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Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson is the first book of the Goddess in the Machine Duology and the July 2020 Owlcrate book!
When Andra wakes up, she's drowning.
Not only that, but she's in a hot, dirty cave, it's the year 3102, and everyone keeps calling her Goddess. When Andra went into a cryonic sleep for a trip across the galaxy, she expected to wake up in a hundred years, not a thousand. Worst of all, the rest of the colonists-including her family and friends-are dead. They died centuries ago, and for some reason, their descendants think Andra's a deity. She knows she's nothing special, but she'll play along if it means she can figure out why she was left in stasis and how to get back to Earth.
Zhade, the exiled bastard prince of Eerensed, has other plans. Four years ago, the sleeping Goddess's glass coffin disappeared from the palace, and Zhade devoted himself to finding it. Now he's hoping the Goddess will be the key to taking his rightful place on the throne-if he can get her to play her part, that is. Because if his people realize she doesn't actually have the power to save their dying planet, they'll kill her.
With a vicious monarch on the throne and a city tearing apart at the seams, Zhade and Andra might never be able to unlock the mystery of her fate, let alone find a way to unseat the king, especially since Zhade hasn't exactly been forthcoming with Andra. And a thousand years from home, is there any way of knowing that Earth is better than the planet she's woken to.
This is a... complicated book for me. I feel like I should enjoy it a lot more than I did, but it somehow is on the lower end of a 3 for me.
There were a lot of things I loved. The concept of Andra as a character -- someone so unseen who is suddenly thrust into the position of a goddess -- really appealed to me. I liked the nanobot technology in this, and it made sense why people would deem it magic if not understanding it. That was a cool fantasy vs sci-fi kinda thing interwoven in. I like that the supposed villain and the supposed good guy aren't as black and white as they should be.
I just... There were these themes I really liked. But they always just felt *there.* They never felt genuinely explored and expanded upon. Especially that first one, which really sucked because it would have made me absolutely *adore* Andra's character.
Instead... I just felt meh toward her. And that isn't a good thing when I also felt meh about most of the characters except the one character I could figure out, which was the supposed bad guy, because he actually felt layered. He was a mystery I wanted to figure out.
Andra... Zhade... Meh?
I also hated the romance. I'm all for relationships that go from jabbing distrust to love, but that just didn't happen here. They were "enemies" and then suddenly they were falling for each other. I never understood why. The chemistry was never there. Like, I don't truly hate either character in it. Nor do I hate the idea of the ship. It was just executed so badly that I hated its inclusion.
Another complaint I have is the language. A lot of people call this a deal breaker and give low reviews when they don't like the language, but I didn't really agree. The language was annoying because it took so much of our language and changed a few wording and phrases. And it just felt... inconsistent? I couldn't figure out why the author chose to change the words she did.
Of course, I did place this at 3 stars, so there are things I like. I did really enjoy the idea of the world, and the plot was interesting, even if I could see some of the twists coming. It is a complex web of political stuff that focuses a lot on the illusion of power. I liked that.
The idea of the evolution of humanity was interesting. I would have loved to learned more about how the destruction of not only the earth but understanding and culture happened. I guess this is a pro and con because it is a concept that never truly felt executed...
One of the twists -- which I kinda predicted, which I dunno if is a pat on my back or a remark to the plot -- does set Andra up to perhaps be more interesting in the sequel.
I think that's the best I can say about that book. It has a lot of potential and a lot of interesting concepts, but it just left me hungry for more. Not more of the world, but more in the form of the execution. More character focus. More history focus. I'm hoping the second book will give that with less of a need to set up the world, but we will see.
