Origin: (The Secret of the Golden Gods, Book 1)

This is a fantasy in which ordinary humans are effectively enslaved by "the Golden Gods". These Gods seem to look like humans, there seem to be about five groups of them, they are very much bigger than humans, and they have "powers" that are derived from the five "elements": earth, water, fire, air and ether. The origin of the power is unclear, but sometimes seems to be manifest through rings, gauntlets, etc. The story follows Ikai as he tries to rescue his sister Kyra who has been selected as a sacrifice for the Gods. The sacrifice is to obtain their life force, which can be used to prolong the Gods' lives.The world building is excellent. Basically the world is ancient, with enormous numbers of slaves building stone monuments, and held in place by overseers with whips, and odd force fields. The characters are quite well drawn and the writing is clear. The background is gradually drawn and more of this world gradually becomes clearer. For me there is a problem of balance: the power is too asymmetric, and given the obsessiveness and cruelty of these "Gods" it is very difficult to resolve the conflict situations. The author does this quite skillfully in this book, but it appears this is the first in a series, and this trick cannot be repeated as is. However, that problem is for the author with the next books. Another problem with this book, for me, was that Kyra is taken in a party of twelve, there are other characters, all going to the central city, and their impressions lead to a bit of repetition. The book reads well, but I cannot give it five stars because it is really only an introduction to the later books.

An exciting read…...The place is very, very bad (dystopian: antonym of utopian) especially for its villagers. The tyrant Golden Gods have enslaved the Senoca people for 1000 years. The villagers are truly fearful of the Gods and their servants. Each slave wears a ring categorizing him/her by trade. Rings and monoliths serve as guardians and locators. Interaction of villager with the Servants of the Gods carries with it the threat of a beating or death. The villagers struggle to survive. The Gods and their servants live in luxury.Ikai is a farmer class but is selected to be a Huntsman - hunter of men in the service of the Gods. While Ikai is out on a mission, his village is visited by minions of the Gods and they take away his sister, Kyra, she of the fiery tongue and temper. She has been summoned by the Gods. Kyra is enraged, and fights, but in the end is carried away. Ikai returns and finds his mother beaten and sister gone, and swears to his mother that he will find her and bring her back home. The Gods had already taken his father.There are about four missions involved in the book the characters: Ikai – to find his sister; Kyra – being forced; Liriana – to find her fiancé, Maruk; and Albana - to establish free colonies beyond the Boundary. Their adventures take them all to the City of the Gods. Kyra is restored from being seemingly the dead in a mysterious way, and returned to her village by her brother. These underdogs work reluctantly at times, but survive by sharing information, fighting together, and by selfless actions – rescuing each other and strangers.The book is fast-paced; the journeys are exciting; with the possibility of a beating, or Death always present. The writing captures the drama in each of these situations very well, and the reader easily becomes the character.My issues begin with the descriptions of the buildings. Because I could not picture the buildings, I sometimes felt the descriptions of heights, base locations, room sizes and shape, etc. as being somewhat intruding on the story of the characters. And though runes are constantly mentioned as being on dress or walls, they are not once translated. It is somewhat of a mystery that Kira gets away with all her disrespect to Servants and Gods alike. We let this go because the reader thereby learns, among other things, thereby the nature and customs of the Gods. We learn that they experience fear; admire human resoluteness; and are envious of human ability to reproduce. And they seek immortality. They look for rare hybrids among the population having both with the God Power and human power. Their Power eats itself when exercised while human power remains. They could only meet their wish for immortality by freezing themselves for ages, and then reviving themselves with human essence.People who like sci-fi and its magic, power characters, and underdog-persistence victories would like this book. It is always a little startling to learn that so-called ‘Gods’ are even more ruthless than Man, and that they envy Man’s survival and selfless nature. An exciting read….

“These young women you see here hanging in shackles tried to trick the Gods. They tried to hide, to outwit the Divine Summons..... That is the reason why they are hanging here now, suffering their well-deserved punishment, nobody can escape the wishes of the Gods...”Against that background of dark fantasy, we meet the Senoca Nation, with Osaen as capital. The gods claim divine rights and a society is build on a pyramid of power.The poor and enslaved live at the mercy of each higher rank. We have the hunters, the enforcers with demands, the executioners, the proxy who acted as nobles and live in luxury. We have the priests and the selected. If you do not live by the will of the gods, you have mortal consequences and pay for treason.Excerpt:“In their divine goodness they allow us to go on living. But our masters do not forget, nor do they forgive, when our corrupt hearts, blinded by power, dare to confront them and their benevolent designs. No, they do not forget, nor do they forgive this, their chosen people, for not accepting them a thousand years ago. Even so, the Golden, in their infinite divine kindness, allow us to go on living under their protective wings. Dear people, faithfully must we serve the Gods, since without their grace we would perish.”It is the kingdom's duty, and the reason for their existence, is to serve the gods. They are their people, and by their kindness they exist. They serve their Golden masters today and forever.The people react:“What rights do those tyrannical, ruthless Gods have to decide my destiny, or any man’s? Who gives them the right to establish the Quotas? Why must I work in the quarry for them? They’ve got no right. I don’t have to obey them....”Who do the gods favour? Are they only the makers of fate?We have those who fear with fury, hate but not relent in agony with courage. We have battles with bloodshed, pain . We have loss of freedom as prisoners are kept in darkness for days in underground caves so well described as the Dungeons of Oblivion.The protagonist Is Ikai, a young man, imposed as a Hunter carrying a golden Ring . He promised to find his captured sister of 17. “If I must die, let it be. But I won’t abandon my sister....She’s my own blood. I won’t abandon her to her fate.”This is how the people thought:“Today there are few of us, no more than a dozen in our village. But that doesn’t matter if we manage to plant the seed of hope. Tomorrow it’ll grow and there’ll soon be a hundred of us, then a thousand, and one day we’ll all be one. And we’ll rise to be free!”Will the force of Oxatsi, Mother Sea, protect them as they pray and ask for her blessing and take pity on her people?Ikai crossed another round room whose floor and ceiling were silver, and once again chose the tunnel to the far right. He hopes not to make the wrong choices, or else he will end up at the bottom of an abyss. Ikai drew his sword and dagger. Protect us, Oxatsi. It was Ikai who helped freeing souls and destiny to let joy and love take place.At the end Kyra looked at him gratefully, with infinite love and pride. “With the help of Mother Sea and Father Moon, we did it,” said Kyra. For a moment, all the evil in the world vanished and was replaced by the complete happiness of a family reunited after so much suffering.For our next delivery of the story I believe we shall pass into another realm through the translucent barriers of the Boundary. Out there is a place where they can hide and settle. “It’s a wonderful place: a protected cove, well-hidden and out of the way. A long way from the Gods and their Enforcers. We’ll be safe there. I’ve always wanted to escape there and disappear, but I never thought it would be possible.”He crossed the Boundary. Ikai had accomplished what he had set out to do: he had rescue his sister and reunite his family. But in so doing, something bigger, much more transcendental had been achieved: the first group of Senoca escaped on that day from the claws of the Golden Gods, to form the first colony of free people, returning to Mother Sea after a thousand years of slavery.A special authorScarlett Jensen12 April 2017

As a child I was a big fan of the Dragonlance books, which were a not too heavyweight fantasy series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman published from the mid-eighties onward.I was recommended this book because a friend of mine saw parallels and I wanted to see what younger fantasy readers were getting into these days (I work with young people and prefer to recommend contemporary titles). Reading this introduction to Pedro Urví’s Dystopian series I am reminded of these books in many ways, particularly by the way characters are introduced and how we are invested into their struggles. One way it differs is in its physical world-building, which is worthy of praise. I’m fascinated by the relationship between the Senoca people who inhabit this world and the Gods, who command their creations like slaveholders, which gives us a good conflict from which to trigger investment in our heroes. Yes, there is definitely some cliche involved, however in many ways this helped me to get involved with the story. I feel that this kind of literature requires the reader to accept the world they are in, so once I had adjusted to the world by about chapter three I was hooked. Whereas the Dragonlance writers had a pre-existing world to sketch their characters into, Urví’s Senoca Nation, benefits from being completely his own universe, which hopefully has been built by to grow with his readers. I think ages 12-17 would be the best audience for this book and these readers will develop an attachment to this world and these characters, acknowledging their imperfections and feeling really at home with them as they develop.However, what really blew me away about this book was the action. The missions and battles feel truly epic, enough to nudge the story along without distracting from the emotional core of the story. These sections really were a blast!One final thing to underline is that this is definitely a dystopian world, which has been written with obvious parallels to fascism and dictatorships. It’s reflections of the real world don’t suffer from being a post Star Wars and Hunger Games franchise thanks to its original take on the theme; giving deities authoritarian power over their creations. The power of human essence in this book is fascinating, taking a well established individualist cliche used by countless authors and overpowering it by giving the Gods an active role in harvesting this essence from the Senoca.This introduction to a two part series has been crafted in enough detail that further development of the series after this would be welcomed. I can’t wait to get into the next instalment, where I’m sure the conflicts with the gods will deepen and develop. If you know a young reader who needs something contemporary in the fantasy range to get their teeth into, Origin would be a good place for them to start.

Origin is the first book in the Golden Gods fantasy series written by talented writer, Pedro Urvi.For at least a thousand years, the Senoca people have been enslaved by the Golden Gods. Ikai, Kyra and their mother, Solma, live in a small village where they, and the other villagers, work the land from dawn to dusk in order to try and meet the unreasonable quotas imposed by the Gods. Those who do not make the quotas are hurt or more often than not, killed. Ikai was chosen by the Gods to be a Hunter and when he hasn’t been summoned by the Gods for a hunting mission, eighteen-year-old Ikai looks after his sister and mother. It’s something he’s done since his father was taken by the God’s enforcers shortly after Ikai’s tenth birthday. While many of the villagers believe Ikai has switched allegiances by becoming a Hunter for the Gods, he has chosen to do it as it lets him obtain coin to buy medicine for his sick mother, Solma.Ikai is now being summoned by the Gods once again and he reluctantly leaves behind his mother and seventeen-year-old sister, Kyra, to meet up with his hunting party. They have been tasked with tracking down a half-dozen fugitives. Shortly after giving pursuit, Ikai and his hunting party are stunned to learn that their quarry has crossed the Boundary; a boundary imposed by the Golden Gods to prevent their slaves from escaping. To cross the Boundary means to die. Ikai’s hunt master, Sejof, gives the order for them to cross the Boundary, which they reluctantly do, anticipating death. Although Ikai and the others’ bodies are consumed by gut-wrenching pain, they survive the crossing and continue in pursuit of their quarry. Their party finds their bodies shortly afterward, having been slaughtered by unknown and vicious assailants who also attack them. Several of their hunting party is murdered and Ikai is gravely injured but is eventually saved by an old woman called Isam the Healer. By this time, Ikai has been gone from his village for four weeks and he’s ordered by his hunt master to go back home. When Ikai returns home, he’s told by his neighbor that Kyra had been Summoned by the Gods and his mother nearly beaten to death when she tried to stop the Gods’ enforcers from taking her. Ikai promises his dying mother that he won’t stop until he finds his sister and brings her back. The next morning, he begins his search…Urvi spins a compelling tale in Origin. Although the story line in Origin appears to be steeped in well-known mythological themes; i.e. the gods against man/man serving the gods, the story is nevertheless fresh and well-written. Ikai is stalwart and driven by honor and tradition whereas his younger sister, Kyra, is fiery and impulsive, driven by her hate for the Golden Gods. She sees their existence as futile unless they all rise against their pre-ordained fate and take on the gods who rule their lives. Urvi has a talent for describing the world he’s created to his readers without making it look likes he’s trying to do so. There’s plenty of action but it’s tempered nicely by the emotionality of the protagonists, Ikai and Kyra, and this gives Origin its heart.Not for those who are faint of stomach, Origin nevertheless gives its fantasy readers a solid ride for their money.

This book grabbed me immediately. The style of the graphics on the cover instantly reminded me of another novel The Oathbreaker’s Shadow. This book definitely has potential. The storyline was easy to follow. The characters were likable; they all had vibrant characteristics and strong qualities. This author is quite good at world building; I was able to envision everything. The story absorbed me in it; its world is something to get lost in. There were the occasion blips here and there, but nothing too serious to take away from the general flow of the story. If you are a fan of fantasy, adventure, or even science fiction this book is the one for you. It is captivating. Its family dynamics also create a deeper level of complexity, it adds to the general adventure of the story because it demonstrates the strong bonds that each of the characters has with each other.

Loves it