Review - Slow Gods by Claire North

Slow Gods

Claire North
Orbit, 18 November 2025 
Available as: HB, 422pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy 
ISBN(HB): 9780356526188

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Slow Gods  to consider for review.

After three books telling the story of what happens at home while Odysseus is adventuring, Claire North still has something to say about the gods - though here they are not Olympian deities but mighty computer systems, going about their inscrutable business across the galaxy. One, in particular, is referred to as "the Slow" because it eschews faster-than-light "arc travel". But one might equally accuse them of being "slow" to act against injustice and oppression in human affairs, which are illustrated in the opening sections of this book by the sad story of Mawukana na-Vdnaze. 

Maw has the misfortune to be born in the polity known as the Shine, a nakedly exploitative territory that works its common people to the grave to support the small minority who are Shiny - possessed of an indefinable mix of wealth, flair and assertion which gives them a passport to success. 

Maw does not have Shine, and his fate follows from that, leading him to a transformation ("I am a very poor copy of myself") which makes him, in the eyes of some - including himself - a monster, a ghost. 

The focus of the book is, in part, how Maw deals with that monsterdom, and seeks to be, if a monster, then a monster on the side of the angels - whether that means resisting the Shine, or working hard on the crisis of his time, the foretold collapse of a binary star system. When it occurs, this supernova will create an intense expanding shell of radiation and extinguish life for hundreds of lightyears. This will obliterate many of the Shine worlds, but also the planet Adjumir, on which a galaxy-wide rescue effort focusses.

I loved the way that North describes Adjumir and its people - "describe" is perhaps the wrong world, they conjure it up through stories, songs, language and the behaviour of the Adjumiris and especially Gebre, a spiky archivist who Maw meets on his rescue mission. Throughout this book we get snippets of history, turning into laments for what's been lost, for the fractured lives of exiles in the Adjumiri diaspora.

There's also haunting love story between Gebre and Maw, who only meet on two occasions - a fusion of duty, desire, loss and inevitable fate which gives the book its core, and a core of steel.

Entwined about that core are conspiracies, plots, secrets and lies, as well as the reprehensible behaviour of the Shine authorities. They see the threat of the coming supernova and refuse to act, indeed suppressing knowledge of it in their territories. (Thank goodness no nation today would act like that, ignoring a planet-killing threat for their own selfish convenience!) 

Through all this, we see Maw's gradual coming to terms with what he is and what he's done. This is often through the exploration of the myriad languages of the Galaxy and their customs and social structures, particularly a diverse assembly of genders (expect multiple systems of pronouns). It's a slow awakening for him, the dry tones of the editorial Maw writing this at some later point in his life counterpointing the passion of what he did and said in his story (and we're warned, this won't always be a reliable account). He's a character who finds it hard to forgive himself for some terrible things, something that, perhaps, allows him an insight into the otherwise inscrutable minds of the gods. I recall the frequent pleas in the Bible to a mighty God who yet permits suffering. How long, O Lord, how long? How long will the unrighteous prosper? How long will the innocent be oppressed? Rescue your people! Reveal yourself before the nations in your might, and cast down the evildoer!

A question we, in our day, might well ask...

Slow Gods gives a hint, a flavour, of the true complexity of that prayer, and of what it might take to answer it. Because there's always a cost to action - as Maw discovers one awful night on Adjumir. And it does so in a warm, generous narrative where monsters and failed, imperfect beings may contemplate their own very essence and deeds and seek redemption, even if - as suggested in a coda to the story - that seems to obliterate justice. 

Slow Gods is an enthralling, intelligent and absorbing story which revives the genre of space opera and adds North's distinct tone of moral questioning. A brilliant book. Buy this one as a present for the SF nerd in your life, and if that's yourself, just buy it!

For more information about Slow Gods, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour - #Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

Fathomfolk

Eliza Chan

Orbit, 27 February 2024,
Available as: HB, 420pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356522395

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me a copy of Fathomfolk to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I have been known to describe books as "immersive". In the case of Fathomfolk, the term really comes into its own because it is, literally, about immersion. Most obviously, there's immersion in water - in the world of Fathomfolk, the waters have risen and most land has been drowned. Humans coexist with sentient sea creatures - the marine peoples of multiple cultures' myths and legends, from East Asian water dragons to mermaids to kelpies to sea witches,  and many actual marine species too. All these are united by their ability to "water weave" - manipulate the water magically - and some also have the ability to shapeshift.

But there are other sorts of immersion here - immersion in different cultures, immersion in work and family and also, romantic immersion in another person. All of these mix, and not always comfortably. If you think the magic of the sea people all sounds wonderful and magical, well it is, but still all is not well. The inundation of the land was the outcome of war between humans and sea peoples, and the latter - the fathomfolk or just Folk - came off worse in this. They are oppressed by humans, who are polluting the oceans and dominating the Folk, treating then as lesser mortals subjects to constraints and controls and prejudices. In the city of Tiankawi, where most of the action in the book takes place, we see the patterns of coexistence in a prejudiced society played out. The focus is on Kai, a sea dragon ambassador from one of the Folk havens and on his partner Mira, a siren and poster girl for diversity. Mira has recently been promoted tocaptain of police but increasingly, as this book proceeds, suffers the tensions and paradoxes of being distrusted by both the dominant society and by the Folk. Mira therefore endures immersion in another sense, genuinely neither a person of the sea nor or the land.

Others in the story also play ambiguous roles, though it would be wrong to say too much about them because spoilers. But we see dilemmas both in the "opposition" to the dominant humans (through a somewhat self regarding sect of revolutionaries) and in those who seek coexistence, as well as those who simply put themselves first. There are also city politics inn play, as well as secrets of going back to Tiankawi's foundation. At times it seems as though everyone's playing a part, everyone's putting on an act. This affects the relationship between Kai and Mira, undermining who they are and exposing issues of privilege and accommodation (Kai, as a dragon, is seen as being at the peak of Folk society which of course has its own hierarchies and prejudices).

Eliza Chan deftly weaves together these multiple strands of the story, gradually expanding the scope form the personal and the immediate to the cosmic and delivering some real shocks as she does, not least in the last few pages which show a narrative that's really going places. 

While the configuration of the world in this story is different form our own, it's easy to see the book as a glimpse of a future affected by global heating, as well as a commentary on prejudice, race and migration  (in a devastating scene, a ship full of sea asylum seekers arrives at the city's docks). It's written in a loosely East Asian setting (albeit, as a I said, the geography is unrecognisably different) which applies both to the human aspects and the Folk.

Eliza Chan portrays the diverse and complex city of Tiankawi as a truly vast and multilayered place, creating distinct and parallel cultures both above and below water and convincingly bringing both to life. This above water/ below water concept feels like it ought not to work yet by the end of the story  it feels completely natural. The city's peopled by vivid and credible characters, with even the villains having their sympathetic side (such as being driven by family ambition, rather than simple love of power). I thought one or two of the secondary characters such as bookish Eun might have had more attention, but I think it's clear there are more books coming so hopefully they will get that at some stage. 

All in all a beguiling and, yes, properly immersive novel. I'd recommend!

For more information about Fathomfolk, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Fathomfolk from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.