Title: The Gods Themselves

Author: Isaac Asimov

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 288

Rating: 3.5/5

I had high hopes going into this book because I knew that it was a favourite of one of the drag queens that I watch on BookTube. Unfortunately, while I did enjoy it, I was a little bit underwhelmed by it, and I don’t think it even cracked my top 50% Isaac Asimov novels.

What is cool is that there’s a lot of fascinating science here, and we see the interplay of science and politics along with one of Asimov’s visions of the way that the future of mankind might look like. What’s interesting with Asimov is that his different novels show different visions, and so here he’s playing mostly with different universes and stuff.

It was good to get back to full-length Asimov novels after reading a few of his different short story collections of late, but I do still think that his short stories are generally better. I think that he gets to cover more ground and to tap into more concepts. This one was interesting because as opposed to being a novel, it’s almost two different interweaving novellas, but still.

So that brings us to the important question of whether I’d recommend this one, and that’s a tricky one. I’d suggest reading the synopsis and seeing whether it sounds like something you might be interested in and going from there. If it doesn’t particularly speak to you, I’d skip it for now and come back later, because there are plenty of other great Asimov novels out there. This one’s good  but not great, cleverly assembled but not particularly compelling. And that’s what I’ve got, folks.

Learn more about The Gods Themselves.