God's War

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