The Gods Below’s Incredible Worldbuilding Makes Up For Its Occasionally Thin Characters

One of the hallmarks of epic fantasy fiction is its sheer scale. The best stories in this genre craft complex and sweeping new worlds, often complete with competing political factions, religious orders, social hierarchies, and detailed histories spanning hundreds of years. When done right, this sort of worldbuilding feels breathtakingly immersive, as though readers are stepping into a fictional universe that has always existed right alongside our own. Author Andrea Stewart is a master at creating this kind of lore—if you slept on her excellent Drowning Empire trilogy, now’s the time to add that to your TBR—and nowhere is that more evident than in her latest novel The Gods Below.  

The first installment in Stewart’s new Hollow Covenant trilogy, The Gods Below is set in a richly imagined fantasy world divided into two complex distinct realms. Humans have destroyed much of the surface world by burning down the fabled Numinar trees that connect the world above to the realm of the gods below. The loss of the trees sparks both a divine war between the gods and an environmental disaster known as the Shattering. This apocalyptic event breaks the world into multiple kingdoms separated by barriers of deadly aether from deep below the surface and ruins much of its land and resources. In desperation, a man descends into the earth to ask the gods for help—but only one of them answers. That god, known as  Kluehnn, claims to want to help the humans struggling to survive and promises to “restore” each land provided the populace provides him with enough magical god gems from beneath the earth. 

But Kluehnn’s restoration comes at a heavy cost. The “restored” land does become green and verdant, teeming with new, strange creatures and lush plant life. But the process basically requires the sacrifice of half of each realm’s population, whose life force is used to help reshape and revitalize the terrain. The remaining residents are “altered”, and transformed into human-animal hybrids with increased strength and new bodies that sit somewhere between mortal and immortal. The most devoted of Kluehnn’s acolytes are given the duty of godkillers, and sent to track down and kill any surviving gods who might threaten his power or plans. 

The story begins with the imminent restoration of Kashan, as throngs of people attempt to escape. Fifteen-year-old Hakara desperately tries to barter passage through the aether for herself and her younger sister, Rahsa, but they are separated in the chaos. Hakara awakes safely in the neighboring realm of Langzhu, only to learn that her sibling has been left behind. She spends the next decade trying to find a way to cross back over the barrier to search for her sister, risking her life as a miner of god gems. Meanwhile, Rasha who has survived restoration but been transmuted into an “altered,” attempts to start over in a den of Kluehnn’s most devoted worshippers while training to become a godkiller herself.

Hakara’s desperation to get back to her sister is one of more than a half dozen major plot lines that unspool in this book, involving everything from an underground resistance fighting restoration to an exploration of the world deep beneath the earth. Alongside the two sisters, we follow multiple secondary supporting characters, including Mullayne, the scientist in search of the realm of the gods known as Unterra; Sheuan Sim, the daughter of a disgraced clan of Langzhu nobles working to reclaim her family’s honor; and Nioanen, an old god attempting to fight back against Kluehnn. 

While the story is teeming with characters and subplots, most of The Gods Below focuses on establishing the rules and specifics of this new world. And, to be honest, it’s a lot.  Stewart doesn’t skimp on the history or world-building here, and those who devour fantasy for its complex lore and intricate inner workings will find a lot to love in this book. You will be forced to put together the timeline of many of these events on your own, however, with some help from chapter headers (dated before or after the Shattering), dialogue, and context clues. There’s a constant sense that this world is much bigger than we currently understand, and many of the Mullayne chapters are particularly useful for digging into the mythology of its history and culture. 

Unfortunately, because so much of this book is devoted to setting up the story’s world, its magical system and history, as well as the stakes of the larger conflict over restoration in general, some of its characters can feel a bit flat and two-dimensional. The Gods Below has to serve many masters and while it’s clear that these various plots will all intersect in the future, for the most part, that future is not right now. As a result, the book occasionally struggles with keeping all its moving pieces in the air and making each of its various protagonists as compelling as the others. 

While the conflict brewing between the two sisters is theoretically the emotional backbone of the novel, Hakara spends most of the first half of the book doing little more than being obsessed with finding her way back across the barrier to Kashan, without truly ever reckoning with the guilt she has carried or considering how her sister may have changed in the years since they last saw one another. To Stewart’s credit, Hakara is much more interesting as a heroine in the story’s final third when she’s allowed to react to and want things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with Rasha, and that should give us all hope for a more balanced second installment that allows both sisters to become something more than symbols to the other. 

The Gods Below is available now wherever books are sold. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB