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I'm always delighted when I read a book that makes me thing, "gosh, that was a hard thing you tried to do, and boy did you do it."

Books about more-or-less-immortal characters are difficult things; there's a real joy in reading a powerful narrator, a lot of fun in a power fantasy, but once your narrator hits a certain level of power, you run the risk of them becoming too alien to identify with or of having the stakes lowered by the lack of consequences. Slow Gods threads that needle well, giving us a protagonist that is powerful but constrained, unknowable but examined. This is something North has done before with her The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which was another book I really enjoyed, but this time the consequences are amped up, the philosophy is amped up, the weirdness is amped up. It was great.

I think that any good, expansive space opera will involve widely different cultures, any sufficiently different cultures that are competently imagined will have different ideas about gender or sexuality, and therefore, any sufficiently well written space opera will be inherently queer. Slow Gods is a very well written space opera, and the range of imagined systems of genders are a delight. We see systems with 8 or more genders, with no genders at all, all reflecting and making sense in the context of their imagined cultures. I greatly appreciated that we never got even a smidge of a hint of what sort of body our narrator's sexual interest had; it wasn't relevant to that character's gender identity in ter society, and so it wasn't worth sharing with us. Even the Shine, the hyper-capitalist debt slavery society, which by law only allowed two genders based on your genitals, acknowledged that some men were more manly and deserved hé/hím, some women more feminine and deserved shé/hér, which is a great analogy for how even the most conservative in our current society understand that gender is at least a spectrum, even if they won't talk about it that way.

In fact, there's plenty ways to read the thematic meat of the analogies here. It's pretty easy to read this as an allegory of what it's like for the EU to deal with the US in the way that the Accord cannot call out the slavery practices of the Shine for fear of the nukes pointed at them. It's easy to see invasion and occupation as echoes of any number of Earth events, historic and present. I tend to read any story of someone finding people different as an autism analogy, and I thought this one was deftly done, both in the subtle ways that Maw describes feeling different from the people around him and in the obvious ways, like when Maw specifically asks another character about his inability to read when someone is being performative and is told it will make social relationships difficult.

In a bunch of ways, I would describe this as a book that does genre conventions well, not a book that invents new conventions. I've read books before that imagine an unknowable space outside the universe filled with unknowable inhabitants that we can use to travel through (most recently, The Outside, and before that Shards of Earth), but Slow Gods does the things that the best books that involve unknowable Lovecraftian horrors do (I'm thinking of American Elsewhere as one example) by making those entities relatable without ever being fully knowable. I've also read books before that try to engage with the philosophy of how you find meaning in a massive universe (The Hydrogen Sonata and Lucky Day come to mind), but it's not an easy thing to do in a cohesive or un-schmalzy way.

All this requires a light touch, but that's Slow Gods through and through. It's a book that leans into the subtleties, that doesn't make evil less banal or boring than it is, that uses an imagined future to illustrate today, all with lovely prose and propulsive plot. It's a delight.

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Slow Gods is engrossing and splendidly written. It is also hard to describe. On the surface it is a fairly straightforward narrative, told in the first person by Mawukana na-Vdnaze, a far future space pilot who has been cryptically altered by a traumatic experience during FTL travel. Maw is a witness to, and often unwilling or unknowing participant in, great events that reshape the galaxy during his unnaturally long life. It is also, certainly, an arc of personal growth and development, as Maw is shaped by his encounters with others caught up in the trauma created by the sphere of destruction spreading through occupied space from a massive supernova. I think it is also an exploration of being neurodivergent, because Maw presents as classically so. It touches on the meaning of what it is to be a monster, and offers two monsters to compare and contrast. It examines quite directly what it is to be a god. Love, war, and ultimately, the meaning of life, come under the microscope.

While excellent, Slow Gods isn't flawless. Maw's character at the beginning of the book is so different from at the end that it is hard to see him as the same person. Though, to be fair, Maw announces in the opening sentence that he is a flawed copy. Still, I would have preferred to see early Maw with a bit more agency and awareness, which would have helped inform his growth throughout the book.

It is, however, nearly flawless. I read this long book in two sittings, foregoing sleep and other activities to push through it. Reading was never anything but a pleasure as Ms. North'a writing is so wonderfully controlled and her sense of pacing is perfect. The supporting characters are beautifully drawn and are key to the development of Maw's personal arc.

Highly recommended.

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Claire North has always been an ambitious storyteller, and *Slow Gods" is no exception. The novel is sprawling, intricate, and richly imaginative; however, my experience with it was more frustrating than rewarding.

The plot felt elusive and difficult to follow. It was like peeling back the layers of an onion—each new revelation or shift in the narrative added complexity, but I struggled to find a solid core or through-line to ground the story.

The world-building is undeniably expansive, but I found it complicated. It may be immersive for some readers, but for me, it became a barrier. I often had to re-read sections to comprehend what was happening, and then, the payoff wasn’t always satisfying. One detail that stood out to me was the naming convention and pronouns. As a nonbinary person, I am not thrown by pronouns; however, the number of types added another layer of complexity to an epic story with many characters and layers to track.

That said, I can appreciate the ambition and emotional depth North brings to her work. There are moments of beauty and introspection here, and some readers will find this book rewarding. For me alone, the layers never quite came together, and I couldn't fully engage with this particular story. The cover is beautiful, and the ideas are fascinating. I hope others enjoy this story. Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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