Teaser

The Carryx are not like us, but they might yet have a use for us. Sweeping across space, the Carryx conquer and enslave all they encounter. And if you do not prove useful, then you will soon be found dead . . .

Review

I am one of the vast majority of science fiction readers who enjoy The Expanse. Both books and TV series were almost exactly what I was looking for in science fiction when they turned up on my radar. And if you want proff that The Expanse made an impact, I point you to the numerous ‘SFF’ readers, whose are mostly F but can get away with the SF label because of James S. A. Corey. As well as nine novels and a bunch of novellas in The Exapnse, Corey (the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) dipped their toes into tie-in fiction with a Star Wars novel. Now, however, they are back to original space opera with a new series entitled The Captive’s War. The early promotional material for this series promised something inspired by grander stories such as Dune, rather than the smaller in scope storytelling of The Expanse. As a big fan of Golden Age space opera, I had high hopes for a galaxy-roaming, spacefaring adventure.

That is not what I got.

The Mercy of Gods takes place against a backdrop of a galaxy being rapidly overrun by a slaver species known as the Carryx. But most of the book itself takes place within three or four rooms, and largely unfolds within a single building. It’s more claustrophobic than spacefaring. And in these rooms, we spend a lot of time talking through science and philosophy. So maybe it has quite a bit in common with Frank Herbert’s epic after all. But this closed-in storytelling means that I have no idea what the larger setting looks like. No idea what the state of play for the galaxy is. The human characters are cut off from their own colony, which is itself so far removed from Earth that the homeworld has been forgotten. There’s no real detail on that one, just a lot of guesswork. Said colony is also either destroyed or simply forgotten with a few chapters of the Carryx turning up, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Once we’re locked away in our laboratory complex to get to the meat of the story, readers are treated to a dizzying array of alien species (most of which are just set dressing for now) and a host of human characters (very few of whom have any real depth. It’s only the protagonist Dafyd who has any true development, and his future is teased throughout the book in ways sure to keep me reading. There is also one nonhuman character who makes an impact, but to say who would be to give the game away.

There are moments when The Mercy of Gods feels more like a novella that has been padded out with extraneous characters and a lengthy prologue than a novel proper. To an extent, it even feels like more of a debut than Leviathan Wakes. But the writing itself is solid. It’s a real page turner, and Corey has earned my trust through a lengthy series. I think the Captive’s War is to be a trilogy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up stretching further than that. I know I’ll be reading on when the time comes.

Taken as a solo novel, The Mercy of Gods is slow and largely uneventful, but as the foundation for something longer, it broadly succeeds in putting all the pieces in place.

Book Stats

• The Captive’s War #1
• First Published 2024
• 422 Pages