For those who lived; for those who died. For those who fled; for those who stayed behind. For those who sacrificed everything so others might live; for those who are waiting for you and the songs you carry far out in the dark.
page 201
Table of Contents
Why Slow Gods?
I first heard about Slow Gods from the booktuber Elliot Brooks who mentioned it a anticipated fantasy releases of November and December 2025 video. Elliot normally does not mention sci-fi books in her videos so that in itself was notable to me.
Science fiction is one of those genres that I want to read more of this year and I want to read sci-fi that isn’t afraid to get a little weird and the description for this book definitely gave off the kind of weird vibes I am looking for.
I placed a hold for it in the Toronto Public Library system in November 2025 and due to the low number of copies and the relatively high number of holds, I didn’t end up getting my hands on this book until January 2026 in my second library haul of the year.
This is my first time reading anything by Claire North so I had no idea what to expect other than “weird”. So, let’s get into it.
The Book
Slow Gods is ostensibly a space opera that tells the story of one Mawukana na-Vdnaze who dies and is reborn in a manner that is never quite explained in the story. Mawukana or Maw as he is sometimes referred to cannot be killed after this rebirth, he is in a sense immortal. The why and hows of his strange immortality are implied to be some sort of consciousness merger with the darkness of space which is also implied to be a unknowable creature of its own.
The entire story is told from Maw’s perspective with brief interludes to explain some aspects of the world. There is an interlude on how various species and worlds choose arcspace pilot and another on how the various words in this universe see gender. The sci-fi world in this book is very intriguing.
Every world/species is different, from the hyper-capitalist and individualist culture of The Shine, the Adjumiri who lives revolve around the complexities and nuances of their language and the power of rituals, to the sentient machines of the Quan, to the living ships of Xihana; the worlds and people depicted in this book are varied and my only criticism is that we don’t get enough time with most of them so some of the uniqueness feels a little shallow.
Gender is irrelevant for quans, for whom replication is a complex dance of modular balancing and operational system optimisation. The use of the pronoun “qe” is a matter of respect – they do not wish to be put in the same category as a bowl of soup or a broken chair.
page 73, Interlude on gender
The events of the book revolve around a specific supernova event, the Lhonoja, a supernova event, the death of the binary stars in this star system that will wipe out all life on some of the planets. The warning of this event is brought to the people of the system by a mysterious creature known as the Slow, an old machine, a perfect black sphere moving through the interstellar darkness at a maximum of 0.3 of the speed of light.
Slow Gods is partially a story about how cultures and worlds deal with end of world scenarios. On one end are the Shine who in their hyper-capitalist culture suppress all news of this upcoming event and write off the population of an entire world instead of evacuating.
“But,” te would mutter, “what is the point of our lives if we are not remembered? What is the point of the stories we make if they do not tell people something true?”
page 71
On the other end of the spectrum, the Adjumiri make great efforts to save not only as many of their people as possible but also make efforts to save as much of their culture as possible and there is an exploration of what it means for an entire world to die. The people born on the new planet have a completely different understanding of what it means to be Adjumiri, there is a sense of profound loss in this and this is explored by way of Maw’s interaction with the Adjumiri throughout his long life.
Slow Gods is also an exploration of the nature of godhood. The way story is told, the grand scale of the events in question, the nature of arcspace, Maw’s immortality and the immortality of the Slow are all weaved together into a tale that asks big questions of the reader. What does it mean to be a god? What is cruelty and justice from the point of view of a god? What matters, who matters? How much do they matter?
As far as I can tell, Slow Gods doesn’t seek to answer any of these questions. It leaves all of them open-ended and the answers are left as an exercise to the reader. Some of the best science fiction I have read operates on this wavelength of big questions with no simple answers and I appreciated that aspect of the book.
I don’t have much to say about the various characters in this book as I don’t think this is a character focused book. The characters are mostly vehicles for grander ideas. With the exception of Maw who gets the largest amount of characterization and Maw’s character appears to be one where he tries to recede into the background and let everything flow around him to a certain extent. As someone who is generally very character oriented, this is my biggest criticism of the book.
Comparing this book to the works of Becky Chambers, Chambers weaves the right balance between characters you care about along with big ideas. Slow Gods is content to let characters be pieces on the chess board of its universe with very few and very brief exceptions. This to a certain extent is what space opera sci-fi is but I I still think that this book is a little too lopsided in favour of its big ideas for me to consider it an incredible book.
Concluding Thoughts
I think it is a tad unfair to keep comparing science fiction novels I read to the works of Becky Chambers because the Wayfarer series set such an impossibly high bar that has not been matched yet. Slow Gods was fine, pretty good even but I don’t think it rises to the level of being a book of the year. I will give it the consolation prize of being the weirdest sci-fi book I’ve read this year…so far.
I will continue to try and read more science fiction this year where possible and I am open to suggestions on what I should read along that front, I am specifically looking for more sci-fi novellas/novels to read.
That is all from me. I’ll see y’all in the next one.
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