God's War

Great world building, but a very average plot that doesn't stand up to tough interrogation. Not blown away but interested to read the next one

Well, that was certainly a weird and wild ride. An enjoyable one too.

This is a tough one. Threaded in between the lines of God's War is a powerful theme - about God, surrender, living without shame while still surviving with humility. Kameron Hurley had a lot to say here, not just in terms of character and philosophy, but in world-building and mythology as well. And it is all squeeze into a trim action-packed book that I feel like just didn't take enough time to breathe and say what it wanted to say.

God's War follows Nyx, a former assassin for the state, a bel dame who would execute runaway soldiers - often young boys conscripted at the age of 18 to serve at the front for 40 years in a war that's already been going on for centuries. Now an ex-con and regular old bounty hunter, she's given a note by the queen herself to pick up an off-world woman who may have left the country with state secrets, and has knowledge that could potentially end the war. I had a really hard time hanging with the motivations of each of the characters, and where they all fit into this huge plot. As far as I could tell, Nyx's only real connection to the main conflict was a paid job - she could have walked away at any time. Almost immediately after taking the job, she's threatened on multiple sides, and it only escalates from there. She's brutally tortured, one of her team members is dismembered and killed. But she sticks with it seemingly purely out of pride. Sure, there's service to her country, but I don't remember Nyx having any thoughts of national loyalty at any time. There's some personal vendettas involved, and the possibility of getting her team members pardoned for past crimes, but none of these motivations take the forefront. It's not the stakes aren't there, it's that they're confusing and foggy, which makes the peril that they're in tough to get invested in.

And that's mostly all I can tell you about God's War. The world-building is more overwhelming than interesting. A desert world where the religion is various versions of Islam that includes shapeshifters, magicians who use bugs to do magic, and bio-mechanical technology - any of those could have been the focus of a whole book in of itself, even a whole series. Hurley just throws it all into one pot, and treats each one like window dressing, not a center piece. The characters are good and I really enjoyed Nyx and Rhys' relationship, I just wish we got to spend more time with them. Every part of this story feels like it could have been expanded more, and maybe that's what Hurley does in the later books. The potential that's there is great, but in and of itself I found God's War to be rather unsatisfying

Damn, this was good. What a terrible disgusting sad world, and what fantastic characters. There are some elements that put me in mind of “Finch.”

It seems like such a long time since I last read a straight-up, proper sci-fi story. I have, of course, read novels that are grounded in science, but I do believe the last one I read that might be considered truly sci-fi would be Ernest Cline's Ready Player One sometime in September; the last sci-fi novel I read that was set in outer space was The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold, and that was all the way back in August. After I finished Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore I was very definitely hankering for sci-fi, preferably something involving aliens and gunfights. It was tempting, of course, to pick up the next book in Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, or the next book in Iain M. Banks's Culture series, or Caliban's War, the sequel to Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. But I felt like reading something with a female protagonist, written by a female author. A lot of women have stepped up to the front lines of genre fiction in the last couple of years, and I wanted to read something in that vein.

It was then that I decided to take a peek into the rather sizable to-read pile I'd accumulated, and decided it was a good time to read Kameron Hurley's God's War. It was something I'd put off reading, mostly because I simply wasn't in the right place, intellectually speaking, to handle what the blurb implied would be a rather heavy read. But four days ago I was ready for it, and dove right in - something I do not regret, though it has left me reeling a little in a very good way.

God's War takes place on a planet called Umayma: baking under the light of two suns, where exposure means cancer or worse. On top of that it is a war-torn planet, as two nations, Nasheen and Chenja, are embroiled in a holy war that has made life even more difficult. Chenja is still run by men, but Nasheen is dominated by women. Both countries send all able-bodied males to the front, where they must serve a certain number of years before they are allowed to come back.

And onto this bloody, ravaged stage steps Nyxnissa “Nyx” so Dasheem, a bel dame: a professional assassin in the employ of the Nasheenian government, with the duty of executing deserters and possible contagion carriers before they get into the heart of Nasheen. But things don't go quite well for Nyx, and soon enough she finds herself stripped of her bel dame title and privileges, and doing work as a bounty hunter with a small team of troubled individuals. Soon enough, though, she receives a message from no one less than the Queen of Nasheen herself, who asks Nyx to accomplish a mission that may either make Nyx and her crew - or break them all.

The first thing that I like about this novel is that it doesn't spend a lot of time in exposition explaining how the world works to the reader. There are times when such an approach to world-building is acceptable, and very enjoyable (to myself, anyway), but I like how Hurley simply dove in and left it up to the reader to figure out how this world worked based on what was going on in the story. It's not kind on the reader, to be sure, but it shows a certain amount of faith in the readers' intelligence that I greatly appreciate. It also means that there is more time spent in characterization and plot, and I believe that it's those two elements that truly make or break a story.

Speaking of characters, this novel has some very interesting and very damaged ones. Nyx is a prime example: a veteran of the war front against Chenja, she's been blown up, burned, reconstituted, beaten, and undergone all sorts of torture - and yet, through her sheer force of will, she continues to survive. Events in her past and throughout the storyline have left and continue to leave Nyx with many physical scars, of course, but it is the psychological scars that truly make Nyx who she is: so damaged that sometimes, she can't see beyond her own nose at the people around her. She is far, far from admirable, and she is not the type of character that will be universally liked, but that is what makes her so fascinating. She is as her world and her situation made her, as much as she has made herself.

The other characters in the novel are just as complex as Nyx, even if they don't receive a lot of screen time, so to speak. There is Rhys, a magician refugee from Chenja and Nyx's right-hand man. Throughout the course of the novel he struggles to hold onto everything he has ever held dear: his honor, his faith, his belief in the rightness of his own beliefs - and yet the reader watches all of that fall apart in the face of the war and in the face of Nyx herself, as her actions show Rhys that maybe, just maybe, he might be wrong after all. There is Taite and his sister Inaya, refugees as well from Ras Tieg, which they fled to avoid persecution. Khos, a Mhorian, is also running away from restrictions in his own country. None of them is completely innocent, completely good, and that's the point. No one can be the metaphorical ray of sunshine in a novel like this, not with the kind of themes it has running.

And the themes in this novel are quite heavy. I really enjoy it when genre fiction is used to refract the reality and concerns of our world, and God's War is an excellent example of such a novel. As the title implies, it ties itself to the ongoing issue of war and religion, and the price or prices that both extract from humanity when one is fought in the name of the other. The results are, of course, not pretty: the very first chapter shows the devastation and desolation wrought by years and years of holy war. Many of the images echo disturbingly with the images that we receive now through various news outlets and media platforms, and the story continues to expand on this by illustrating the desperate lengths people will go in order to survive such a world. Interwoven with those two primary concerns are issues connected to race, gender and the environment, which are handled extraordinarily well. It would be giving away too many spoilers to discuss just how those are handled, but suffice to say that they are dealt with, and, in my opinion, dealt with very well, especially considering how they are incorporated into the story.

As for the plot, that is very well done as well. I enjoy stories that are all about cloak-and-dagger, political intrigue, and this is precisely what lies at the core of God's War. Again to explain how that is the case would mean giving away too many spoilers, but it is there, and it was very enjoyable to read how Nyx and her team unraveled the mystery lying at the heart of the mission given to them by the queen. Hurley also weaves world-building brilliantly into her plot and keeps it moving, balancing action and storytelling with creating the world her characters inhabit. As I mentioned earlier, this places a great deal of faith in the readers' intelligence to put the pieces together to build the world for themselves, but I feel Hurley does it very well without bogging her plot down much. The beginning may feel slow at first, but by the time the reader gets to the middle third of the novel it begins to pick up speed, and the slow pace of the first third is forgotten in the rapid pace of the second and in the revelations of the third.

Overall, God's War is an incredible piece of writing: a well-built world, populated by interesting characters with a plot that moves along very well and dealing in themes that continue to concern us today, despite the far-flung future in which the novel is set. It is, admittedly, the “deep end of the pool” when it comes to sci-fi, and the characters may be off-putting to some, but readers with experience and patience will find their efforts very well-rewarded by a story that offers far more than it initially promises.

Pros: unique, diverse cast, interesting world and politics

Cons: limited description, slow beginning

Nyx used to be a Bel Dame, a government sponsored assassin sent after deserters from the war with Chenja. But after a bad job she's stripped of her membership and left doing dirty mercenery work. Her team consists of misfits escaping one thing or another: a Ras Tiegan communications man, a Mhorian shape shifter, a gun loving local (poached from a former boss) and a Chenjan draft dodger, whose magical abilities of controlling bugs are limited. When they're offered a well paying - but dangerous job, Nyx takes it, not realizing it would pit her against the toughest, most dangerous women in Nasheen.

Described by the author as being a book about “Bugs. Blood. Brutal women.” and “bugpunk at it's best” this was a... unique read. Heavily influenced by middle eastern culture, the book takes place on a planet colonized by several groups of people, all followers of the book. Each group interprets the book differently though, which has led to a centuries long war among the Nasheenians and the Chenjans. The politics, both between the nations and within Nasheen (where most of the book takes place) are fascinating.

The characters themselves are interesting, each having their own reasons why they've left their homelands to live in Nasheen, and why they're working for Nyx. There's a good balance between action and development, so you get the chance to really know what motivates each of her team members.

I would have appreciated more description and deeper world building. I had to look up what a burnous was (a long cloak with a hood that everyone in the book wears) as there was no proper description of it (I got that it was worn over clothing and had a hood and pockets, but didn't know it was a cloak rather than a jacket). Neither bug magic nor bug tech are explained at all, nor how this planet develped them. The same goes for shape shifters, who you learn were created, but not why or how (though this didn't play into the novel as much as the bug magic and tech so I can understand why the author wouldn't want to focus on it).

I also found the opening a bit slow. Not in terms of action (there's a LOT of action), but in terms of plot. The opening scenes set up things for later, but you don't realize that until you're several chapters into the book.

There's a lot of violence, and a fair amount of gore (several people are tortured and replacing body parts is one of a magician's talents, which gets used a lot in this book).

If you're looking for something very different from what's out there and like kick-ass women, you've found it. If you've got a weak stomach, look elsewhere.

I'm loving this, so far–can't put it down.

On a planet colonized by Muslims using insect-based technology in the far-flung future ravaged a multi-sect religious war, in the midst of which a scrappy band of pansexual assassins try to scrap out a living (selling the occasional organ to pay bills). Ho-hum. Nothing we all haven't read a thousand times before, right?

Well, maybe not. Fantastic concept, well-written, heckuva world built by Hurley here.

But here's the problem – I couldn't force myself to care about any of these characters, particularly the protagonist Nyx. Unpleasant people, no real moral core, no reason to root for/against them, to care about their lives, their missions, their wars. I kept trying and trying and trying to find a reason to get invested in this beyond trying to figure out exactly how the insect-tech worked and utterly failed at every turn.

You can have the coolest, most inventive setup imaginable, but if you don't fill it with people readers can give a rip about, it's just not worth the effort.