Book Review: “House of Many Gods” by Kiana Davenport

Oct 10

Håfa adai! May is Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month in the United States. For the first two weeks of May 2025, I will post reviews for works of fiction written by Pacific Islander authors and depicting important experiences within Pacific Islander communities. My second selection of AAPI Heritage Month 2025 is House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport.

This book review consists of two parts: a spoiler-free plot summary and my thoughts on the story. In the second part, I give my personal rating and break down the setting and worldbuilding, storytelling, cast of characters, and themes. There may be some lightweight spoilers—such as how characters interact with each other and the world around them—but I will not give away any major plot twists or endings. I want to share my opinions of the book and maybe encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.

Click on the tags at the bottom of this post to see all reviews with the same tags in the Fiction bookshelf.

Spoiler-Free Plot Summary

Anahola believed that the best thing she could do for her child was to walk away. So, she did. Decades after leaving her child in Honolulu for San Francisco, Anahola feels that her now-grown daughter would want nothing to do with her and maybe the Hawaiian gods and ancestors of her home would not even recognize her anymore. Ana was raised by her extended family in the Wai’anae coast west of Honolulu after her mother abandoned her. Surrounded by poverty and drugs, Ana manages to beat the odds and become a medical doctor. Yet she struggles allowing herself to be vulnerable with others and honest with herself. Nikolai was born in the unforgiving frozen landscape of a gulag, a labor camp in the USSR. He quickly had to learn to survive and escape the harshness of his homeland, turning his skills into a career as a filmmaker. Decades later, while covering the aftermath of Hurricane ‘Iniki, he meets Ana. And the courses of their lives go in a direction neither of them could have anticipated.

Important Trigger Warning for House of Many Gods

House of Many Gods depicts domestic violence, child abandonment, and substance abuse. These scenes and themes are essential to the plot. Please prioritize your own mental health before engaging with any work of fiction or non-fiction. If these would cause you distress or discomfort in any way, then make sure to take necessary steps to prepare and protect yourself before and after reading this book.

My Thoughts on House of Many Gods: 5 stars!

House of Many Gods follows the events of three characters’ lives from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s on Hawai’i, the mainland United States, Russia, and other parts of the world, introducing the reader to a large and dynamic cast of supporting characters along the way. Kiana Davenport uses a third-person limited perspective to shadow the experiences of Anahola, Ana, and Nikolai. At the center of these three is Ana, the daughter of Anahola and later acquaintance of Nikolai. Through provocative imagery and emotional prose, the complex pasts of each character expand and contract to display many of the social and the societal issues in a post-Atomic Age world.

From how I interpreted the novel, the complex multi-component story in House of Many Gods touches on several themes that resonate deeply with Indigenous Pacific Islander communities. The first theme that stood out to me is the pain inflicted on a community when they become a minority—both in terms of access to resources as well as in population percentage—in their own homeland. Starting in the 1960s, the narration quickly points out that some of the last communities of “full-blooded” Hawaiians were also among the poverty stricken in Hawaii. Today, Native Hawaiians are an ethnic minority in their own islands.

Second, sometimes it takes more courage to stay in your homeland than to leave for a place with greater prospects and opportunities. This is stated early on in the story in the context of one character leaving Hawai’i for the mainland and is reflected later when a character in Russia refuses to leave their country, regardless of what their country has become. More often than not, the decision to leave your homeland for greater opportunities elsewhere is a difficult decision for someone to make. The nuance between the choosing to leave or to stay is handled delicately in House of Many Gods, conveying Kiana Davenport’s care and respect for the topic. The third theme that stood out to me—and the one that resonated most deeply with me—was the fear of losing the connection to your heritage by being away from your homeland for too long. I am Indigenous Pacific Islander who is now a part of the Chamorro diaspora in the mainland United States. One character’s anxiety that her gods and ancestors would no longer know or recognize her after being away from Hawaii for so long brought tears to my eyes.

Fourth, Kiana Davenport does not shy away from the topics of intense militarization and the history of nuclear industry by the United States in the Pacific as well as by Russia in the USSR. Indigenous Pacific Islanders have fought and died for the United States in every conflict since WWI. This is reflected by the many wounded and deeply traumatized military veterans in Anahola and Ana’s family. In the decades following WWII, Pacific islands were used as detonation sites for the testing of nuclear weaponry by the United States. Today, human populations throughout the Pacific have disproportionately high rates of different kinds of cancers, an aspect reflected by the number of individuals who become diagnosed with cancer throughout the story. The theme of nuclear industry is further expanded in House of Many Gods with the brief mention of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Pripyat, a town established to build nuclear industry in the Ukrainian area of the USSR.

The fifth theme in House of Many Gods—stressed in the final chapters of the novel—is the complex relationship between truth and lies. Twisting the truth is presented as an essential survival skill for the Hawaiian and Russian characters throughout the story. Anahola and Ana both give and (at first unknowingly) receive slightly altered versions of reality to those around them. For them, these twists serve the purpose of self-protection by hiding and concealing certain aspects of the past. But for Nikolai and the other characters still living in Russia, these distortions mean the difference between living free or spending years as prisoners in a labor camp.

My overall rating for Kiana Davenport’s House of Many Gods is 5 out of 5 stars! This book has easily and quickly become one of my new favorite works of fiction. Kiana Davenport’s prose is thought-provoking and evocative. The characters and their respective arcs are distinct and intense. This story deftly explores a wide range of important themes—important for many communities, but especially for Pacific Islanders—and engages with a plethora of contentious issues. Once the different plot lines converged, the story went in a truly surprising direction. This is the first novel I have read from Kiana Davenport, and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future. I highly recommend House of Many Gods to anyone who is a fan of complex multi-generational tales.

Dångkulo' na' saina ma'åse'! Thank you so much for reading my review of House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport.

Rating Cheat Sheet

4.75 - 5.00 stars: Everyone should read this book! (If you’re into that sort of thing.)
4.00 - 4.50 stars: I appreciated many aspects of this book. I recommend it!
3.00 - 3.75 stars: I liked some aspects of this book. I won’t revisit it, but someone else might really like it.
2.00 - 2.75 stars: There were some things I appreciated about this book, but I do not recommend it.
0.25 - 1.75 stars: I do not recommend this book. I did not enjoy or appreciate the experience of it.

Post Date: 12 May 2025