The Mercy of Gods

I don't normally listen to sci-fi because of the amount of detail they tend to contain, but this was simple enough for me to be able to keep up yet also interesting enough to make me want to know what's going to happen next.

I didn't realise this was the first book on a series, but at least I have something to look forward to now!

Best SF novel I've read this year, enjoyed more than Expanse

This is just pure James S.A. Corey. Brilliant, powerful, deep, confusing, and just perfection.

All I can really say is that if you enjoyed The Expanse, you will thoroughly enjoy this.

There are some really frustrating character traits, and that may feel like a drag at first, but it's all for a reason, and when you come out the other side, it all makes sense, and makes the story so much more rich.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

The world building was exceptional and I want to explore this world. All of these worlds. Unfortunately the main characters were all assholes. And not like fun assholes you can't help to enjoy. No, this is like being thrown into a taskforce at work with all of those colleagues you barely can muster up a fake smile for when you say good morning. Spending time with them is pretty much as enjoyable as that looming deadline for the project you wish was assigned someone else, like maybe your worst enemy. So I'm being a big generous with the 3 stars, but it's competently written and the world sparks the imagination. It's just a bummer the protagonists are the least interesting part about it.

This is a weird book, but not because of anything the book itself does (or does not do). In a vacuum, The Mercy of the Gods is a fairly boilerplate, run of the mill ‘hard' SF novel; if you like SF door-stoppers that focus more on plot minutia, passably plausible future-tech and encyclopedic worldbuilding detail, than characterization, emotion, or cultural worldbuilding detail, this book is perfect for you. Ignore the rest of this review and read it now.

However, when viewed within the body of work the authors have published beforehand, The Mercy of the Gods is kind of bizarre. The previous series written by James SA Corey, The Expanse, is radically different than TMoG, and not just in terms of thematic tropes. It's also structurally differnet, and not really in a good way. Thematically, the Expanse was notable (to me) and enjoyable (for me) for focusing on cultural and sociological worldbuilding, being concerned with the politics of class, having dense characterization. Structurally, the books used changing POVs to move the plot forward and show different perspectives on plot development, and while the books were never briskly paced, they never wasted their time or felt like a slog (to me).

None of this is true of TMoG, which has a huge cast of largely identical characters (there are three categories of character, of which there are three to four examples of each: Leader Guys In Conflict, Women Who Are Emotionally Unpredictable / Ambiguous For A Tragic Reason, and Support Guys Who Are There For The Other Two Types Of Characters To Bounce Ideas Off) all from the same profession and class background, from a world with no discernable difference from Earth save that it has different country names and a higher technological level. As such, every POV feels roughly the same except Jessyn's, because her mental illness is very deftly written (I suspect this is because she is based on a real person in the author's life, and while I also suspect I can guess exactly who that person is because I've read several interviews with them, I'm not going to out and say it because that sounds extremely creepy). As such, it's not clear who'se POV it is in almost all chapters.

The plot is extremely meandering but also emotionally distant– monstrous events like the colonization of Earth take place, but everything feels very detached. This is especially strange because these chapters feel very much like the part of the Expanse where Earth is bombed from orbit, but it lacks all emotional resonance or feeling. Same with a section where the main cast is held captive by the aliens– there is striking resemblance to an excellent part of Cibola Burn where colonists on an alien world are trapped underground, but there is again no real emotion present in these sections because there's no sense of perspective. While every chapter is told in the third person from the POV of a named character, things frequently feel like they're written in omnipotent POV because the main cast has so little discernible difference in perspective from each other.

It's also horribly paced, with several (very very long) chapters in a row that don't really move the plot along or aclimate the characters to their surroundings; it just feels like they're there so the writers can figure out the plot and the worldbuilding as they go along, but they forgot to edit the extremely bland chapters out. This book would be 2x stronger if it was half its size.

I don't know why they changed so much, why it's so different on every level. I strongly suspect, though, that the writing duo that is James SA Corey benefitted hugely from their first few Expanse books detailing a structured TTRPG adventure. At almost all times, it feels like the Expanse knew where it was going; TMoG never really does, and every plot development feels like it just appeared there suddenly, with very little buildup or foreshadowing despite having a wealth of paged in which to do so. I also think James SA Corey benefitted from being less well-known when the Expanse came out, and thus they were more heavily edited– the books ended up more polished. Now that the Expanse is extremely well-known in SF circles, James SA Corey are probably edited less, and can throw their weight around more to keep in things that an editor might want them to cut.

In a nutshell: if you loved the Expanse for any other reason than it was long and moderately hard-SF, you might still like The Mercy of Gods! But if you like both, you'll probably like them both for very different reasons, because they are such different book with such a variant level of quality that if I didn't know better, I'd assume TMoG was written years and years before Leviathan Wakes. It feels, at best, like a sophomoric attempt made by authors who have the capabilities to do much, much better.

Another excellent book by the authors of The Expanse. While the story is vastly different from The Expanse, I feel a connection between the two as they both delve into human nature. It's just a coincidence that I read this book after reading the Three Body Problem series. Now my perspective on the possibility of encountering intelligent life has become slightly more pessimistic.

Awaiting the next book in this series with much anticipation.

I thought I'd give it a try getting in at the ground floor for the next James S.A. Corey saga, considering I am a big fan of The Expanse show (and a slow reader of some of the novels). But I am not really into multi-novel scifi sagas, and reading The Mercy of Gods just made that clear to me. It reads like a long prologue. And it didn't hook me enough to be curious about the second. It clearly doesn't have the emotional stakes The Expanse saga had, with its closeness to Earth.

This one is more of a intergalactic zoo setup, and while I enjoyed the world building, the slowness with which some of the plot enfolded, made me rather nitpicky about the setup (It's normal for science results to be replicated in multiple labs, why did they all act like that was such a problem? How are they all able to breathe the same air? How can they perfectly replicate laboratory equipment, while failing to replicate shower and doors?).

And hey, guess what, at the end it's a ragtag team of ~4 guys and 1 girl. Sounds familiar?

Incredibly rich world building, alot of aliens to consider but the main characters are not what I would consider hanging out with and the situation is pretty bleak; even dark and gruesome at times.

I don't think I'll be continuing in the series.

There are a lot of interesting plot points here, and a lot to think about. It's a well-written book. I didn't find myself connecting to any of the characters in it, however, and that limited my ability to enjoy it.

As a long time lover of The Expanse I was excited to see what the author duo of James S.A. Corey would come up with this time around. While not "Hard Science Fiction" as the Expanse was, it was wonderful seeing their imaginations run wild. Given that this is first in a series it's hard to know where things will go from here and the book does world building very well but left me wanting more and doesn't feel like it stands alone in the end. I look forward to continuing the series and see how everything plays out.

I've been wanting to try out this author duo for the longest but didn't want to jump into another big series (but of course, this is series as well SURPRISE!) and this sounded like the perfect chance.

I enjoyed this book, mainly because of the plot twists. I loved that I couldn't really tell when one was about to happen which lead to a lot of 😲😲😲 moments.

The pace good as well. Nearing the end of part one so much has happened in one particular setting that it was kind of like overwhelming but in a good way.

I really appreciate the wide variety of characters and all their different motives and journeys throughout the story. One con about that though is that I couldn't for the life of me keep people straight especially when more people were introduced near the last act BUT I was just listening to the audiobook and didn't have the names in front of my eyes so it's not a really a slight on the story ... perhaps (they're just an a lot of people which IS realistic for the situation sooo idk 😅)

Overall, I'm glad I finally got to give this author a chance and as someone who is notoriously bad at following up with series, I leaning towards yeah more than meh when it comes to picking up book 2 so win!

Great to see these two tackling an SF story that couldn't be more different from the Expanse books that made their name. It would have been very easy to knock out a retread of the hits, but this has a very different setting and feel. The only thing that carries over is the readability and enjoyment. -I really liked this opening instalment and I'm keen for the rest of the story