I closed the final page of Shattered Divinity with a quiet exhale, still feeling the reverberations of its emotional current. The story opens amid a broken world, where divine relics known as the Shards are not merely powerful artifacts but deeply symbolic remnants of a time when gods answered prayers, and kingdoms stood unfractured. Yoder wastes no time drawing you into this landscape: you first meet Leper Xentoth, a warrior shunned and marked by horns—disgraced, yet entrusted by the queen with the legendary Shard of Theora. Simultaneously, you bear witness to the obliteration of a royal family, and a sixteen-year-old survivor named Leighth who emerges from the ashes of her past, her heart lit with vengeance, determined to reclaim the Shard of Hathor. Their fates become tethered, and the pull between them—at once fragile and fierce—is what propels this novel.
There is something magnetic in the way the book threads the paths of these two broken souls. Leper, taciturn and steeped in guilt, moves through the forest and court with the weight of exile in every step; Leighth, brash and raw in grief, hates the world that betrayed her and yearns for a justice that may demand more than she’s willing to give. When they meet, there is no spark of romance, but rather the slow forging of trust grounded in mutual need and grief. Their shared loneliness, their guarded vulnerabilities, become the unexpected soil in which loyalty, and something like hope, can take root.
Yoder’s descriptive brushstrokes render the realm vivid and bruised, steeped in memory and magic. It’s a place of shifting alliances and older powers, where the violence of gods, the weight of legacy, and the politics of mortal hands collide. You feel the rumor of dragon-riders long extinguished, the echoes of armies and ancient bloodlines. Yet amid these echoes, the narrative stays anchored to its characters. It’s easy to get lost in sprawling epics when the stakes climb so high, but here the emotional intimacy remains the story’s center. You are not merely watching wars unfold—you are there as grief blooms, as the longing for belonging and redemption pulses under every chapter.
The pacing is deliberate: slow-burning, with tension threading scene to scene. The urgency of shards being stolen, alliances fracturing, and a throne slipping into myth could have yielded a breathless, action-first rhythm. Instead, Yoder gives the story room to breathe. Chapters echo with the silence between words, the flicker of regret, and the stubborn, stubborn ache of two people rising from ruin. This, I think, is where many readers will find themselves most moved—not in battles, but in the shards of humanity between them.
That said, it leans into familiar fantasy terrain—the disgraced hero, the vengeance-driven royal, the mystical artifacts of ancient power—but where many such tales trade depth for spectacle, Yoder trades spectacle for depth. The prose isn’t ornate; there are no gilded monologues, no sweeping soliloquies. It’s quietly grounded even as it reaches for the divine. And when the emotional stakes land—when you see Leper’s internal struggle with belonging and when you feel Leighth's fire simmer into purpose—it’s in those moments you remember why fantasy can cut so deep.
My one reservation would be that certain tropes—like the stoic horned warrior or the embattled princess—might feel familiar at first. But as the pages turned, these figures revealed their scars, their conflicts, and their choices, and the familiarity became less a flaw and more a foundation for something more powerful. In the end, you root for them not because their roles are recognizable, but because they are fully, achingly human.
In Shattered Divinity, Yoder doesn’t just invite you into a fantasy world—you are made to feel its fractures in your bones. You are there in the muddy grief of loss. You are there when trust, tentative and dangerous, blooms in half-lit conversations and steel-drawn pacts. You are there when divine power is as much a burden as a boon. I finished it already anticipating what book two might bring, because the heart of this story is so alive it stays with you.
If your heart yearns for fantasy that balances worldshaking stakes with soul-bearing character, if you believe in magic but live for the spaces where people, broken and bruised, find their way home to themselves—Shattered Divinity offers a fierce, resonant journey.

I received this ARC from NetGalley and loved it. It is a grand "Game of Thrones" type of epic where you never know who is sided with whom and when or how it will change. There are great characters with complicated motivations and loyalties. One of the unique touches in the writing is explaining how the magic works and how it is used in daily life which results in a different level of immersion. I hope to enjoy many more additions to this wonderfully built world.

Absolutely 5 of 5 stars

This was a strong start to the Shattered Divinity series, it had that fantasy element that I was looking for and was engaged with what was happening. I enjoyed this as a opening chapter and am excited to read more in this universe. It uses the slow burn perfectly and liked that the characters were just pure good or evil. The characters had that overall feel that I was wanting and enjoyed the concept. Aaron D Yoder wrote this well and was engaged from the first page.

(Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC — I wasn’t prepared for the emotional weight of this one.)

Shattered Divinity is one of those dark fantasies that refuses to pretend pain can be pretty. The world is violent, the people are scarred in ways that feel uncomfortably familiar, and the tone stays heavy from beginning to end. Yoder writes trauma the way trauma actually feels — jagged, slow-burning, and sometimes directionless, with no promise of redemption just because you “deserve” it. I found myself pausing more than once, not because I was bored, but because certain lines felt too real. It’s not about shock value; it’s about the quiet ache that sits under every decision the characters make.

The brutality is grounded — never gratuitous — and the themes of loss, meaning, and survival are threaded tightly through the narrative. The pacing read steady to me, but with a weight that made each chapter feel like a climb. It’s not a hopeful book, but it is a human one, and that’s what worked for me. If you’re in the mood for dark fantasy that explores the aftermath of devastation without glamorizing it, this is the kind of story that sticks under your skin. Just make sure you’re in the emotional headspace for something heavy and honest.