God's War

Kameron Hurley
God's War Cover

God's War

DrNefario
3/28/2014
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My preconceptions about this book were totally wrong. The title, the series name and the beginnings of the blurb all led me to believe that it was a supernatural fantasy. It isn't. It's SF. It might not be the hardest of hard SF, but it is pretty solidly SF. It's set on an alien world. Many of the things that look like magic, and indeed are called magic, are understood to be some kind of biotech.

God's War is an action-SF tale set in an interesting and richly-imagined world blighted by and distorted by an unending religious conflict.

It was a good read, but I don't think I liked it as much as some.

My biggest problem was that, like Daniel Craig's 007, our super-badass elite heroine Nyx appears to be criminally incompetent. We hear a lot about how she used to be among the best of the best, but we hardly ever see any sign of that. She is constantly getting defeated and captured, without really putting up much of a fight.

Indeed, Nyx's biggest skill seems to be that she can take the punishment and carry on. If she's ever going to defeat her enemies, she seems intent on doing it by breaking their fists with her face.

It was a little difficult to root for her as she constantly failed and didn't seem to learn from it, but the world was interesting and there was plenty of action.

So I liked it, but I didn't love it. I've given it 3.5/5, and intend to read the next in the series eventually.