(I received a free e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I love that mythologies besides Greco-Roman are on the rise (Norse, APIDA: Asian/Pacific Islander/Desi - in this case Hawaiian, etc), but it also means the market is starting to become oversaturated and I need to stop leaping for books because of their premise. (Plus, the diversity is limited to "bronze-skinned" characters on the Hawaiian side and "inhumanly pale and attractive" on the Norse side.) I especially appreciated the strong female relationships, particularly since they took precedence over the too-convenient heterosexual romances.

This one had an interesting idea, but I found it generally underdeveloped. I wasn't quite sure what was going on in terms of worldbuilding - it's implied that all the mythologies are true, a la Riordanverse, but besides a couple of exceptions it's limited to the Norse pantheon and Hawaiian deities - and the Fate Cipher role itself seemed to be defined as "whatever keeps the plot on track," with far too many instances of perfectly-timed divine intervention and frankly illogical developments, leaning heavily on the "main character doesn't know her own strength but will somehow manage to save the world through good intentions and sheer force of will and convenient magical abilities" trope. In addition to the unnatural progression of Ives' powers, the plot development seemed a little contrived, hinging on offhand comments and random remembrances, and it was far too easy to figure out what was happening because the POV jumps gave the reader much more information than the characters could know - the villain and their plot were completely obvious.

While I've found that excellent prose can make up for a formulaic plot, that unfortunately wasn't the case here. The action was bogged down by an excess of description, ominous statements, and a lot of cliched turns of phrase; the characters were pretty archetypical and lacked nuance. I also found the attempts at modernization a little jarring, and not altogether relevant to the story.

So with all that said, it definitely wasn't for me, but if you like modern mythology with strong female leads and you're less nitpicky than me, it's probably still worth a try.