix it all in two or three pages; life just doesn't work out that neatly.Even with these problems, however, The Black God's War was very enjoyable.