A review by mocaxe
The Idiot Gods by David Zindell

4.0

This was a very beautiful tale. Though it took a couple tries to get into it (the language can be overly flowery and difficult to swallow before you get used to it), once I got over that initial bump I was entirely sucked into the story and finished it very quickly. It is told purely from the point of view of Arjuna the orca, and the pacing was perfect for me as he embarked on a classic hero's journey filled with gods and monsters alike. The book is highly philosophical and, in case it wasn't obvious from the get go, the author has a very clear message to send to his fellow humans through Arjuna's story. It was easy to get invested in Arjuna's character, and the various humans also compelled me, though the other orcas seemed to just serve as props for Arjuna's journey and were harder to enjoy as characters. You could follow Arjuna's feelings and logic very well, even when his perspective would be quite alien to us. There is one passage towards the end where I am tempted to write it out somewhere and save it, because somehow amidst the despair of a great part of the book, a few passages shone like gems and filled me with an endless hope for humanity that I needed a reminder of. Beautifully put, a lot of quoteable sentences. My biggest issue with the book is that there are a lot of facets of human experience that the author treats with a surprising naiveté and even is quite blaisé about. Sometimes this speaks to Arjuna's own naiveté which I could accept, but sometimes a perspective that is obviously quite uninformed is treated as objective fact and is casually tossed out. The biggest example that took me out of the story was when a shooter was described as having "narcissism, and various personality disorders", and this is treated as just the natural, factual reason for people to commit mass shootings. It was unnecessary and felt like tossing in a topic that requires a lot of depth, without then exploring it as much as it deserves (or at all). Some of the darker parts of humanity seemed to be placed in the book for shock value, and were not given the depth I expected them to be given. Asides from this, I was well immersed in this book the whole time, and thoroughly enjoyed my time reading it.