Kameron Hurley

This book hit the spot for me. All the characters are women. The technology is all organic, and there's quite a bit of body horror mixed in there. More than that, the characters are not stereotypical. Even as I really enjoyed myself, I must warn people that it was not an easy read. There were times where even I was a little grossed out, but I get why those things were important. The book embodied the icky squishy parts of being a human with female plumbing very well, and for some people that show more might be too well. I feel like this book does a lot of the same kind of thing with sci-fi that Octavia Butler did with the Xenogenesis books(Lilith's Brood), but the feeling is the main similarity. Story-wise the books are not all that similar. I like books like this that stretch some boundaries and make me a bit uncomfortable at times, so all in all I would recommend it. show less

Six years after the events in God’s War and Nyx is still making a living by taking notes, or killing. She has a new team, no magician this time round, and she’s doing okay. Not great, never great, but she’s getting by. She has enough to pay the bills most of the time and a couple of emergency caches if things go sour. But she is still an ex-Bel Dame. The loss of that title still rankles her, maybe more than she realises. She remembers her life having honour and purpose back then.

But show more those rogue sisters of her that caused so much trouble before are back at it again. A faction among the Bel Dames seem to be ready to launch a coup, to take out the queen and seize power.

So where does that leave Nyx?

On my first read of God’s War I loved its worldbuilding and the fact that it was so different from so much fantasy/science fiction, on my reread I loved the characters just as much as I hadn’t the first time I picked up the book. Reading Infidel was like my reread. I loved the worldbuilding, I loved the way the different societies had their different ideas and practices, their social taboos and customs, I loved the desert and the bugs and the magicians. And I loved the characters.

In a way Nyx reminds me a certain amount of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye character. Not that Toby is as quick to kill, not in the least, but she starts out sure she isn’t a hero and through the books begins to realise that she is that hero. Now, don’t get me wrong, the books are miles apart in tone and character and a whole heap of stuff. And Nyx is no hero. But I think she may be on the path. She’ll never be a Hollywood white-hat, she’s got far too much red in her ledger, but at least now she is questioning things a little.

Of course her world is a brutal one. It’s one where cancers are common, you simply get them scraped off, if of course you can afford that. It is a world that has been at war for so long that the whole fabric of society has altered. In Nasheen all the men go to the front, most never return, so the women dominate society. Most of the men of Chenja also go to the front, but not the wealthy land-owning first born sons, so there are men at the home front. Men who rule and marry multiple women so that they can all have wives. To the Chenjans the Nasheenian women are brutal, barbaric, and lacking in virtue. Mainly because they behave like men.

And the story just barrels along. Never too fast to make you scratch your head and wonder whats going on, despite all the alien-ness of the whole world. But it is action packed.

If you liked God’s War I’d say that you will enjoy this one too. I loved it, and am looking forward to starting book 3 Rapture in a few weeks. show less

Kameron Hurley’s God’s War is probably not a book I would have picked up had it not been recently nominated for a Nebula Award. Even then, I probably wouldn’t have read it had I not seen that Nyx, the main character, was one of a group of government sanctioned female assassins known as the bel dames. Once I saw that, I had to read it; I’m a sucker for poetry references.

Some science fiction and fantasy novels gently introduce you to their world, carefully explaining the magic systems show more and politics through semi plausible conversations and interactions. God’s War does not fall into this category. The reader is dumped into a complex world and explanations are not readily forthcoming. I’m usually a fast reader but I read this book, particularly the early parts, very slowly; I focused closely on each word, trying to grasp what was going on. There are hints that Nyx’s world was settled before it had been completely terraformed, the colonists forced to struggle in an inhospitable environment. In addition, a religious war between two nations which appear to follow variants on Islam, has been waged for centuries, long enough that most people no longer remember exactly why they’re fighting. Young men are, archaically put, cannon fodder, and relations between the genders have altered. In addition, some people on this world have acquired inherited traits like shapeshifting and magic. The former are disliked, despised or disenfranchised depending on what nation they’re in and the latter, employed. Technology and magic are centered around insects: bug tech. Insects swarm in this novel; it is not for anyone with a bug phobia.

This book is dark, violent and casually brutal. The characters are damaged and struggle, not only to survive, but to interact with others. I have a limited tolerance for dystopian fiction and do not enjoy reading about bleak worlds lives, so the fact that I not only finished God’s War but intended to read sequel, [Infidel] says a great deal about the skill with which I believe the author handled ugly subjects. This work is not going to be for everyone, but if it sounds at all interesting, it’s worth giving a try; it is incredibly well done. show less

Do you like Ursula le Guin?

And more specifically, do you like le Guin's anthropological world-building, where she takes the relationships and social constructs we take for granted, upends them, and writes a novel about it?

If so, you are likely to enjoy The Mirror Empire, but Hurley is going to make you work for it. It is as if every possible permutation of a society except for our own exists within its pages: there are men and women as equals, women as stronger and bigger than men, armies show more run by women, armies run by both, marriages of multiple men and women to each other, marriages where women are the boss of the men and the men are treated as women used to be, societies where the concept of consent is so sacred that you do not ever touch anyone without first asking them--and if you're anything like me, this will give you a fairly significant brain spasm in the first 75 pages or so. It's all very, very good, but there isn't a single solitary concept you can take for granted. There are no nuclear families as we know them, and men don't run anything (at least, not without strong female help). Some of the societies have two genders; some have three; and one has FIVE. And until the rules and constructs of this world start coming into focus, keeping it all straight takes a strong concentration.

However, it pays off. It's a strong first novel in an eventual trilogy, with a fairly inventive take on the multiple-worlds storyline. The non-social worldbuilding is very strong, with living buildings and people riding bears, for starters. The characters are interesting and endlessly inventive. The system of magic is vaguely astrological, but if you can suspend your disbelief on that score, it has a lot to offer. It is, at the very least, refreshing to read an epic fantasy novel where the social constructs and gender relations are as up for imaginative restructuring as the laws of physics, say. show less