Review: When the Gods Fell, by Richard Paolinelli

Mythology just got stranger

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Which explains why the herald of Yahweh was waiting for sixty five million years.

Buckle in, this one is going to take some explaining.

Welcome to Richard Paolinelli's When The Gods Fell.

And once more, just to be clear, Richard did not write Eragon. That was a guy named Paolini.

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The story

In 2040, the latest Martian exploration team crew is wandering around the planet, minding their own business .... until they stumble upon a woman just standing in the middle of the Martian landscape. She's so happy that the humans seeded on Earth finally made it to Mars. Of course she managed to survive that long -- she had become a being of pure energy (damn Vorlons. They get everywhere). And it's a story 65 million years in the making (yes, I stole the Jurassic Park ad campaign).

The following story is an epic tale of ... well, we're going to take ALL the mythology, and make the gods aliens with style. There were so many mythological references in this one that I'm certain that I missed some. As this is mythology, there are enough betrayals and back stabbing to make the cast of Game of Thrones look like amateurs.

We have Caste Zion, led by Lord Yahweh, where everyone in the City of Eden is part of the national guard, which was helpful when Lucifer's House Satania challenged Chronos Saturnius' Caste Olympia a hundred years before hand, and Lord Marduk and Lord Tiamat of Houses Canaan and Dagon are plotting a followup coup....

This was hands-down awesome. This is one part 2001: A Space Odyssey, one part Dan Simmons, and one part Babylon 5, with a hint of Mass Effect.

The short version? The concepts are brilliant The execution is spot on. There is about 10-15% of the book that needed a little bit of a trim, but aside from that? Wonderful.

This one is very much a novel. I don't mean to be masty about the description. But this is as much of a novel as The Martian. Only without as much smart ass. Okay, there's still plenty of smart ass -- with the Mars station Von Braun, and rovers named Aldren and The Glenn -- but this one is a bit more serious than The Martian. The execution of the science bit felt an a lot like the Martian -- sensible, straightforward, and sciencey. (I especially like how Russia, in 2040, is still trying to cover their inferiority complex with bravado.)

Okay, this book is a little chocked FULL of smartass, it just requires a degree in classical studies (or a read-through of Bullfinch's Mythology) to really get the jokes.

As the book nears the end, it's fairly obvious how this runaway freight train is going to end. In fact, we kinda know how the book is going to end from the beginning -- but the journey to how it gets there is so interesting and so readable, you don't care how it ends, you want to see how they got there. But after a certain point, runaway train is not only running off the rails, but is on fire. What comes next?

What comes next ... is a heck of an epilogue that sets up for an apocalyptic battle that I'm sure will be very interesting....

But damnit man, why did you have to end it THERE?

And the ending .... well, all I can say is that you should pay VERY close attention to the numbers they throw about.

The characters

This is "the weak point" of the book. Everyone's mythology is thrown in, and their characterizations are pretty spot on from what I recall of mythology. Petty pantheons and infighting? Say it ain't so... I am being sarcastic of course.

But frankly, I think Richard's translating mythological characters into a science fiction setting worked beautifully. And Richard nailed  their characterizations.

The world

As I said before, when Richard uses ALL of the mythologies, he uses ALL of the mythologies. If he missed one, I can't tell you what he may have left out. We have appearances by Thor, Loki, Shiva, Kali, Nippon, a literal Mount Fuji .... okay, Ganesh didn't make it into the book, but there's a sequel.

And yes, Loki is still Loki.

Then again, when everyone's pantheon gets together, everyone starts to look a little like Loki. (Honestly, straight up mythology has enough murder and incest porn to make Game of Thrones look like Kindergarten).

Now, in a book that mixes mythology and scifi -- especially when one turned mythology into Scifi -- you'd normally expect a ton of handwavium. Not really. I especially enjoyed describing Hades' House Orcus as underground, on the banks of a fire river Styx .... but that Styx had carved out tubes and caves from pole to pole, and the way the water is described as being laced with enough methane so that the water was always on fire. It was just such a nice touch. It's less scifi and more ... fi.

The politics

This is pure power politics. How much of Game of Thrones was politically aligned and how much was just about "How can I get mine?"

Content warning

I am not going to complain about how "Yahweh is really a Vorlon." Even in the book, the Oracle telling the story said that yes, there was a Deity to whom these "gods" prayed. And I saw no mention of one of the kids becoming a carpenter. If you're that concerned, unbunch your panties and just relax. This is not Dan Brown. Paolinelli is not poking at your faith with malice aforethought.

Who is it for?

This is for anyone who wants to see how creatively one can take mythology and make it scifi. As usual, if you like John C Wright or classic SciFi, Richard Paolinelli is your guy.

Why read it?

You're going to want to read this if only because it's just plain fun, taking a lot of interesting ideas and smashing them together.