A bit shallow. [Silent Pantheon by Eric Nierstedt]

Once, long ago, we knew their names…Healer. Teacher. Gravedigger. Mother. Trickster.They live among us, performing the duties that define them. Their names are whispers, drowned out by a single, mighty voice.

They live under it, finding solace in the work and with each other, pretending not to remember the times when their songs were sung.But times are changing again. And darkness is rising. Those that have forgotten them will call for them again. But when they call, will these forgotten beings from distant lands heed it? Or will they abandon those who forgot their songs?

Come see a world where myth and faith live together. Where those that are forgotten will choose between duty and anger.

Where mankind will once again speak the names of the SILENT PANTHEON.

This genre of story where religious and mythological figures are made new human only to have them falter in human ways with supernatural influence? It's always a bit wild.

I've read American Gods. I watched Supernatural to a point. When Stargate SG-1 did it I was intrigued. That the gods of yore were alien overlords who'd masterminded galactic empires of enslavement and worship or experiments in evolution? That their would-be immortality was due to technology so far beyond human understanding? That so-called deities are revered as such because their capabilities are called magical but magic is just science we don't understand? I'm well familiar with these tropes and I take them as nonsense. Either they are valid critiques of the lack of understanding with heavy heaps of hubris or they're thinly veiled atheistic takes on religions and beliefs.

It was back in college that I read American Gods. At the time it was a bit mind-blowing. The concept that the strength and capabilities of deities was tied directly to the level of their worship, or that if belief was strong enough it manifested physically - wow, what interesting ideas. And I've been scholar of mythologies from childhood, so the mixed mythologies was real interesting too. My understanding of world religions has shaped and reinforced my own Christian faith. But while biased I've tried understand other belief systems thoroughly and respectfully, and that's where a lot of these stories get it wrong.

LIGHT SPOILERS.

Eric Nierstedt's Silent Pantheon is a story of old gods from polytheistic pantheons living among man in a time where monotheism takes center stage. Pushed aside by the God of the Abrahamic faiths, the old fogies are real bitter farts. But then they must band together and do the unexpected to save humanity. Cool. A bit bland, but okay, a plot. But the execution was real reckless.

The levity which with faith systems were approached? Reckless. Irreverant perhaps. The motivations for former beings worshiped as gods? Riddled with holes. Consistency in relative powers? In constant flux. And the thing that gets me about stories where the gods are humans but they're still gods is that they are at once so dumb and so smart. They are obviously superhuman, but also very obviously so fallible and vulnerable for their station.

And so in the end the book read like a weird case against polytheism, but also maybe monotheism? Because why did we need to have an exploration of the pantheons and their weaknesses?  I found myself rolling my eyes because of how underpowered the pagan gods were. Because of how they were made to be well-meaning victims against a tyrannical and hands-off heavenly power, despite the violence of their own systems. I'd say this falls under the thinly veiled atheist critique, but one that for me wasn't even done well.

I liked the story and many different points, but all in all it was really bland. A lover of old histories and mythologies, and someone who seeks to understand world religions, the respective approach here was so shallow, as if done with the most basic of familiarity. The Lois Lane trope is played out, especially as it played out here. The author took obvious inspiration from Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman and the book is littered with needless reminders of that fact. They weren't needed, the book would probably have been better off without it.

The GoodReads rating system apparently goes off of how much I liked it. If I was rating primarily for GoodReads I'd say this was a 2 star read, it was okay. I didn't hate it, so maybe under that system 1 star wouldn't be fair. But this is a book I got through NetGalley. Would I recommend it? No. It's wild, but I guess this is my first 1 star read.

Silent Pantheon was published September 2019.