Underwood, Michael R. The Younger Gods. The Younger Gods No. 1. Pocket Star, 2014.
I had hopes for this urban fantasy in its early pages, but a few chapters in, I ceased to care. The problem is one of basic world building. The story seems too rushed to establish its world and its characters. I was initially drawn to our hero, a farm boy from a witchy family trying to lead a normal life as a New York City college student. But too quickly, we are thrown into a plot for which we have not been adequately prepared. Three stars, and that is stretching it. ( )

Jacob, former cult member, decides he's had enough with his family's evil practices and their betrayal of him and takes off to college. Now he's the bad child, in hiding from his family, and his evil sister, the good child, finds him and wants to bring him back into the family fold or kill him. Either one. Even though all Jacob wants is to live a normal life, without regular sacrifices to elder gods, he knows if he doesn't save the world no one will.

Jacob's a pretty weird kid, as you'd expect from someone who was raised in a cult of elder gods. But he's likeable, and he's the hero we have even if he's not the hero we need, so he'll do. (Provided by publisher) ( )

Michael Underwood has accomplished something terribly difficult in the genre of YA Urban Fantasy: He has created an entirely new fictional world that is not a retread of familiar supernatural tropes, and has introduced a teen character that does not speak in slang.
Jacob Hicks/Greene has escaped his family of evil sorcerers by enrolling in a New York City college. Unfortunately his sister has followed him and begins wreaking havoc, death and destruction across the city as she attempts to awaken one of the Younger Gods and bring her brother back into the fold. Jake is joined by some very heterogeneous and fascinating sidekicks in his fight against his sister who all have magical backgrounds and powers to lend to the fight. Jake is quite an erudite young man and, having been homeschooled in a very abusive but strongly formal environment, he speaks in a cadence which recalls literature of the early 1900's instead of the dialect that youngsters speak today. He is also quite unaware of most popular culture references which serves to add quite a bit of humor to the book.
The plotting is suspenseful, with very little buildup and the majority of the book devoted to the group of allies chasing Jake's sister, Esther, around the city and trying to defeat her. The eventual climax is riveting and sets up well the next volume in this series. The tale is also devoid of the near mandatory love triangle, having not even an element of romance to distract from the task at hand. Romance would not be necessary, although, I wonder if this is because the lead character is a young male instead of a young female.
I cannot express enough how impressed and fascinated I was with this book. I recommend it to all fans of the Urban Fantasy genre who are tired of the common supernatural tropes (vampires, werewolves, zombies and witches) that are so ubiquitous. ( )

Jacob Greene came from a cult. He escaped and his trying to make a new life for himself at St. Mark's University. So far Jacob is learning it is harder to make friends than it was living in a cult. Jacob hears on the news of a murder. The body was surrounded by a circle that was burned with ashes. The murder can mean only one thing...Jacob's family has found him. Jacob knows that the murder is just the beginning. It is a ritual to being doom to the Earth.

I had issues with this book. At times it read like the author did not think the readers (me) would get the concept of the story, so he would write things out sometimes repeating. Then at other times he did not explain enough and it felt like he was just rushing through the story. Another problem I had is that I wanted the characters to be more engaging. I found them to be uninteresting and not so likeable. Like I did not really felt like Jake was all that interested or cared about sharing people. He was his persona. He came off stiff and a little cold. I did understand his reservation with people and making friends due to his one and only friend being killed by his family. Yet, I wanted him to be more warm and inviting. Despite all of this I did find myself skimming parts after a while. The cult rituals and other magical elements in the book were not bad. I did see some promise of a good book. ( )

Jacob was home schooled, quiet, well educated and is now away for college, doing all the right things, following the rules and living frugally. And desperately avoiding his evil family and their pledge to the dark ones with which they one day intend to destroy the world

It was an unconventional upbringing.

Getting used to New York City after such a beginning would be difficult – but when his sister arrives in town fully intending to kick start the apocalypse, it’s all Jacob can do to rally what defences he can to save the city and save the world.

It’s hard not to love the concept of this – Jacob, a meticulously nice if rather boring boy is escaping his family cult. Except his family cult is literally empowered with cthulu-esque monsters from the Deeps who are trying to end the world. And can do it. That’s a twist on the cult story.

The whole story is set in New York City where Jacob has to fight off his sister Esther using every ally the city has to offer – and it has a lot to offer. The world setting here is incredibly rich with several kinds of gods and pantheons, multiple supernatural creatures, a deep and varied magic system (I love the whole using of stones to channel and shape magic) and a wide selection of mythologies all concentrated into this extremely diverse city. It was huge and it managed not to be confusing because it constantly suggested depth and detail without us having to delve deeply into each one. We get the shape of, say, Antoinette’s voodoo or Dorothea’s knight powers or Carter being a child of the Hindu gods without having to use a vast amount of detail to explain it – but still including enough to get a sense of depth and creation there. The backstory’s there, we’re just not going to bog down seeing it all yet.

The story is action packed and extremely tense. Jacob’s fight with few resources against the seeming impossible power of his sister – backed by her completely moral-less pursuit of power. He has to struggle to get people to take her seriously and as the battle continues it gets more and more desperate as each ace they pull up, each master plan they prepare frays and falls in the face of Esther’s power. There’s an amazingly well maintained sense of tension here and a real sense of the threat Esther represents. This is one of the few books where, several time over, it really felt like the story was in the balance and the protagonist could – and probably would – lose.

And I loved the ending – I can’t say any more than that without a terrible, unforgiveable spoiler.

Jacob is a fascinating character full of levels. He feels a level of guilt for his family’s legacy and actions but isn’t willing to wallow in it. He understands why people are suspicious and wary of him and doesn’t blame them for it, but nor is he going to spend a lot of unproductive time apologising for what his family has done (and it’s a nice combination of both not feeling good about his family’s legacy but not exactly being willing to accept the blame for it either). He’s immensely practical in his thinking, but at the same time very overwhelmed by the situation he’s in – he’s very much a fish out of water and it pretty much shows by how conscientious and careful and meticulous he is – but that also reflects his upbringing (after all, if you’re imprecise and careless when summoning dangerous monsters of the netherworld then bad things happen). He also really shows his combination of being extremely well educated, even classically educated, but at the same time very much isolated and raised in a very rural, unsophisticated area – it’s a really hard combination to pull off and it’s done excellently. On top of all that he has a vast amount of confidence because he has been raised to think how powerful they are (and he does have mastery of an extremely powerful form of magic) while being full of doubt because he is so out of place in New York.

There’s so much that goes into Jacob as a character, all of these layers and effects and influences are clear in his character making him very real, very complex and very interesting to follow.

While Jacob gets the most in depth build, most of the major side characters have a decent amount of attention fleshing them out – from Carter the Indian Nephilim with his extremely wealthy family and heavy expectations, to Antoinette, the daughter of a powerful Mambo who inherited her shop, her stock and her connection to the Loa even if she’s not entirely sure she wants it. And there’s Dorothea, one of the Broadway Knights, ex-cop drawn to protect the weakest and most vulnerable in the city after watching her brother’s decline. They all have a story, no matter how briefly alluded to among all the action, any character that is there for any length of time rather than just met in passing has some history has some sense of themselves as people which is great to see. There’s a real push to make sure they are people, not just names or additions to Jacob Greene.

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