I am a Vonnegut lover. Born and raised that way by my Vonnegut loving mother. So when I saw this title compared to Vonnegut's writing, I immediately requested it on NetGalley. Dear reader, I am sad to report that I do not think this writing style mimics Vonnegut's. I found this writing style to be much closer to that of Lemony Snicket's in the Series of Unfortunate Events series. The narrator is a character within the book, but it takes a while for the narrator to reveal their true identity. From there, I felt as though the narration was strange. The narrator did not narrate as though they were that character. Instead, there continued to be a sassy and philosophical third person narrator who was only re-connected to the story when it was necessary or convenient for the plot.

The author attempts to mimic writers like Adams and Vonnegut by adding philosophical ramblings and diatribes into the story, but they do not flow with the speed of the plot. Kanan Gill is first and foremost a standup comedian who is taking his first big step into novel writing. In the world of stand up comedy, a well placed pause can make or break a joke. It feels like this book doesn't recognize that very powerful fact, and instead tries too hard to overload the reader with jokes and philosophical questions.

Gill tackles subjects such as religion, grief, ethics, and found family within this story. I thought that the ending was absolutely amazing and tied together the plot in a way that I didn't expect. However, the sassy quips had burnt too much goodwill at this point. I was sad that I hadn't gotten to the ending sooner, while simultaneously frustrated that it had taken this long.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for this advance copy in exchange for an open and honest review.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., this book is not. I didn’t make this comparison—the book’s promo does, along with comps to Neil Gaiman (booooo, by the way), Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett. Indeed, when you see a book compared to so many heavy hitters, you should probably increase your skepticism rather than you hype. Acts of God is an inchoate mess of a novel, though I rather suspect Kanan Gill might welcome such an excoriating statement, and he or his publicists are welcome to blurb me on his next book. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Blackstone in exchange for a review.

Acts of God follows two parallel, connected stories. In one universe, P. Manjunath is a private investigator on the trail of a globe-spanning mystery. However, it turns out his universe is just a simulation that exists within the universe of Dr. Krishna, who has been simulating Manjunath’s universe illegally. Krishna lives in an absurdist, almost Kafka-esque dystopia built on a principle of absolute transparency, which of course Krishna has violated. Both stories are narrated by a fourth-wall-breaking sentient wall tile.

Look, on the surface, I should love this. I love Vonnegut and Adams and Pratchett. I enjoy absurdist humour and metafictional commentary. The simulation hypothesis can occasionally be done well.

To Gill’s credit, as a work of science fiction, Acts of God is pretty good! There’s some trenchant commentary about AI, the meaning of life, culture, etc., buried deep within this trainwreck of a plot. The simulation hypothesis physics is explained fairly well. The whole society of nuclear winter refugees is interesting.

However, in his attempt to make this book into a weird kind of romp, Gill has done the literary equivalent of throwing a bunch of paint at a canvas and hoping the result is a masterpiece. Sometimes it is! Sometimes—most of the time—it’s just a mess. Pratchett’s secret lay in his deeply compassionate characterization: even the most minor characters, for him, were people who had these full, reified lives, even if we never saw them. Most of Gill’s characters barely have names—and that is fine, not every character has to be fully realized. But, you know, at least give us more backstory for people like P. Manjunath? Or his assistant?

Vonnegut wrote from a place of trauma—“Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time” is a great opening line, and it also signifies Slaughterhouse-Five’s abiding allegory for PTSD. I can see how Gill might be attempting to follow in these footsteps in Acts of God, where Krishna is grieving and processing the death of a colleague who was, in many ways, the closest thing he had to a friend. Yet the reader has very little to ground themselves in here, for the society Gill describes is so foreign it might as well be alien—and there is nothing, nobody around, not even the wall tile, who can really interpret for us the way, say, Arthur Dent can do in Hitchhiker’s Guide.

I want to bring one more author into the chat: Samuel R. Delany. Because he’s also great at writing weird science fiction and fantasy, and his stories are often set in societies far different from our own. Nevertheless, he grounds his characters in the real—it’s just the real for them—in a way that allows readers to grasp the fundamentals. (Except for Dhalgren, of course, because that’s just … pfft. James Joyce wishes.)

Anyway, if I’ve spent most of this review talking about other authors, it’s just because Acts of God didn’t leave enough of an impression for me to critique it very deeply. I don’t want to be harsh. Maybe my sense of humour has just contracted over the past decade. Maybe this is a hilarious book that have many doubled over with laughter! If so, that’s fantastic. But it absolutely did not work for me. Much respect to Gill for swinging big and writing a story that is very much his own, but in this reader’s humble opinion, he has a long way to go.

Come for the story, stay for the ride. The author is a fairly well known stand up comedian in India and the humor in the book stays true to form. I had been hearing a lot about this book for a while and was glad to get my hands on it. Looking forward to more!

More of a 3.5 I think.

The author is Ofcourse a well known figure in India with his standup comedy and I’ve always been a fan of his pretentious movie reviews series. So when I saw that he had written a sci-fi series, it almost felt unbelievable. It’s already so so rare to find a desi sci-fi being written, that too from India (and not the diaspora) and on top of that, it’s someone we know - it felt too good to be true. And I definitely had the expectation that this would be absolutely hilarious, in line with his humor.

The humor is there. The weird and the absurd, the various tangents and ramblings the story goes into, the incessant philosophical themes throughout - it all felt very signature Kanan Gill but there just was something missing. The beginning was pretty confusing and it took me a while to get used to the verbose writing style and while I didn’t feel like giving up, it also wasn’t something I couldn’t put down. It almost came into its own towards the final 100 pages, where plot points converged and we got to understand the characters better and got a peek through their hearts and minds. The world created here is interesting, futuristic but still gives you a very real lived in feel, something familiar and possible in our reality. The characters are quirky and vulnerable but also have a mystery about them which takes a while to unravel, but I think I ended up liking the sentient wall the most.

Overall, this was both fun and exhausting but I’m still glad that it exists and I got to read it. I only hope it encourages more Indian writers to delve into the SFF genre and crave many more wonderful worlds for us to explore. Recommend this one to readers who love satire and philosophy and wackiness in their sci-fi books.

How to describe this book? It is complex, interesting, engaging, humorous, thoughtful, with interesting concepts to explore and philosophical and scientific ideas to let rumble around in your head. But what is it about? Scientists create a simulated universe, and the story follows both the scientists and the simulated universe. Every universe they create runs and ends the same way, destruction. Can the scientists nudge it in a different direction? Can they do it in secret since all their work is illegal? Are the scientists in a simulation? Will their universe also end? And why is the same guy in each simulated universe disrupting the scientists' work? There is a lot here, and for me, it required a lot of concentration to put all the pieces together. But it was worth it. This book is going to live in my head for a while as I think through all the bits. Oh, and the book gets pretty meta in places where the narrator addresses the reader directly and makes fun of novels and writing. So some humor, some hard thinking, and a fun interesting story.

*Acts of God* is a wild, philosophical adventure that blends humor and existential musings in a futuristic world turned upside down. Private detective P. Manjunath's quest to uncover global mysteries collides with the machinations of Dr. Krishna, the God-like figure in a utopian future, resulting in a series of absurd, mind-bending events. Kanan Gill's debut is a laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking romp that challenges the very nature of reality, identity, and the human condition.