Cameron Johnston is a member of the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle (new members always welcome) so hats off to him for getting his book Traitor God published by Angry Robot. I would like to give the book 3.5 stars out of 5, but as I can’t do that and Cameron is bigger than me (plus he apparently can wield a sword), I’ll round it up to 4. Let’s get the three and a half things I didn’t like out of the way.

First, Traitor God obviously hasn’t been properly edited. Or if someone says they’ve done it they’ve done a poor job. We have things like, ‘Jane looked at John and I’ (made up sentence), and some other grammatical errors, including comma splices; there are some spelling mistakes (‘franticly’ springs to mind), and the occasional blooper that a good editor would point out (eg the hero gasping and panting while struggling to keep up with someone, but at the same time having a conversation with no apparent problem).

Second, for the first approx third of the book, we launch into historical info dumping at the drop of a hat. This is my opinion; others may disagree. I felt the action was constantly being interrupted by history lessons.

Third, for the last approx third of the book, I felt it went on a bit, with weirder things being piled up on top of already weird things, but our hero surviving throughout. Again, just my opinion, but I felt a couple of these layers could be cut, more attention devoted to those remaining, leaving a better focus (and perhaps less to explain).

And the half? Well, the word ‘arse’ was used a lot. I’ve nothing against the word, but it became obvious that this was an author use, not a character use.

All that said, I still enjoyed Traitor God, because there’s plenty to commend it. The world-building is good – maybe even too good, as quite a bit of time has to be devoted to explaining it. The uses of magic and (ugh) blood magic are well described. The horrific incident our hero endures in his younger days is well observed and suitably horrific. The tension between him and the Counil of mages is also well observed. I was a bit puzzled that the Council seemed to know he was a ‘tyrant’ (able to manipulate other minds) when I thought he’d gone to great lengths to conceal the fact, but that’s probably just me. The final horrific creature lurching up out of the depths to destroy all life is something that will remain with me for quite a while, I suspect. It’s really well described, so it’s easy to see in your mind’s eye. And, trust me, you don’t really want to!

The ending of the book is also well done. The final scenes with hero v god work; and the concluding scenes (which are bittersweet) also work well. As I said above, I wish the number of scenes before those two could be reduced. Well, you read the book and tell me if you agree.

Nice one, Cameron. Looking forward to the follow-up. Get it properly edited!