Slow Gods
Finalist for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel! Shortlisted for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! Best of the Year at Gizmodo, Library Journal, and more! "An astonishing, thought-provoking and above all touching story of found meaning and lost humanity." --Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time Slow Gods is the galaxy-spanning tale of one man's impossible life charted against the fate of humanity amongst the stars--a powerfully imaginative space opera from multi-award-winning author Claire North, perfect for fans of A Memory Called Empire and The Vanished Birds. My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself. In telling my story, there are certain things I should perhaps lie about. I should make myself a hero. Pretend I was not used by strangers and gods, did not leave people behind. Here is one truth: out there in deep space, in the pilot's chair, I died. And then, I was reborn. I became something not quite human, something that could speak to the infinite dark. And I vowed to become the scourge of the world that wronged me. This is the story of the supernova event that burned planets and felled civilizations. This is also the story of the many lives I've lived since I died for the first time. Are you listening?
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Community Reviews
What a magnificent work this is.
When it comes to lyrical prose, a grand and sweeping scope, an unhurried pace, and sumptuous world-building, I am an easy mark (all of which is kind of inexplicable given that, when I'm not reading, I'm a fairly impatient person). Slow Gods is exactly in that register, the sort of thing I love best, and so I suppose it was inevitable that I would enjoy this as much as I did. I think Claire North has given us something genuinely beautiful here.
It put me in mind, funny enough, of Orbital by Samantha Harvey: I guess because they're both set in space and both feature characters pondering heady themes of life and love and worth and destiny and death, and reflecting on how, against the immeasurable vastness of the cosmos, those things are both entirely meaningless and the only things that have any tangible meaning at all. But whereas I did not really enjoy Orbital at all, Slow Gods had me wrapped around its little finger from the first few pages.
So much of North's writing in this is achingly beautiful: there are quotes that will stay with me long after I set this back on the shelf. What a gift.
Enjoy this book, readers. You have been loved, and you are beautiful.
(Crossposted from my Storygraph review)
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