Teaser

Two years ago, Little Springs was just another Nevada backwater. Then an alien fell out of the sky. Now, in the shadow of the fallen giant, Sheriff David Blunt must stop the town’s first serial killer before anyone else can die . . .

Review

A few years ago I noticed that my reading was becoming a bit out of date. Obviously, I love older science fiction. I also read quite a lot of new stuff, but because the price of books is ever-spiralling, I tend to stick to the same few authors I know I can trust. You know, the Tchaikovskys and Baxters of the world. This year, I decided to push myself a bit and read new books by authors I wasn’t familiar with. Audiobooks have been grant for this, but I’ve also grabbed a few physical copies too. When I saw there was a debut novel that mixed detective fiction with a dead alien giant, I knew I was going to buy it. As it happens, Godfall is not a 2026 debut, but a republication of a 2023 small press original. Nevertheless, it had everything going for it.

Godfall was also the August pick for the Boundary’s Edge Book Club, a choice I made before realising it was the first book in a trilogy. This wasn’t mentioned anywhere on my edition, though I’m told the paperback has the first chapter of the sequel Godrise. I can only assume that the third book will be called Godstayingatthesameelevation.

Anyway, the book promises a crime novel against the backdrop of a science fiction mystery. It does live up to that, but nowhere near as well as I’d hoped. The science fiction elements are exactly that: backdrop. the dead alien, named Gulliver by the locals, looms large over the town, but could equally have been a crashed spaceship or magical mountain for all the relevance it has to the plot. Naturally the government have walled the whole thing up and are now running the show. So when there’s a murder that may be related to Gulliver, the local Sheriff is told not to pursue the case. The problem is that David Blunt soon finds a personal stake in the killing(s), and pursues it anyway.

Look, I know how detective fiction works. People love seeing a detective going after a case that’s personal to them. But in any sane system, that personal connection would see the Sheriff taken right off the case. when the obstructionist FBI agents are the normal ones, something’s gone wrong. Early on Godfall has the feel of an X-Files episode told from the perspective of the local cop who keeps getting in the way. By the end of the novel, we’re deep into Stephen King territory, as all the alien weirdness is really just an excuse for the locals to bring out all the worst aspects of one another.

My issue with the book is twofold. As a detective novel, it’s marred by just how incompetent the protagonist is. He spends most of the book stumbling from dead end to distraction, never asking any relevant questions, and spending more time getting drunk with friends than investigating the serial killer wandering around town. If Blunt had been even halfway competent, the book would have been a novella.

The other issue is that the book largely fails as science fiction. As I said before, Gulliver could have been anything. There’s a cult dedicated to his arrival on Earth, but that plotline goes nowhere. Likewise, we are to assume that it’s alien influence causing unusual events at a nearby care home, but this never intersects with the main plot in any meaningful way. Presumably these will be picked up on in the rest of the trilogy, because they add nothing to Godfall as an individual book.

For all it’s issues, however, there are the bones of a good book in Godfall. Jensen does a good job of portraying life in a small town. The characters are likeable. It’s also very, very readable. I’m probably not going to read the rest of the trilogy when it comes out, but I’m intrigued enough by the concept that I will likely watch the TV adaptation that is already in the works.

Book Stats

• The Godfall Trilogy #1
• First Published 2023
• 374 Pages