The Lost Reliquary

Author Lyndsay Ely grapples with loyalty, love and divinity in her fantasy novel The Lost Reliquary, the first of the Divine Thrall series. As a divine warrior in service to the only remaining deity, Tempestra-Innara, Lys cannot help but love them. Yet a lifetime of compulsory service to the flame goddess has Lys dreaming of deicide. It's only a fantasy until a heretic turns into a tentacled beast during a routine execution, nearly killing Tempestra-Innara and revealing that slaying the goddess could be possible. Tempestra-Innara tasks her and her fellow devotee Nolan with finding the reliquary that allowed the heretic to nearly kill them. Lys plans on using the reliquary, filled with the blood of Tempestra-Innara’s dead siblings, to accomplish her deicidic dreams. As she and Nolan begin to explore the world outside the cloister, visiting new cities and meeting citizens with a wide variety of beliefs, more truths and dangers about the greater world are revealed. Can god-loyal Nolan be trusted? Could there be a world free of the gods entirely? And what happens if Lys fails? Lys is part of the current wave of snarky, sword-wielding heroines—think Kissen of Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller—and her struggle between the love of the goddess she knows and the temptation of a world where she is no longer bound to them makes her a very compelling character. While other characters intrigue, it is Ely’s world building that fascinates most: a crumbling world of dead gods, who were slain by their Butcher God sibling who is now locked in the body of a crumbling and weak avatar. Tempestra-Innara haunts the narrative even when they are not on the page, looming as a divine entity ought; their hungry, inhuman logic makes for a goddess to remember. Though character motivations get muddled in the last third of the book, leading to confusing missteps and unexpected decisions, Ely’s original world and fast-paced action creates a compulsive and memorable read.