The God Engines

За последние годы успел сложить впечатление о Скальци как о писателе, слишком верно поймавшем успех, и работающем теперь на случайно обретённую широкую аудиторию: Interdependency-трилогия(?) делает многое чтобы удержать читателя, присосавшегося через Redshirts к средне-изобретательному потоку деривативов слова "fuck" (окей, для меня в 14 лет это тоже была бы самая дерзкая писанина в мире), не даёт этому потоку иссякнуть, и... не делает ничего особенно более.

А тут нормас.

Короткая совсем зарисовка, но не без фантазии, и вновь чуть расшатывает изнутри правила игры.

Всегда бы так.

It's my first John Scalzi book so I had no expectations. It's entertaining, poses some interesting questions and in the current international context (2017) of returning to bigotry very relevant.

I liked it even if I'm more a fan of hard sci-fi.

Quite an original idea, the god engines takes the idea of god like aliens to the next level and asks what if faith really worked.

I was a bit disappointed the Scalzi then goes on to use just about every anti church trope in the book. Not inventing anything new that wouldn't fit in a book about the middle ages and not leaving the idea of a society powered by faith even one redeeming feature.

This was really 3.5 stars for me, but I'll be generous. :) (It should probably be noted that I'm a fan of the author from his blog, so perhaps more inclined to be so.)

I did enjoy this novella, and found the premise of captured gods powering space travel (among other things) very intriguing. The God Engines is hard to categorise - despite the fantasy elements, it still felt a lot like sci fi for me. It was a quick read, and despite its shortness I thought the characterisations were good. It was also quite dark in places, which I wasn't really expecting - but it suited the setting and the plot. World-building was a bit thinner than I would have liked - I wanted to know more about the setting and history, but that would have required a full length novel. As it is, I think the story suited the shorter length (and vice versa).

I wouldn't suggest reading this if you only like sunny, optimistic stories - but otherwise, recommended.

Simple review... I found it pretty odd at first. I didn't know what was going on. By the end it started to make sense.

Its really nothing like scalzi's normal writing. Its very serious. Kinda dark. Very short.