God's War

By Kameron Hurley

Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn't make any difference...

On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there's one thing everybody agrees on--

There's not a chance in hell of ending it.

Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx's ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war--but at what price?

The world is about to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Night Shade Books
• Release date: Feb 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781597803007

Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley is the acclaimed author of the novels God’s War, The Mirror Empire, and The Light Brigade. Hurley has been awarded two Hugo Awards, the Kitschies Award for Best Debut Novel, and has also been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. Visit the author online at KameronHurley.com or on Twitter at @KameronHurley.

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PART ONE

BEL DAME

1

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.

Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl.

Nyx lost every coin, a wad of opium, and the wine she’d gotten from the butchers as a bonus for her womb. But she did get Jaks into bed, and—loser or not—in the desert after dark, that was something.

What are you after? Jaks murmured in her good ear.

They lay tangled in the sheets like old lovers: a losing boxer with a poor right hook and a tendency to drop her left, and a wombless hunter bereft of money, weapons, food, and most of her clothing.

I’m looking for my sister, Nyx said. It was partly the truth. She was looking for something else too, something worth a lot more, and Jaks was going to help her get it.

The midnight call to prayer rolled out over the desert. It started somewhere out in Faleen and moved in a slow wave from mosque muezzin to village mullah to town crier, certain as a swarm of locusts, ubiquitous as the name of God.

Don’t tell anyone, Nyx said, what I’m about to tell you…

Nyx woke sometime after dawn prayer with a hangover and what felt like a wad of cotton in her belly. Dropping the womb had bought her some time—a day, maybe more if the butchers were smart enough to sell it before her bloody sisters sniffed her out. She’d shaken them in Punjai when she dumped the womb, along with the rest of her coin.

Jaks was long gone, off to catch a ride to Faleen with the agricultural traffic. Nyx was headed that way too, but she hadn’t said a word of that to Jaks. She wanted her next meeting with Jaks to be a pleasant surprise. Mysterious women were attractive—stalkers and groupies were not. Nyx had tracked this woman too long to lose it all by being overly familiar.

Some days, Nyx was a bel dame—an honored, respected, and deadly government-funded assassin. Other days, she was just a butcher, a hunter—a woman with nothing to lose. And the butcher had a bounty to bring in.

The sun bled across the big angry sky. The call box at the cantina was busted, so Nyx walked. The way was unpaved, mostly sand and gravel. Her feet were bruised, bleeding, and bare, but she hadn’t felt much of anything down there in a good long while. Back at the butchers’, she had traded her good sandals for directions out of the fleshpots, too dopey to figure the way out on her own. Under the burnous, she wore little more than a dhoti and breast binding. She had an old baldric, too—her dead partner’s. All the sheaths were empty, and had been for some time. She remembered some proverb about meeting God empty-handed, but her knees weren’t calloused anymore—not from praying, anyway. She had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference.

She hitched a ride on the back of a cat-pulled cart that afternoon. The cats were as tall as her shoulder. Their long, coarse fur was matted and tangled, and they stank. The cats turned leaking, bloodshot eyes to her. One of them was blind.

The woman driving the cart was a cancerous old crone with a bubbling gash that clove the left half of her face in two. She offered Nyx a ride in exchange for a finger’s length of blood to feed the enormous silk beetle she kept in a covered cage next to her left hip, pressed against her battered pistol.

Nyx had the hood of her burnous up to keep off the sun; traveling this time of day was dangerous. The crone’s skin was rough and pitted with old scars from cancer digs. Fresh, virulent melanomas spotted her forearms and the back of her neck. Most of her nose was gone.

You coming from the front, my woman? the crone asked. Nyx shook her head, but the old woman was nearly blind and did not see.

I fought at the front, the crone said. It brought me much honor. You, too, could find honor.

Nyx had left her partner, and a lot more at the front—a long time ago.

I’d rather find a call box, Nyx said.

God does not answer the phone.

Nyx couldn’t argue with that.

She jumped off the cart an hour later as they approached a bodega with a call box and a sign telling her she was fifty kilometers from Faleen. The old woman nattered on about the wisdom of making phone calls to God.

Nyx made a call.

Two hours later, at fourteen in the afternoon on a day that clocked in at twenty-seven hours, her sister Kine pulled up in a bakkie belching red roaches from its back end.

Kine leaned over and pushed out the door. You’re lucky the office picked up, she said. I had to get some samples at the war front for the breeding compounds. You headed to the coast? I need to get these back there.

You’ve got a leak in your exhaust, Nyx said. Unlock the hood.

It’s been leaking since the front, Kine said. She popped the hood.

The bakkie’s front end hissed open. Waves of yeasty steam rolled off the innards. Nyx wiped the moisture from her face and peered into the guts of the bakkie. The bug cistern was covered in a thin film of organic tissue, healthy and functioning, best Nyx could tell by the color. The hoses were in worse shape—semi-organic, just like the cistern, but patched and replaced in at least a half-dozen places she could see without bringing in a speculum. In places, the healthy amber tissue had blistered and turned black.

She was no bug-blessed magician—not even a standard tissue mechanic—but she knew how to find a leak and patch it up with organic salve. Every woman worth her weight in blood knew how to do that.

Where’s your tissue kit? Nyx said.

Kine got out of the bakkie and walked over. She was shorter than Nyx by a head—average height, for a Nasheenian woman—but they shared the same wide hips. She wore an embroidered housecoat and a hijab over her dark hair. Nyx remembered seeing her with her hair unbound and her skirt hiked up, knee deep in mud back in Mushirah. In her memory, Kine was twelve and laughing at some joke about conservative women who worked for the government. Rigid crones, she’d call them, half dead or dying in a world God made for pleasure. A farmer’s daughter, just like Nyx. A blood sister in a country where blood and bugs and currency were synonymous.

I don’t have a tissue kit, Kine said. I gave it to one of the boys at the front. They’re low on supplies.

Nyx snorted. They were low on a lot more than tissue kits at the front these days.

You’re the only organic technician I know who’d ever be short a tissue kit, Nyx said.

Kine looked her over. Are you as desperately poor as you look? I know a good magician who can scrape you for cancers.

I’ve been worse, Nyx said, and shut the hood. Your bug cistern is in good shape. It’ll breed you enough bugs to power this thing back to the coast, even with the leak.

But the leak meant she’d get to Faleen just a little bit slower. If there was one thing Nyx felt short on these days, it was time.

Nyx slid into the bakkie. Kine got behind the steering wheel. For a moment they sat in stuffy, uncomfortable silence. Then Kine turned down the window and stepped on the juice.

What’s her name? Kine asked, shifting pedals as they rolled back onto the road.

Who?

I can smell her, Kine said, tightening her hands on the steering wheel. Her hands had the brown, worn, sinewy look of old leather. Her lip curled in disdain.

I’m working a note, Nyx said. What I do to bring it in isn’t your business.

A note for a deserter, or one of those dirty bounties you deal in? If you’re bringing in a deserter, where’s Tej?

Tej, Nyx thought, and the shock of it, of hearing his name out loud, of thinking Tej, my dead partner, was a punch in the gut.

I couldn’t get him back over the Chenjan border, Nyx said. Another boy buried in the desert.

A clerk the color of honey had given Nyx a bel dame’s note for a boy named Arran nearly three months before, after he’d deserted his place at the front and sought refuge in Chenja. His officer had called in the bel dames because she believed he’d been exposed to a new Chenjan burst, a delayed viral vapor that hid out in the host for up to four months before triggering an airborne contagion. The contagion was capable of taking out half a city before the magicians could contain it. Nyx had gone into the bel dame office and been inoculated against the latest burst, so all she had to do was bleed on the boy to neutralize the contagion, then cut off his head and take him home. Even clean, the penalty for desertion was death. Boys either came home at forty or came home in a bag. No exceptions.

This was Nyx’s job.

Some days, it paid well.

So Nyx and Tej had tracked Arran. Arran had gone over the border into Chenja. That part was easy to figure out. Where in Chenja, though, that was harder. It took tracking down Jaksdijah so Hajjij first. Arran had been a house boy of Jaks’s mother, a coastal boy raised in the interior. Jaks was the last of his known, living kin. Nyx and Tej found Jaks boxing for bread at an underground fighting club thirty kilometers inside the Chenjan border. The mullahs didn’t like Chenjans fighting foreigners—which made Jaks’s fights illegal—but it paid well.

Tej and Nyx bided their time for a month, waiting for Arran to show up while their money ran out. Arran didn’t disappoint. Tej was on watch the night a hooded figure knocked on Jaks’s door. Just before dawn, Jaks and Arran were headed back to Nasheen.

Tej and Nyx followed.

But Tej hadn’t made it back.

He was the only one of your partners I liked, Kine said, and pursed her lips, probably to hold back words God wouldn’t permit her to say. Then, You should partner with men more often.

Nyx snorted.

They blew back out onto the road. The shocks in the bakkie were going out too, Nyx realized, leaking vital fluid all over the desert. She hoped Kine knew a good tissue mechanic at the coast.

Where am I taking you? Kine asked. Sand rolled across the pavement.

Faleen.

A bit out of my way.

Nyx let that one go and looked out the window, watching flat white desert turn to dunes. Kine didn’t like silence. Give her a long stretch of stillness and eventually she’d change the subject.

Kine was government now, one of the breeding techs who worked at the compounds on the coast. She had some kind of slick security clearance that went well with her hijab and lonely bed. Nyx saw her only when she was ferrying samples to and from the front—just another blood dealer, another organ stealer.

A ship came into Faleen this week, Kine said as she rolled up the window. Nyx saw the wide sleeve of her burnous come down, flashing a length of paler skin from wrist to elbow—dusty sand instead of sun dark. If you’re looking for magicians to help you bring in this deserter, there are a whole mess of them gathering in Faleen. I hear even the lower sort are there, the sort who might—

Where from?

The magicians?

The ship.

Oh, yes. The ship is from New Kinaan.

Colonists had been barred from Umayma for a thousand years. Nyx hadn’t even seen a ship in a decade. Umayma sat at the edge of everything; most of the sky was dark at night. All she ever saw moving up there were dead satellites and broken star carriers from the beginning of the world.

I’ve corresponded with them for some time, Kine said, for my genetics work. They fight another of God’s wars out there in the dark, can you believe it?

Does the radio work? Nyx asked. Knowing aliens were out there killing each other for God, too, just depressed her. She leaned forward to fiddle with the tube jutting out of the dashboard.

No, Kine said. She pinched her mouth. How did you lose Tej?

Nyx wasn’t sure she could answer that question herself, let alone give Kine a good answer.

You have any weapons? Nyx asked.

Kine’s face scrunched up like a date. If you can’t tell me that, then tell me who’s tracking you.

You giving me the fourth inquisition?

Nyxnissa, she said, in the same hard tone she used for quoting the Kitab.

Nyx dipped her head out the open window. The air was clearing up.

Raine, she said.

Kine’s hands tightened on the wheel. She shifted pedals. The bakkie rattled and belched and picked up speed. Dust and dead beetles roiled behind them.

You’re doing black work, aren’t you? Kine said. One of your dirty bounties. I don’t like dealing with bounty hunters. Raine is the worst of them, and you’re no better, these days.  I’ll drop you at the gates of Faleen, but no farther.

Nyx nodded. The gate would be good. More might get Kine killed.

Raine would bring Nyx in if he had to cut up half of Nasheen to do it. Nyx had been a part of his team, once, and it had been a great way of picking up skills and paying off some magician-debts for having her body reconstituted. After a while, though, he’d started to treat her like just another dumb hunter, another body to be bloodied and buried. When she started selling out her womb on the black market, well, that had made the animosity mutual. He had good reason to track her down now. Reasons a lot less personal than cutting off his cock.

Tej was a good boy, Kine said, You kill good men for a lost cause just like Raine.

Raine always got us back over the border.

Raine isn’t a bel dame. He’s a bounty hunter.

There’s not much difference.

God knows the difference.

Yeah, well, we all do it our own way.

Yes, Kine said, and her hands tightened on the wheel. We’re all trying to cure the war.

Spoken like a true organic technician, Nyx thought.

But there is a difference, Kine said, turning to look at her again, hard and sober now. Bel dames enforce God’s laws. They keep our boys at the front and our women honest. Bounty hunters just bring in petty thieves and women doing black work.

Women like me, Nyx thought.

Her black market broker, Bashir so Saud, owned a cantina in Faleen. The cantina was first. Even on a botched delivery, Bashir owed her at least half what it was worth. If Nyx had taken the job in Faleen instead of through Bashir’s agents in Punjai, she’d have half her money now and wouldn’t be so hard up. As it was, her pockets were empty. The last of her currency had been eaten with Tej.

They turned off the paved track and onto the Queen Zubair Highway that bisected Nasheen from the Chenjan border to the sea. The road signs were popular shooting targets for Chenjan operatives and Nasheenian youth. Most of the metal markers were pocked with bullet holes and smeared in burst residue. A careful eye could spot the shimmering casings of unexploded bursts lining the highway.

If dropping the womb kept Raine and Nyx’s sisters busy long enough trying to track it down so they could tag and bag it, she could collect her note, call in some favors from the magicians, and maybe find a way to clear up this whole fucking mess.

Maybe.

A three-hundred-year-old water purifying plant marked the edge of the old Faleenian city limits. The city itself had lapped at the organic filter surrounding the plant for half a century before a group of Chenjan terrorists set off a sticky burst that ate up flesh and metal, scouring the eastern quarter of the city and leaving the plant on the edge of a wasteland. The government had rebuilt the road and the plant, but the detritus of the eastern quarter remained a twisted ruin. Chenjan asylum seekers, draft dodgers, and foreign women had turned the devastated quarter into a refugee camp. A colorful stir of humanity wove through the ruins now, hawking avocados and mayflies and baskets of yellow roaches. Nyx caught the spicy stink of spent fire beetles and burning glow worms.

As the dusty ridges of the refugee camps turned into the walled yards and high-rises of what passed for the Faleenian suburbs, the massive ship from New Kinaan came into view, rearing above the old gated city center of Faleen like some obscene winged minaret.

Faleen was a port city, the kind that took in the ragged handfuls of off-world ships that sputtered into its archaic docking bay every year looking for repairs, supplies, and usually—directions. Faleen wasn’t the sort of place anybody off-world came to on purpose. Most of the ships that rocketed past Umayma were so alien in their level of technology that they couldn’t have put into the old port if they wanted to. The port design hadn’t changed much since the beginning of the world, and most everybody on Umayma wanted to keep it that way.

They drove past women and girls walking along the highway carrying baskets on their heads and huge nets over their shoulders. Bugs were popular trade with the magicians in Faleen. Professional creepers caught up to three kilos a day—striped chafers, locusts, tumblebugs, spider wasps, dragonflies, pselaphid beetles, fungus weevils—and headed to the magicians’ gym to trade them in for opium, new kidneys, good lungs, maybe a scraping or two to take off the cancers.

Kine pulled up outside the towering main gate of the dusty city, scattering young girls, sand, and scaly chickens from her path with a blast of her horn. Another cloud of beetles escaped from the leak in the back and bloomed around the bakkie. Nyx batted away the bugs and jumped out.

She took one long look at the main gate, then swung back to look at Kine. She half opened her mouth to ask.

I’m not giving you any money, Kine said.

Nyx grimaced.

Go with God! Kine yelled after her.

Nyx raised a hand. She’d left God in Chenja.

Kine shifted pedals and turned back onto the highway, heading for the interior.

Nyx turned toward the two giant slabs of organic matting that were the main gates into Faleen. Rumor had it they’d seen better days as compression doors on some star carrier the First Families rode down on from the moons.

Nyx pulled up the hood of her burnous and bled into the traffic heading through the gate. She passed the broken tower of a minaret and walked through narrow alleys between mud-brick buildings whose precipitous lean threatened a swift death. She didn’t much like the stink and crowd of cities, but you could lose yourself in a city a lot more easily than you could out in farming communities like Mushirah. She had run to the desert and the cities for the anonymity. And to die for God.

None of that had worked out very well.

Bashir’s cantina was at the edge of the Chenjan quarter, and the ass end of it served as the public entrance to the magicians’ gym and fighting ring. Bashir made a pretty penny on fight nights when all of Faleen’s starving tailors, tax clerks, bug merchants, and renegade printers crowded in through the bar to watch the fight. The ones who couldn’t get into the main fighting area contented themselves with drinking cheap rice wine and whiskey, listening to the steady slap-slap of gloved fists meeting flesh and the damp thumping of sweaty bodies hitting the mat.

Bashir also made a little money on the side as a black work broker.

Two tall women with shoulders as wide as the doorway stopped Nyx at the cantina stoop.

You have an appointment? one of them asked. It’s private business only until we open for tonight’s fight.

Do I look like I have an appointment?

Who the fuck are you?

Tell her I’m the bel dame.

The women shifted on their feet. I’ll get her, the biggest one said.

There was a time when Nyx had enjoyed throwing that title around on a job. Yeah, I’m a bel dame, and "bel dames—like me." These days the whole dance just made her tired. She’d cut off a lot of boys’ heads over the last three years. Draft dodgers, mostly, and deserters like this Arran kid who came back into Nasheen still contaminated with shit from the front.

Nyx pushed at her sore belly and rocked back on her heels. She wondered if Bashir sold morphine before noon.

The bouncer came back and said, She’ll see you.

Nyx ducked after her into the dark, smoky interior of the cantina. Dust clotted the air, and bug-laced sand covered most of the floor. It was good for soaking up blood and piss.

Bashir sat at a corner table smoking sweet opium. Nyx could taste it. The smell made her nauseous. Bashir had two bottles of sand-colored whiskey at the table, and someone had left behind a still-smoking cigar that smelled more like marijuana than sen. Bashir had two teenage boys beside her, both just shy of draft age, maybe fifteen. They were sallow and soft-looking and kept their hair long, braided, and belled. Somebody had kept them out of training. Letting adolescent boys go that soft was illegal in most districts, even if they were prostitutes. They wouldn’t last a day at the front—the Chenjans would mash through them like overripe squash.

Nyxnissa, Bashir said. She exhaled a plume of rich smoke. Thought I’d seen the last of you.

Most people think that, Nyx said, sliding next to one of the boys. He flinched. She outweighed him by at least twenty-five kilos. Until I show up again.

How was your trip? Bashir asked. She wore red trousers and a stained short coat but kept her head uncovered. Her skin was a shade paler than those who worked in the desert, but the tough, leathery look of her face said her wealth was recently acquired. Like the boys, she was getting fat and soft at the edges, but unlike the boys, she’d fought it out on the sand with the best of them in her youth. There was muscle under the affluence.

Not as smooth as I hoped, Nyx said. She pulled off her hood.

Bashir looked her over with a lazy sort of interest. A bug told me you don’t have what we bargained for.

I need a drink, Nyx said, and half of what you owe me. She hailed the woman at the bar, but Bashir waved her woman back.

The bug says you dropped the purse at the butcher’s.

I did, Nyx said. It was a high-risk job. You knew that when your agent gave it to me. She’d been carrying genetic material worth a nice chunk of money in that womb. Bashir wasn’t going to let it go easy, no, but bel dames made good black market runners which made them valuable to people like Bashir—until they got caught. Word got around when you did business with gene pirates.

Being unarmed made it easier to resist the urge to shoot Bashir in the head and demand the contents of the cantina’s till from the barmaid. She was too close to the magicians’ gym to get away with that.

It was a substantial purse, Bashir said.

Nyx leaned back against the seat. The boy next to her had a hold of his glass, but wasn’t drinking. Like many Nasheenian women, Bashir was known to like boys, but these ones were a little young and soft for a desert matron.

Where’d you pick up these two? Nyx asked.

Lovely, eh? Bashir said. Her dark eyes glinted in the low light. The place was too cheap for bulbs. They were still using worms in glass. They were a gift. From a friend.

Bashir didn’t have friends. Nyx cut a look at the door. The bouncers had closed it. The woman at the bar was still wiping the same length of counter she’d been mopping when Nyx dropped in. I shouldn’t have come, Nyx thought. She should have gone straight to the magicians and asked for sanctuary. It had been only a matter of time before turning Nyx in was worth more than a black market purse. But, fuck, she’d needed the money from this job.

Nyx knew the answer but asked anyway.

Who gave them to you?

Bashir showed her teeth.

You’ll get shit from the magicians for crossing a bel dame, Nyx said. They could take her money, her shoes, her sword, her bloody fucking partner, but they couldn’t take her title. How much did you get for selling me out? I’m worth a lot more than a couple of fuckable boys.

Your reputation’s been tumbling for a good long while, Nyxnissa. The bounty hunters have your name in a hat now, and if you’re lucky, it’ll be Raine who brings you in and not some young honey pot trying to prove something by cutting off your head. What would your sisters say?

Leave the bel dame family out of it.

There’s been some stirring in the bel dame council. Rumor has it they want to clean up this little mess with you internally, the way Alharazad cleaned up the council. They’ll cut you up and put you in a bag.

Then you and your pirates are losing a good ferrier.

You don’t deliver enough to make yourself worth the risk. And now you dropped your womb, so I don’t have anything invested. Putting out a note on you got me a good purse for reporting a pirate. Delivering you to the bounty office and claiming my own bounty makes us even.

So Bashir had turned her in for bread.

How much am I going for? Nyx asked. Her hands itched for a blade that she no longer carried. She was good with a sword. The guns? Not so much.

About fifty, Bashir said.

Well, that was something.

The boy beside Nyx took his hand away from his drink.

The woman behind the bar moved toward the kitchen.

All right, then.

Nyx kicked up onto the tabletop before the boy could steady the pistol in his other hand. The gun went off with a pop and burst of yellow smoke.

She threw a low roundhouse kick to the other boy’s face and leapt off the table before Bashir could get her scattergun free.

Reflex sent her running for the back door, kicking up sand behind her. She shouldered into the kitchen, knocked past a startled Mhorian cook, and ran headlong out the open back door and into the alley.

A strong arm shot out and slammed into her throat. The blow took her off her feet.

Nyx hit the sand and rolled.

Still choking, Nyx tried to get up, but Raine already had hold of her.

He twisted her arm behind her and forced her face back into the sand. She spit and turned her head, gulping air. She saw two pairs of dirty sandaled feet in front of her. She tried to look up at who owned them.

Little ropy-muscled Anneke hadn’t broken a sweat. She stood chewing a wad of sen, one arm supporting the weight of the rifle she kept lodged just under her shoulder. She was as dark as a Chenjan, and about the size of a twelve-year-old. The other feet belonged to the skinny half-breed Taite, who wasn’t a whole hell of a lot older than thirteen or fourteen.

You must be desperate, Nyx said, spitting more sand, to use Taite and Anneke as muscle.

That’s all the greeting I get? Raine asked. He pulled her up, kept a grip on her arm, and tugged off her burnous.

Where did you lose your gear, girl? I taught you better than that. He shook the burnous out, probably thinking she’d hidden something in it.

Raine was a large man, a head taller than Nyx, just as dark and twice as massive. His face was broad and flat and stamped with two black, expressionless eyes, like deep water from a community well. The hilt of a good blade cut through a slit in the back of his brown burnous. He was pushing Bashir’s age—one of the few who’d survived the front.

She grunted.

He took off her baldric and passed it to Anneke for inspection.

Nothing here, Anneke said, and tossed the baldric at Nyx’s feet.

You’re clean, Raine said, half a question. You know how much you’re going for?

More than fifty, Nyx said.

He took Nyx by her braids and brought her close to his bearded face. The beard was new, a Chenjan affectation that would get him noticed on the street and pegged as a political radical. Do you know what the queen does to bel dames who turn black? he asked. When they start selling zygotes to gene pirates? Those pirates will breed monsters in jars and sell them to Chenjans. But you don’t care about that, do you? You need pocket money.

Raine had recruited her from the magicians’ gym after she was reconstituted. They’d spent long nights and longer days talking about the war and his hatred for those whose work he saw as perpetuating it. Gene pirates—selling genetic material to both sides—were no better to him than Tirhani arms dealers.

Raine released her.

I didn’t train you to be a bel dame, he said. I taught you to be a bounty hunter, to fight real threats to Nasheen like young bel dames who sell out their organs to gene pirates.

I got issued a bel dame note for a contaminated boy. I know he’s in Faleen. I needed the cash from the womb to bring him in.

You should have given the note to a real bel dame.

Nyx looked him in the eye. I don’t give up notes.

Taite, Raine said, holding Nyx with one strong arm while reaching toward the boy. Taite had the half-starved look of a kid who had grown up outside the breeding compounds. He reached into his gear bag.

They were going to truss her up and sell her.

Nyx stood in the back alley of Bashir’s cantina. At the end of the alley she could clearly see the back entrance to the magicians’ gym. Anneke was leaning against the wall now, rifle still in hand. Getting shot would hurt.

Getting trussed up and hauled into the Chenjan district, though… that would be the end of the job. And probably a lot more.

Nyx tensed. Taite pulled out the sticky bands from his gear bag and threw them to Raine.

Nyx twisted and swiveled in Raine’s grip while he tried to catch the bands. She palmed him in the solar plexus. He grunted. His grip loosened. She pulled free and bolted.

Anneke jumped to attention. Nyx pushed past her.

The rifle popped.

Nyx felt a sharp, stabbing thump on her right hip, as if someone had set a sledge hammer on fire and hit her with it.

She staggered down the alley and clutched her hip. A burst of mud-brick exploded behind her. She heard two more rounds go off.

The red door of the magicians’ gym appeared at her right. She stumbled and pounded on the door.

Sanctuary! she yelled. Bel dame! My life for a thousand! Sanctuary!

She heard Anneke yell, Fuck!

The pack of them ran toward her. Raine’s face was dark. Nyx screamed, My life for a thousand! and pounded on the door again. There was nothing easier to shoot than a stationary target.

Anneke was a hand breadth away. She reached for Nyx’s hair.

The magicians’ door opened. A waft of cold air billowed into the alley, bringing with it the stink of sweat and leather. Nyx fell inside, into darkness. She tucked her feet underneath her, pulling them across the threshold.

Fuck! Anneke said again.

Nyx lay at a pair of bare feet cloaked by yellow trousers. She heard a low buzzing sound, and a soapy organic filter popped up over the doorway. Through the filmy gauze of the filter, Nyx saw Raine standing behind his crew, her burnous still in his hand.

She looked up the length of billowing yellow trousers and into the sapphire-eyed face of Yah Reza.

Reviews for God's War

[schant-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tiptree shortlist 2011.Despite being unremittingly grim and violent, and a bit confused at times, the story did draw me in.

[chrissychris_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Purchased this as a book of the day on Barnes & Noble. While an interesting premise and great world building, I could not generate a bit of care for any of the characters. Not clicking with any of them keeps me from reading any of the rest of the books in this series.

[dgold-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Okay, so this book isn't perfect. The war it depicts is simply logically unsustainable, particularly on the planet it takes place on. But really, such points are quibbles, for this is an outstanding work of science fiction. Hurley's world building is outstanding, her characterization if her leading cast is powerful, her narrative is sparking.
Don't think that this is an easy book to get into, it really isn't. Like Mieville's Perdido Street Station, it confronts the reader rather than welcomes you in. It is hugely rewarding to the careful reader who allows their mind to inhabit the world of Nyxnyssa and her band of violent murderers. Outstanding.

[rrainer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book, but wow was it harsh. So harsh. The main difficulty I had, and the reason why it's a low four and not higher, is that I really just didn't like any of the characters. I found them fascinating and compelling, deeply damaged as they were, but didn't have that someone to root for. But the worldbuilding makes up for a lot of that--it's so refreshing to see a colony/world that's not based on or descended from a Western culture. And the system of magic--in which the magic/technology line is extremely blurred--is so different I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. Despite my lack of fondness for the characters, I certainly seem to have developed an emotional attachment because I really desperately want to know what happens next.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On a hardscrabble alien world populated with what humanity becomes in the far future, a long holy war rages. Both sides have drafted all their men for so many generations that the societies left behind have become nearly matriarchal, populated by females, boys, and the very old or damaged men who survived their war service. Their planet is nealry deadly for humanity, and over the years its colonists have made all sorts of adjustments. Now they scrape themselves regularly for cancers the way modern people go in for dental cleanings, and reattach body parts as a matter of course.

In this strange and brutal place we are introduced to Nyx, a woman who has lost her faith on the battlefield but can't let go of her own version of honor. On the very first page, Nyx sells her womb for cash, then loses it all gambling on a pretty boxer. The upside is, she gets to bed the boxer. The really badass part is that she bet on the boxer knowing she'd probably lose, and knowing that her bet would be a good in with a depressed losing boxer, who might then take her home. After sleeping with the boxer, Nyx creeps out of bed, kills the boxer's sleeping brother, and collects his head for its bounty. And then the plot starts. After falling out with her bounty hunting sisters, Nyx gets herself a new crew: a mediocre magician, a refugee shifter, an ex-convict, and a half-breed comm tech. None of them are particularly good or well-respected, but they're bound together by Nyx's unstoppable will. Times are hard, and although they're stacking bodies like firewood in the freezer, the bounty hunts never pay quite enough. Then they get a new hunt: to find an alien gene scientist who's lost somewhere in enemy territory. The stakes have never been higher, because whoever has the alien will probably win the war.

Although the plot is fast-paced, action-heavy and twisty, it's really secondary to seeing inside the characters' heads, most particularly Nyx and her bug-magician, Rhys. Nyx drinks whiskey like water, has sex with anyone she pleases, and gave up on god (or felt given up) years ago. Rhys is a refugee from the country she nearly died fighting, and is so pious he can hardly bear to pray in the presence of women. They're drawn to each other without knowing why or how, but refuse to acknowledge how much they need each other, not even to themselves. The unresolved tension between them didn't really work for me: neither of them respects or seems sexually attracted to the other, and they don't talk much, so we the reader are just told repeatedly that they feel things for each other, and that Rhys is known as her shadow. But as individual characters, they're each very well-drawn, complicated people.

The 'verse Hurley has created here is novel, populated by pitiless, practical people. It's not a pleasant read, really, but it's certainly an interesting one.

[nnschiller · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book. I liked it so much I don't really trust my review of it, because I'm well aware that I'm blind to the book's flaws.

I'm especially fond of the character Nyx. She is balanced in a place that I find absolutely fascinating. She's not a complete femme fatale a la Linda Fiorentino's Wendy Kroy in The Last Seduction, but she isn't female hero in the mold of Buffy Summers or Sookie Stackhouse who balances her strength with her vulnerability. Nyx operates only from a position of strength and refuses to acknowledge her own weakness and vulnerabilities. What makes this particular character so fascinating is that she still *has* weaknesses and vulnerabilities and the flaws in her approach are apparent. Nyx is aware of her limitations, but is just too stubborn to give up. She is who she is

This innate stubbornness and unwillingness to accept her limitations is key to who she is. It has its best expression in her relationship with Rhys. Rhys is another character worth his weight in gold. He's a coward and plays the kind of role usually relegated to the pretty girl in a boy's adventure story. He's pretty and smart, but a little delicate and not quite strong enough to get by on his own, so he needs someone like Nyx to look out for him. I really liked reading how Hurley wrote him. In this classic reversal of gender roles, she writes the "princess" character better than all those boys writing their rescue fantasies.

The plot was also good, and I enjoyed the film noire type twists and turns at the end, but what really sold me on this book and the Bel Dame Apocrypha in general was the characters of Nyx and Rhys and how they move around each other in the world.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took a looooong time to find its pace - this book definitely starts too early, and would not suffer from losing everything before "Part II" - but once it did I was hooked. Nyx is one of those rough, nasty anti-heroes you don't like so much as respect, and Rhys is remarkable for keeping his composure while having to live with her. The setting feels an awful lot like the trailers for the new Mad Max movie. The bug-based technology and magic is pretty gross, but it all fits together into one messy, cohesive whole. I finished it and said out loud, "I'm really glad there are two sequels."

[strider66_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pros: unique, diverse cast, interesting world and politicsCons: limited description, slow beginningNyx used to be a Bel Dame, a government sponsored assassin sent after deserters from the war with Chenja. But after a bad job she's stripped of her membership and left doing dirty mercenery work. Her team consists of misfits escaping one thing or another: a Ras Tiegan communications man, a Mhorian shape shifter, a gun loving local (poached from a former boss) and a Chenjan draft dodger, whose magical abilities of controlling bugs are limited. When they're offered a well paying - but dangerous job, Nyx takes it, not realizing it would pit her against the toughest, most dangerous women in Nasheen.Described by the author as being a book about "Bugs. Blood. Brutal women." and "bugpunk at it's best" this was a... unique read. Heavily influenced by middle eastern culture, the book takes place on a planet colonized by several groups of people, all followers of the book. Each group interprets the book differently though, which has led to a centuries long war among the Nasheenians and the Chenjans. The politics, both between the nations and within Nasheen (where most of the book takes place) are fascinating. The characters themselves are interesting, each having their own reasons why they've left their homelands to live in Nasheen, and why they're working for Nyx. There's a good balance between action and development, so you get the chance to really know what motivates each of her team members.I would have appreciated more description and deeper world building. I had to look up what a burnous was (a long cloak with a hood that everyone in the book wears) as there was no proper description of it (I got that it was worn over clothing and had a hood and pockets, but didn't know it was a cloak rather than a jacket). Neither bug magic nor bug tech are explained at all, nor how this planet develped them. The same goes for shape shifters, who you learn were created, but not why or how (though this didn't play into the novel as much as the bug magic and tech so I can understand why the author wouldn't want to focus on it).I also found the opening a bit slow. Not in terms of action (there's a LOT of action), but in terms of plot. The opening scenes set up things for later, but you don't realize that until you're several chapters into the book.There's a lot of violence, and a fair amount of gore (several people are tortured and replacing body parts is one of a magician's talents, which gets used a lot in this book).If you're looking for something very different from what's out there and like kick-ass women, you've found it. If you've got a weak stomach, look elsewhere.

[newskepticx · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really want to like this book more than I did, but something just didn't do it for me, and I won't read the rest of the series. Interesting but not compelling for me.

[patrickgarson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was pleasantly surprised by Infidel, an accomplished scifi debut. Hurley has managed decent enough plot but really it is the characters and intriguing setting that put the novel above average. Nyx is a former Bel Dame, a government assassin, now forced to freelance on the war-riven planet of Umaya. Her latest commission may be her last, though, as it sets her against her former bosses, and her country's sworn enemy. I really enjoyed the creativity in God's War. Hurley has created a Muslim-orientated planet, which is unusual enough, but populated it with all kinds of humanoids, technologies and magic. Umaya felt real and detailed in a way that I don't see very often, and there's plenty of locales and cultures for the sequels, as well. The most immediate thing that struck me, was Hurley's creation of a matriarchal society. It's so simple in some respects, but the changes are so wide-ranging. It also forced me to confront my own biases and expectations when the sergeant is a woman, the boxers are women, etc etc. I thought it worked tremendously well, and Hurley didn't overplay it, either, or drag down with sententious allegory. It gives the novel an originality that lasts the whole duration. The is consolidated by her characerisation, which I really enjoyed. Like anyone who's been through war, her characters have their own issues, and their likability - especially Nyx's - is questionable at times. However the rich back stories, complex motivations, and regular displays of compassion, loyalty and fear as well as aggression, cruelty, paranoia, built up three dimensional people with a lot more story to tell. The plot itself is okay, though a bit MacGuffin-ish at times. It excelled in propelling the cast into interesting situations, but in itself it didn't hold great interest for me. Thankfully, amongst all the action (Infidel is a violent book) Hurley never got too bogged down in. This was a strong, creative debut, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel.

[hskey-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Going to hop off and not continue the trilogy. I didn't dislike God's War, but the Library doesn't have books 2 or 3 and I didn't enjoy the story enough to purchase the next few books outright. Hurley is a very good author, the world building here is very impressive; it's not often I read a fantasy/science fiction book and get immersed in a world I've never considered before. The concept of insects powering everything, from industry and engines to magic and surveillance is fascinating, and Hurley doesn't skimp on the details or cheat here. No shortcuts, it's good old fashioned creativity and I flew through the book because of it. I think it's more a personal preference - I don't like the desert, and bugs creep me out, so I didn't necessarily "enjoy" the book in this regard. Nyx and her crew are really interesting, but I was just sort of ho-hum throughout. If I was to be given books 2 or 3, I'd read them for sure.

[jamestomasino · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really solid. Deserves a longer review when I'm not on mobile.

[reading_fox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First of the stories featuring the irrepressible Nyx. Set in quite an odd world on the fringes of occupied space, her nation has been at war for the last millennia, for nothing is quite so savage as internecine religious division, heathens can be quelled at any time, but those who worship the same faith but wrongly are heretics and most be converted. Not that Nyx cares, any compassion she had was for her brothers and comrades at the front, and subsequently her sisters in the assassin's guild she worked for after her return. In the opening pages we learn she failed one and betrayed the other, sent to prison she endured her sentence and formed her own team of bounty hunters.Nyx has been eking out a living just about keeping them all together, if only because the team does better than she'd do on her and she doesn't ask more questions of them that. She's slightly gratified when one of her contacts passes her a personal invitation from the Queen, to apply for slightly less usual contract. A visiting 'alien' (human who's not adapted to their strange world) has gone missing. This alien had been investigating a possible end to the war, and it's vital that they don't re-appear in the neighbouring country ending it in the other direction. TBCInclude thoughts on gender and religion.l

[fence_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

War is hell. Especially on a planet torn up between warring religious countries. Nyx has done her time at the front, been a hero and had her body rebuilt. Then she joined the bel dame, government mercenary/bounty hunters to you and me. A sister-hood of the elite to them. But she has been doing black work for extra money and now her sisters are after her.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. It has so much going for it. First off, it is not your usual sci-fi war story. It isn’t set at the front, for one thing. War is the back-drop and makes everything all the more dangerous, but there are no battles here. Gun-fights and boxing matches, sure, even a bit of torture. But no all out battles. There is bug powered magic though. With wasps set to attack and bugs powering vehicles. That is pretty damn cool I’ll be the first to admit.

And it is set in a Muslim-esque future. Makes for a nice change from the usual.

Unfortunately it is a little bit too dark and gritty for me. I like to like at least one of the characters. Nyx has a lot going for her in terms of being an interesting woman, but she sure isn’t likeable. And the rest, well, many are supporting characters so we only get flashes and hints, I think I may have liked some of them if we’d had more time with them, but as it is, we didn’t.

It is a very interesting book though. All about how war messes you up, messes society up. Especially a religious war.

I also enjoyed the gender politics. Nasheen is dominated by women. Ruled by a queen and, almost as much, by its bel dames. The boys get drafted and sent off to the front. Few return. Their enemies, the Chenjen are male dominated. Although they likewise send their men off to fight, unless you are head of household that is.

Race, sexuality, religion; its all here, and so well done and believable.

But I need me some nice characters! And I didn’t get them, so I can’t love this book. I can like it, and find it interesting, and I can even recommend that you read it! But I can’t love it :) I will be totally reading the sequel, Infinity though.

[elenaj-147457 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a seriously violent and bleak novel - I don't think I've read so many torture scenes in one published book since Elizabeth Moon's Paks novels. I came close to giving up on it a couple of times, but in the end, I'm glad I stuck it out.

I also have some reservations about the treatment of Islam and Muslims in the book. On the one hand, it's great to see a science fiction world populated largely by Muslims, and by people of color. On the other hand, the world is a gritty, war-torn, polluted desert with the two main countries ruled by corrupt unelected leaders. On the other other hand, the novel handles religious themes (including misuse of religious power, religious bigotry, genuine piety, respectful relationships across religious difference, and religious hypocrisy) thoughtfully and creatively.

[allison_s-802575 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

UGH FABULOUS.

Like "Best Served Cold" meets Lostara Yil meets Tatooine and there's a magic system based around BUGS and women are in charge and men are war fodder and it's all very slick and violent and awesome.

[simplekind · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3/5 stars – I liked it and will finish the series.This is the story about a woman, named Nyx, who is in the middle of a religious war on her planet. She first worked as a Bel Dame but by the time the book began Nyx was working as an assassin for herself and picking up notes where she chose. She brought together a team of outcasts who battle with relying on her and but also trying to protect themselves and what they find most important in life.In the beginning of the book, the reader is dropped right into this strange world with no clue on what is happening. It seems that some information is given right off but much of it isn’t given until it is relevant at the moment. I found this to be distracting from the action because of the mini history stories throughout the book. Other then that issue, I find this book to be very attractive. The imagination of Hurley is amazing because I found myself fighting for the rights of those stuck in this war.

[texascheeseman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

God’s WarAuthor: Kameron HurleyPublisher: Night Shade BooksPublished In: San Francisco, CADate: 2011Pgs: 286_________________________________________________REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERSSummary:Holy War, never ending, centuries long. A ravaged world contaminated to the point of being almost unlivable. Nyx is a former assassin. She walks the world between the warring sides. Her ugly past makes her the go-to person to collect the head of a alien pirate who got on the wrong side of the government. Her price, considering what this alien’s head represents, is going to be expensive, though not necessarily monetarily._________________________________________________Genre:AdventureAliensAndroidsApocalypseDisasterEnd of the WorldFictionPulpQuirkScience fictionSpace operaWarWhy this book:A post-apocalypse assassin who has to hunt down an alien geneticist who the government wants dead. I’m in._________________________________________________Favorite Character:Nyxnissa reminds me of Aeon Flux in an even more f’ed up world. She can’t make up her mind about Rhys. What happens to her sister tears away one of her few humanizing characteristics. She does care about her team though. Nyx is so damned gruff. I want to like her. She is cold blooded. And oh so damaged. I may be in love. Her character comes across as having a plot hole in it during the middle portion of the book, but it closes nicely.Rhys grows on you after you get through his, long winded, introduction as he joins Nyx’s team and grows into his own. Rhys is my favorite character. He’s got depth, or rather apparent depth. Could be a front or a put-on to allow him to survive the world he lives in.Least Favorite Character: Rasheeda. She’s a scenery chewer.Character I Most Identified With:The Feel:2 pages in, main character has sold her womb and is walking the desert on some penance driven bounty hunt. Grim, dark, horrible, and beautifully written.I like the feel of the story, but the every single stroke leads to a trap and everyone knows what they are up to gets old, worst covert action team in the history of covert action teams.Favorite Scene / Quote:Whenever there is a burst going off and they instinctively look up at it and wonder if it's the one that is going to kill them. Real Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads stuff there.When Nyx gets jumped on the road to the coast as she’s going to check on her sister. The sequence where Nyx has been taken by the bel dames in Chenja, when her team comes after her.Didn’t even think about how families must react when boys are born in this matriarchal world, where boys are cannon fodder for the draft. Looks like it hits the team hard, this team of hardasses who are in over their heads, talk tough, and, then, get a soft edge when a baby boy is born. Really sad when taken in context.Pacing:Early parts of the book, the pace is slow. Very much, read a couple pages and break to consider what happened and the background. Page 100+ the pace picks up as they receive their assignment from the queen and set out across the border.Hmm Moments:Flesh magicians, organic vehicles that run on roaches, aliens fighting a Holy War, and a matriarchy where men are to be used up and cast aside.Are the Mhorians another sect of humanity or are they alien shapeshifters? Not clear. So, the shifters aren’t aliens. They’re another subset of humanity that emigrated from the moons of Umayma. The “aliens” seem human too. The shifters and the magicians weren’t shifters and magicians before coming to Umayma. Wonder if the genetics plot that is bubbling under the surface here is another subset of humanity about to be brought into their holy war.Rhys and Nyx appear to be circling closer to one another across a cultural veil that may be unpierceable. Does Nyx have feelings for Rhys, or is he a ghost to her, a ghost of the friend she couldn’t get across the borderline the last time a mission took her inside Chenja. There is a bit of a sinking feeling running underneath the character interactions after they get their note from the queen and before they cross into Chenja. Nyx trying to convince herself that she can get all of her team back across the Chenja-Nasheen border is filling the text with foreboding. She’ll be permanently lost if she loses them, whether she managed to return to the bel dame after his or not.What I perceived as an out-of-character stretch in the book came into much better focus. Really didn’t expect there to be unexplored depth in “that” meathead character. An unexpected villain turn.WTF Moments:The bugs are everything motif is both awesome and oogie inducing.Crossing Nyx leads to one opponent’s penis being cut off. Wow. Just wow.Gave me a “No, don’t go you damned fool” moment. Very nice.Meh / PFFT Moments:If certain religious folk were to read this book and put two and two together, I wonder if they’d issue a fatwa or two based on the bastardized alien religion that exists in these pages.Hope there isn’t betrayal in the wind for Nyx’s team.Could every single move they make, maybe, not lead to a trap of some kind. Again, the worst covert ops team in the history of covert ops. They must show up in a city and it get broadcasted across the net or whatever passed for the net in their bug-tech world. Or maybe they’ve got words written all over their burnous that give away who they are and why they are there, but they can’t see the words and everyone else can.I cared what happens to the characters, but there was a long stretch of no hope. Seemed that they were being piled on in an unrealistic fashion, everything that can go wrong, went wrong. Was afraid that the story was headed down a rabbit hole that only a deus ex machina could save it from. Thankfully, I was mistaken, but it was a hard section to read through.Why isn’t there a screenplay?Could be awesome. Afraid that regardless of how well it was done thought, that it would fall on the sword of nerdrage and social justice warrioring, and a bit of John Carter and Jupiter Rising and it wouldn’t matter how well the movie is. That looks like Islam, there goes part of the audience. That looks like Mad Max, there goes part of the audience. That’s not how men and women act, there goes part of the audience. Etc, etc, etc. Maybe I’m just getting cynical...lol, getting.Casting call / Dreamcasting:I keep trying to come up with an actress who could communicate Nyx’s gruff, cold blooded, and damaged psyche on film and i’m not finding anyone. Maybe Zoe Saldana. The character, at base, is similar to her character in Columbiana. Saldana has said she doesn’t want to do sci-fi and fire guns anymore. Hopefully, the interview where she said that was in error.Chiwetel Ejiofor would be awesome as Rhys. But he’s too old and recently played a mage in Dr Strange anyway. Though Marvel movie magic and the bug magic of Hurley’s world don’t have anything in common with one another. Who would be a young Chiwetel? Maybe Don Glover. I could see Don Glover as Rhys. Maybe Wilson Jackson Harper who plays Chidi Anagonye.Jason Momoa as Khos, the shape shifting Mhorian.Devin Aoki as Anneke, Nyx’s second.Would love to see David Twohy direct it. There is a bit of a Pitch Black feel here._________________________________________________Last Page Sound:Victory wrapped in tragedy. Finishing this on the day I saw Rogue One was a double dose of sadness.Well done, despite the sky is falling aspects of the challenges that rained on the “hero” team. Not sure that hero is the right appellation for them.Author Assessment:Loved the story. The Afterword held some gold. The author said that she “wrote most of this book during the year she was dying.” And the final quote of the book, “Finally, many thanks to my long suffering parents...who told me...that they would be happy to encourage their dorky kid’s writing career, as long as I knew I’d always be poor.Over the years, I found out that poverty wasn’t such a catastrophe. The real tragedy woudl have been dying before I’d ever published a book.There are some things worth coming back for.”I would read more from Kameron Hurley.Editorial Assessment:Editor should have challenged the unrelenting darkness chapters of the book where it seemed that there was no hope and the main characters were being outplayed at every single turn. Their being professionals, themselves, seems like they should have had more small, at least, victories along the road to the climax, win or lose. Knee Jerk Reaction:really good bookDisposition of Book:Irving Public LibrarySouth CampusIrving, TXDewey Decimal System: FHURWould recommend to:genre fans_________________________________________________

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Opening line: “Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.”I really liked this one, but a few issues hold it back from being a four star or higher book.The planet of Umayma has been settled for roughly three thousand years. For the last few centuries, it has been consumed by a holy war between two of its countries. It’s an all consuming sort of war that sucks in the vast majority of young men through a mandatory draft and spits out bodies and scarred survivors.Nyx is a former bel dame, a government assassin who takes the heads off deserters. She is mostly focused on her own survival, but when aliens come to Umayma claiming to be able to end the war, Nyx becomes wrapped up in something she never expected.I loved the setting and world building. Umayma is a hostile planet, full of harsh sunlight and strange diseases. Its residents regularly have to get cancer scraped off, and replacing body parts is a matter of course. The planet was originally settled by Muslim colonists as a haven to practice their faith, and three thousand years later Islam still has a large impact upon the world.Centuries of holy war have also shaped the world. The country Nyx hails from has become a matriarchy, since there’s hardly any men around given that the vast majority are forced to the war front. God’s War uses the constant warfare to explore how both societies react and as part of its larger exploration of gender and sexuality (the protagonist, Nyx, is bisexual).The technology is based of controlling insects, and the people with this talent are known as magicians. Besides the fact of its existence, this skill was not explained, and I wish that it could have been explored to a greater extent.One of the strongest aspects of God’s War is its characters – they all feel like living breathing people, complete with character flaws. Nyx herself is a wonderful anti-heroine who’s making it onto my lists of all time favorite protagonists. She’s been through hell for duty and honor and now will only risk her life for cold hard cash.“Nyx had wanted to be the hero of her own life. Things hadn’t turned out that way. Sometimes she thought maybe she could just be the hero of someone else’s life, but there was no one who cared enough about her to keep her that close. Hell, there was nobody she’d let that close. No one wanted a hero who couldn’t even save herself.”While Nyx was the central character, other’s also had POV chapters. Rhys was the most significant of these. In many ways, he served as a foil for Nyx. While he had a tendency to be holier-than-thou, I liked him overall and found his POV interesting.However, God’s War wasn’t simple to read. The world is radically different from our own (and often unexplained) and something about the writing doesn’t really facilitate an easy reading. I was constantly reading back over paragraphs and lines to make sure that I understood them. There was another section where I skimmed over a few times to try and figure out if a character was present.The plot was also thin or confusing in places. I’m still not entirely sure what happened or how certain events were significant.I would not recommend this for anyone unfamiliar with science fiction. You’ve got to have practice diving into a very different world and trying to pick up context clues to figure it out when it goes unexplained. I just can’t see someone who doesn’t read a lot of science fiction or fantasy having a good time with it.On the other hand, if you’ve already got practice reading genre works, you may very well want to pick up God’s War. It’s got a brilliantly inventive setting and a diverse cast of well realized characters.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

[veronicah3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On a planet with two suns, two nations have been at war with each other for almost as long as each has existed. Centuries of war have affected each country differently, though both continually loose generations of men to the endless war. In Nasheen, women rule; The Queen’s word is God’s word, and her laws are carried out by highly skilled female assassins known as bel dames. In Chenja, women are the veiled property of men who are to be cared for by fathers, brothers, or husbands. Each country has specialized breeding compounds to provide a continual stream of fresh bodies for the war, but In Chenja, a woman doing anything other than staying at home and veiled is considered indecent and punishable by laws seemingly based on Sharia law. The women in Nasheen at least get to choose what they will do with their life: breed or fight. Nyxnissa so Dasheem has chosen the latter. A stint at the war front left her half dead, but she was “reconstituted” and joined the law and order of the bel dames, carrying out government-contracted bounties and assassinations. The book opens with her crossing from Chenja to Nasheen after a failed contract kills her partner, selling her womb (quite literally) for a ticket across the border. She is broken, bleeding, and completely out of options.It’s a situation Nyx will find herself in many times throughout God’s War, Kameron Hurley’s bloody take on religious wars and the damage they inflict on those who suffer them. The titular god bears significant resemblance to the god of the Qur’an, which in Hurley’s world is called the Kitab (which means book in Arabic; kitabullah is also used in the book, and this is a direct reference to the Qur’an as kitabullah means “the book of God” in Arabic). No one remembers why the war started, but it continues to be fought over religious and ideological differences (different interpretations of the Prophet’s words) between the two nations. None of this really matters to Nyx; the only thing that matters to her is bringing in her notes, assassination contracts handed out by the bel dame council and sometimes even the Queen herself. The main story takes place several years after the opening sequence and concerns a note handed out by the latter behind the back of the bel dame council. Nyx takes the note in hope of redemption, but instead opens a can of worms that could obliterate Nasheen’s enemy, Chenja, or even Nasheen itself.Speaking of worms, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the tech on this world is mostly organic and relies almost entirely on the use of bugs by magicians and others who can manipulate organic matter. Cars have organic, living hoses and are powered by red beetles. Organic filters surround entire cities and act as doors, but are tailored to let only certain organic matter through. The war is largely fought with organic bursts, biowarfare that unleashes plagues, disease, and other contagens on anyone not inoculated or caught outside the filters (God help them if something explodes inside the filters). Nyx’s world is harsh, and anything organic is profitable, including, and sometimes especially, genetic material or body parts (hence the womb). Also on this world are shifters, people who can shape-shift into various animals. Explaining some of this is worth while because like any good SFF writer, Hurley drops you into the middle of Nyx’s world and you had better hit the ground running if you want to make heads or tails of anything. She also uses exposition only when necessary, and parsed out in as little space as possible. A line or three here and there, rarely a whole paragraph. And yet it’s easy to inhabit Nyx’s world; Hurley is thorough without being pedantic. Nyx is a completely likable yet frequently feckless anti-hero. In this she reminds me a bit of Mal from Joss Whedon’s excellent but short-lived tv series, Firefly. She’s a lot harder than Mal, but just as bumbling sometimes. She’s aslo pretty damn kick-ass; just the kind of SFF heroine I like.While I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying that gender politics is a main point of Hurley’s story, it plays a significant role. But the novel isn’t as skewed as one might expect as she gives voice to the Chenja view of women and the world in the character of Rhys, a Chenjan magician hiding out in Nasheen. The narrative form used allows for Hurley to explore multiple perspectives, and while the novel is certainly tilted in favor of Nasheenian views of women and the world through Nyx, it was nice to be given multiple views. If Hurley can anywhere be accused of too much exposition, it’s in the sections from Rhys’s POV, mainly because he frequently comments on the differences between Chenjan women and Nasheenian women.This book stayed with me long after I finished it, and I frequently found myself thinking of Nyx’s various horrible situations-how she could get out of them, etc. After I finished God’s War, I immediately downloaded the next in the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy, Infidel. I just finished God’s War today, and I’m already half-way through Infidel. The third book in the trilogy will be released in early November, but I’ve got a NetGalley advance of it, so come back for a review of the next two books soon. This is exactly the kind of hard SF with a female heroine I look for and rarely find. I highly recommend the Kameron Hurley’s Bel Dame Apocrypha.

[devilwrites · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The premise: ganked from BN.com: Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn't make any difference...On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there's one thing everybody agrees on--There's not a chance in hell of ending it.Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx's ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war--but at what price?The world is about to find out.My Rating: Worth Reading, with ReservationsThe biggest reservation I have with this book is that it is not an easy read. Amazon tells me the physical copy is 288 pages, but it felt longer than that. But there's so much detail in this world, so much to absorb and understand. This is no breezy beach read, but rather a utterly unique and original universe that demands the reader pay attention, because there are so many goodies to discover in all the violence found in these pages. And while it's a difficult read, by the end, it has a fantastic emotional pay-off, where the reader can see how this trilogy is going to be built on character and the gradual building of, and that's a wonderful thing. The end is what had me kind of wanting to read the next installment, despite the fact I simply don't have the time right now. Horrible excuse, but despite hard-to-like characters and the grisly violence of the book, I can see why it's so acclaimed, why it was nominated for a Nebula. If you're in the mood for something unique and intelligent, something that's full of diversity of all sorts, you can't go wrong with this book.Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. As with all book club selections, both my review and the comments will be riddled with spoilers, so if you haven't read the book and want to avoid spoilers, do not read the full review, which is located at my blog and linked below. Everyone else, onward! As always, comments and discussion are welcome.REVIEW: Kameron Hurley's GOD'S WARHappy Reading!

[marfisk_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is little simple or sweet about this book. It is a bloody, no holds barred, look at long term, devastating conflict with racial and religious foundations that are largely propaganda or misunderstandings. As if that weren't enough, the different groups also hold harsh beliefs about gender, sparked by being on a planet where survival is difficult even without an ongoing war.Before you get the idea that this is a sociological rant, though, know that it is personalized through the lead characters, each of which has a different stake in how this all comes into play. You see the world and the war through the eyes of a character who has been on many different levels of the conflict, and whose rare viewpoint lets her take people on their own grounding despite race and gender. Which is not to say she has no prejudices, nor that she is not a product of her culture. She suffers from as many internal clashes of culture and duty as external, a process that is both fascinating and traumatic to watch.No, God's War is not an easy read. It's neither light entertainment nor fluffy, politically correct, feel good literature. What this novel does is offer a look at flaws that exist in our world through the window of another planet where everything is an extreme. It makes you think about things that are swept under the rug and provides a level of realism that is both horrifying and compelling. I said it was not light entertainment and I hold to that, but there is no question that God's War is entertaining, compelling, and illuminating thanks to rich, complicated characters who are feeling their way around as much as we readers are, and who I wanted to get to know better and hoped for a happy ending. Oh and there are even 'aliens'--off-world splinter races--and something along the lines of magic, and the setting is more Middle Eastern than Western European, for those of you seeking to expand your reading cultures.P.S. I got this book through NetGalley but the opinions are all my own.

[ladycato · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book first came to my attention as a Nebula nominee earlier this year and then was recently selected as a book club read. I found God's War to be completely different from my usual reads: aggressively dark, defying all genre conventions, and fascinating at every turn.This is science fiction in that it takes place off Earth, but on a world that was colonized 3,000 years before by Muslims. At this point, faiths have diverged amongst different nations, with some more conservative than others and many tenets of Islam recognizable in an evolved form. The fantasy element is that this is also a world with magic--bug-based magic. That's right. Magicians manipulate bugs to heal wounds, transmit poison, or even as an energy source for vehicles.This use of bugs also lends itself to the incredible darkness of the book. Nyx collects heads for bounty. Death is everywhere. Torture is commonplace. The war is a nefarious, constant presence. There are points where it verges on horror, because the scenes are so gruesome and intense. Yet I kept reading. Why? I typically like my heroes and heroines as good guys. Nyx is not. She's terrifically complicated. Rhys--I loved Rhys, the God-fearing Chenyan with haphazard magical skills. The rest of the team is equally vivid and diverse. The plot is fast-paced, like a thriller, with threats at every turn. My curiosity about the world pulled me in, and the characters wouldn't let me go.God's War is daring, dark, and amazing. I will definitely look for more by this author.

[faganjc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrific protagonist: Nyx is not admirable, but she is interesting, tragic, and empowered. Secondary principal character Rhys is not completely likable and is hardly inspirational, but he is 100% himself. The other characters are not that deep, but they add good flavor and are likewise true to themselves. This book would make a great Zoe Saldana movie. Noir elements. Creative world-building; magic and technology are interwoven with a religious war context. Even though some of the trappings are like our world, mostly this setting stands apart.

[tadad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Remember those popsicle stick bombs you made as a kid? Five sticks held together by pressure? They were kind of interesting for a couple of minutes then, inevitably, they flew apart under their own tensions and became just popsicle sticks. Yeah, that's the way I felt about this book: it was kind of interesting but it flew apart from its own tension.The premise goes something like the following. On the planet Umayma, two particular Muslim factions are locked in a war that has raged for centuries. Every single male must fight until age 40 or dead (almost always the latter), or be executed. Women run everything, including the war and the execution part. Our main character, Nyx, is a former government assassin whose job was to execute deserters. She has left the service under a bit of a cloud when she gets sucked into a big conspiracy. Her skills are a bit less than she might like and her luck is atrocious, so things go wrong. So far, so good.However, we also have the planet mutating humans (for reasons that are not fully explained) into "shapeshifters" and "magicians". The former are pretty typical lycanthropes without the whole moon thing. The second are able to control the insect life native to the world via what the book implies is pheromone emission (except that it doesn't seem to be that). And the insects in the world—either naturally or through human intervention, the story is not clear—can do pretty much everything from communicate via radio waves, to acting as remote viewing devices, to powering a car. Hmmmm.Now throw in biological and chemical sciences so far in advance of what we know today that new viral attacks are whipped up routinely and lobbed at the enemy...with countering immunizations following almost as quickly. However, despite space travel, the physical sciences are somewhat retarded so that nuclear attacks, or even things like rail guns, don't figure into the story. Stir in some teleportation devices (mentioned but not explained or exploited, either by the story or the war), a big thing about organ bootlegging, breeding farms for producing more men, an inter-stellar conspiracy, some racial genocide, huge quantities of sexual politics, and the kitchen sink...wait, I'm kidding about the last...and you have an idea of what Hurley has attempted. It's too much for 288 pages. After a while, you move beyond the fact that she has some real abilities at world-building and realize that she bit off way too much. In other words, it flies apart.It's unfortunate because Hurley is one of the more inventive world-builders I've encountered in a while. And the one or two characters she takes the time to develop grow on you. And her prose is edgy and exciting. And she's fearless about tackling gender, racial and social issues in her incredibly dark, grim and violent world. I haven't made up my mind whether I'll continue on to the sequel, Infidel. I guess I'll wait until the numbness in my brain fades to decide.

[reginar_447079 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is not a full review as I read this books months ago, it is sort of a remembering. I just learned it is a nominee for the 2011 Nebula Awards, so I thought the book deserved some write up. This book and the world written about in this book is unlike anything else I have ever read. The world building was fantastic and so unique. Magic and technology run on bugs. Control of bugs gives individuals more power. The society is devoid of men because they are at war; fighting has been going on for centuries. As the result of war society of both countries fighting has been devistated socially and environmentally. Each country at war has reacted differently. One is oppresive to women and the other country, due to the lack of men, is oppressive to men. But that is a simplistic description of the social dynamics in this book, it is much more complex. What is clear in this story is that war is devistating and the violence in people's lives destroys their humanity. The setting is in a desert like location reminscent of the middle east, but it appears to be a planet settled centuries ago. The story told is a dark, brutal story. There is not much light in it. There is no love, no romance, there is loyalty among team members -- but the team members themselves are brutal and cruel people. I have purchased her next book in this series and do plan to read it.If you can handle dark and brutal (and I mean brutal) stories and enjoy complex world building, then you likely would enjoy this story. It is not for those who are squeamish about bugs, violence or if same-sex sexual relationships bother you.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On the Muslim (plus a few thousand years of cultural drift) world of Umayma, a mercenary navigates between warring states, with bonus shapeshifters and magicians who can control biological functions and the insects that operate machines, surveil people, and otherwise provide technology. There’s a lot of blood and a lot of politics. It wasn’t to my taste, but if you like noir and people who spit blood in the faces of other people who are about to kill them, you might enjoy it.

[courtneyschafer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing worldbuilding and a truly kick-ass, take-no-prisoners female protagonist - if you like dark, brutal novels like Joe Abercrombie's (which I do!), go buy this book right now. It's an unflinching look at the terrible cost of war, and the difficult choices faced by those who struggle to break free of their cultural expectations. Highly recommended to anyone who likes their sf edgy and thought-provoking.

[p_linehan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I would probably not have picked this one out in a bookstore. But I got it free on my new Nook. It has adventure, lots of violence, and a strange desert planet where people sell their body parts and doctors use bugs to cure people! I can't wait for the sequel.

[kaipakartik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great world building and conflicted characters here.All technology is driven by bugs. There is a very obvious feminist slant here which also leads to some interesting conversations between the characters.The ending was a tad disappointing. The villains were surprisingly stupid at the end. They won and then did something really stupid and lost.Will definitely be reading the rest of the series.