If this book is Science FICTION, then... how come it all makes sense?

You won't find time travel in this book. It also doesn't have wormholes, no portals to other dimensions, no aliens whose morphology suspiciously resembles humans or dinosaurs, no superheroes, no teleportation, no wizardry... What it DOES have is LOTS of real-life hard science that seems fictional at first glance. As an educator teaching sciences, this immediately stood out to me, and this is part of the reason I will recommend it to my students.

Halfway through, I realized that while reading, I kept googling and fact-checking scientific ideas and research topics that were mentioned in the book. Everything checked out! Scary... What shocked me the most was that the Habitat Bennu plan is for real: in 2022, scientists have actually come up with a cost-effective plan to colonize asteroids! The author must have invested so much effort in research... This made me feel that I, and all other readers, are treated with respect.

One more thing I noticed is that the text was written with a lot of attention to language. That's true for the actual book's text, the back-cover blurb, and even the subtitle: "God is gambling to survive". At first, it sounded weird to me - I guess because subconsciously I might have expected 'is gambling' to be transitive, so I was asking myself, 'What's at stake in this gamble?' (This question is 'sort of' answered right before the ending of the book). Who knows - maybe that weirdness is what caught my eye in the first place and made me pick up this book? If that was intentional, then it's very clever!

At times, the book reads as if it were translated from a foreign language by someone who is not a native English speaker. Still, I feel the grammatical choices here are mostly intentional, not accidental - they give a sort of special, out-of-this-world vibe to the read.

Many other reviewers rightfully praised the plot. I will only add that it is utterly CRAZY. The philosophical ideas challenged my conceptions, but they might actually MAKE SENSE - they are certainly difficult to argue with. And the ending... Well, it simply begs for a sequel. Can't wait!