I was disappointed with this book. It was an agreeable read but I was expecting more from it. 
 Among the things that annoyed me the most is the heroine. We're told that she is the leader of her people and that she is a competent ruler, but she didn't demonstrate any particular intelligence and spend her time being manipulated by other, wandering in the palace hoping that people will help her and being clueless. She doesn't demonstrate any of the training we are told she got from her warrior grandmother and her political mother. In the whole, she was far too juvenile and clueless. 
 I also had to struggle to keep reading for the first half of the novel. The writing style of the author was bad (I don't know if it get better in the second half or if I just got used to it) and I didn't appreciate the first person narration. In addition, the author kept writing small paragraph of reminiscences from the heroine which makes no sense until the end of the book but which kept throwing me off the story. 
 As for the world building, it was interesting but not that original and many things are not sufficiently explained or explored. The plot itself which consists of palace intrigues is far too shallow and the ending is too deus ex machina. 
 The characters of the gods were well written. They were humanized as part of their punishment for opposing the most powerful god, but the author managed to let them retain some of their alien aspect. As for the heroine cousins, they are both too stereotyped. 
 Another thing that I didn't appreciate is the custom that the female warrior from the heroine clan must go through for their coming of age : 
 (view spoiler)[ the girls must spend a month alone in a wood and then fight against a warrior selected by their sponsor and lose their virginity by having sex with him in the presence of the council members, the fight determining if the girl is raped or if she controls the encounter, but she still has to have sex. The heroine loss the fight and is raped, but she then killed the warrior with a hidden weapon. I don't understand why she had to do that, she should have killed him before the rape or not at all, it makes no sense otherwise. I dislike mention of rape in novels and in my opinion it didn't serve any purpose here other than trying (and failing) to demonstrate how tough and determine the heroine is. (hide spoiler)] 
 Like I said, it's still a good read despite all those flaws, but given all the awards the book received I was expecting better.