Book Review: The Mercy of Gods by James S A Corey

I was not a fan of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. In a weird way, I'm really glad I read this masterpiece, and some of the concepts (wearing masks for video calls, creating lobbing games for tennis, things you can do to enemies with toothbrushes) have really stayed with me. But, although considered a masterpiece, my thoughts are the same as my friend Spoon's: "I...think I hate this book."

The main reason this book didn't agree with me is that it's overly complicated. There are too many people to remember (which really matters over 1000+ pages), the US is at war with Canada for some reason, and there's a kicker on the Arizona Cardinals who likes trapping scorpions under glasses - most of this stuff doesn't really matter to the story (as much as there was one) and only existed because David Foster Wallace just loved writing (and note that although I hated this book, I love his short story and article collections - it would be hard for anything to ever top his piece on Roger Federer for the New York Times - I think he just needed to be told to condense his thoughts into short pieces - where he would still spend 20+ pages reviewing the dictionary (which was still a fascinating read)).

So, in sum, I don't like things to be overly complicated - if it's not in the service of the story, maybe get rid of it.

So imagine my response when reading the first chapter of James S A Corey's The Mercy of Gods. The chapter takes place on a planet that is similar to Earth and probably colonized by Earth, but not Earth. Although colonization happened in the distant past, the culture and level of technology are relatively similar to what we have now. However, all the places and institutions have completely different names. The main characters are biologists at a university (I think?) - they have just made a major breakthrough only to see their funding dry up, so they spend the chapter discussing the funding cut and figuring out how to get around it. The main characters all have names that similar but not quite like ours (Dafyd, Rickar, Tonner), and right off the bat there are eight of them.

I fell asleep three times trying to get through this chapter.

Luckily the action picks up a few chapters from there when an alien race invades the planet and captures the science crew. The number of main characters right-size a bit there (hint hint) and do start to develop enough personalities to tell them apart.

So, alien invasion. The main story of this book (first in a series of three) is the aliens (the Carryx) invading, capturing the best and brightest of the planet, and taking them away to their homeworld. The science crew learns some valuable lessons - that alien species have much different sets of values than humans, that many of the conquered species are in competition with each other, that patience is a virtue.

It should be noted that right off the bat, in the prologue of the book, we already know how this three-book series will end - that Dafyd from the science team will end up betraying and destroying all of the Carryx. It's a big flex, and provides pressure on the character of Dafyd. Luckily, he's a really great character. While just a lowly research assistant on his homeworld of Anjiin, during captivity Dafyd becomes a world-class schemer. He learns to interpret what the Carryx actually want from them, determines the best ways for the scientists to work under the Carryx, and becomes the de facto leader of the scientists. Throughout, though, he remains committed to killing all the Carryx - he just realizes that they will need to be patient and learn everything they can about them before carrying anything out against that strong an enemy.

Overall the story really picks up with the alien invasion. It has to be docked for the slow (and pretty much irrelevant) first few chapters, as well as the seemingly unnecessary complications (I don't really know why the scientists couldn't have come from present-day Earth), but it's a good read nonetheless. Eight out of ten hot dogs for book one - looking forward to book two (assuming there aren't any more battles over research funding).