The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It gets better after the first half.
James SA Corey is, of course, the author of the hugely successful The Expanse Series, a galaxy spanning space opera of interplanetary war and alien threat that played out over nine books and spawned a TV series and other media. I love The Expanse. I’ve read all the books, listened to the audiobooks twice and consumed the show. So, when The Mercy of Gods was announced as kicking off a spectacular new space opera from the same author, I pre-ordered the title immediately.
But when I started reading it, I realised this was quite a different proposition from The Expanse. Firstly, marketing it as a space opera seems not altogether correct. It has space opera elements but this first volume, at least, is mainly confined to a small group of people and a single location. The second thing that hit me was how boring the first half of the book was.
The Expanse’s first book Leviathan Wakes starts with a woman being imprisoned after her ship is attacked and boarded and quickly shifts to another ship responding to an automated distress signal that leads to a violent outcome. From the very first sentence we are in the action and completely invested.
The Mercy of Gods starts with a statement from the alien invader protagonists of the book – the Carryx – laying out their long war of galactic domination and foreshadowing how coming across humanity brought about their downfall. And the very next chapter has one of the human characters – Dafyd – again remonstrating how his life was completely changed by what was to come. It’s foreshadowing on steroids and it’s not the only example before the invasion happens, as if Corey is aware this first section isn’t exactly engaging.
Because it isn’t. The first scene is an academic end of year ball in which we are introduced to Dafyd and a number of other academics and we begin to understand the byzantine politics of academic funding. Dafyd’s team is in the ascendancy but other institutions and study groups are looking to undermine them or steal their work. We also meet Dafyd’s colleagues, none of whom are particularly likeable or interesting for that matter and – even by the halfway mark of the novel – don’t seem well defined.
Because of all this the promised alien invasion seems to be a long time coming, despite hints and, yes, more foreshadowing. The first half of the book could have been told much more economically so we could get to the good stuff quicker.
And there is good stuff to be had. After the invasion finally happens – hooray! – The group are split up and transported to a planet owed by the Carryx. They’re given a scientific task to complete which will show whether their species will be useful to the Carryx or not. The implication is that if they’re not, they’ll all be killed. The facility they’re in is also inhabited by a wide range of other subject species all working on their own projects for – presumably – the same ends. Dafyd begins to seek out and talk to their Carryx supervisor and slowly works out that the test is more than it seems. He also encounters a spy who is working against the Carryx on the inside, so we start to get some real drama and intrigue and the story centres on how they can turn the situation to their advantage. But it’s Dafyd’s intuition about the psychology of the Carryx that points to a way they may be able to defeat their captors.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book, but I’m still pretty annoyed about being subjected to the first half. I’m also worried that the story might turn into one about ‘human exceptionalism’. The idea that the other subject species just give up and succumb to the Carryx, but there’s something different about the rebellious human spirit that gives us an edge. It’s a pretty tired SF trope, but it’s also one that’s no longer possible to justify, given how terrible the state of our real world is right now.
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