Goddess in the Machine is set over 1,000 years in the future, in the year 3102, and follows Andromeda (Andra) who was, in her own words, “a normal 22nd-century teenager” who entered a cryogenic sleep for what was supposed to be 100 years that somehow turned into 1,000. I am not by any means a science fiction reader–I’m usually much more drawn to stories that take place in the past than the future, but Lora Beth Johnson is a genius who paints such a vivid image of what Earth could look like a millennium from now. She predicts how the English language could evolve, and while it reads a bit like nonsensical slang at first, it slowly starts to make sense. Andra is forced to learn this new English along with us, and being the word nerd that she is (a girl after my own heart, truly), she is eventually able to explain how the language evolved the way that it did. Andra’s story of confusion and acclimatization alternates with that of ex-prince and 32nd-century teen Zhade, who is a fantastic loveable asshole character if I ever saw one. He, like most people in this futuristic society, thinks that Andra is a goddess, and offers her “goddess lessons” and a healthy dose of snark (naturally). What follows is a lot of romantic tension and I was living for it.

Goddess in the Machine is the first book in a planned series, so there’s a ton of worldbuilding as well as the introduction to some great characters who I hope we get to see develop in the sequels. I especially need to see where the tentative Andra/Zhade romance goes, because I can see that becoming a relationship that people will become very invested in. I’m not a sci-fi fan, but Goddess in the Machine was seriously just so well done.

Goddess in the Machine turned out to be one of the most surprisingly fun reads of 2020. It pushed me out of my slump, was twisty and unexpected, and simply put a whole of fun. 100% planning to go on to the next book in the series.
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If you love YA fantasy/science fiction and are looking for something that just feels fresh and DIFFERENT, then this book is for you.

If you love that feeling of not being able to see where things are headed in a book...this is for you

If you like unique heroines who don’t fit body stereotypes or norms this is for you

I adored this book, it took a while to get set up and hooked but then I was a goner. I really loved Andra and Zhade as the two main perspectives that really drive the plot forward. Zhade is a character that you have no idea what he will say and do next and that’s why I loved him.

I had no idea where this plot would go, what would be the next disaster, where the story would end but that’s what made it so exciting. The adaptation of language 1000 years into the future was another factor that just made this book fun.

Read this underrated book I have literally seen no where, and take a chance. If you are feeling underwhelmed with your current reads this might just be the book to pull you out of that.

Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson is a must-read for anyone who loves fantastical tropes, clever world-building, and science fiction in a YA novel. Johnson cunningly developed a variety of witty teenaged characters, with plenty of wisecracks and angst involved in her debut novel, who are determined to follow their own paths regardless of destiny or fate, because they are living in a world that appears to wish them all dead for reasons unknown. Andromeda “Andra” Yue Watts (a 17-year-old from Riverside, Ohio) is abruptly awakened from what she believed was 100 years of sleep; she immediately recognizes that the process is nothing like she was told by her mother or the cryo’technician who had put her to sleep and that something has gone terribly wrong. She also witnesses what appears to be the planet of Holymyth “Hell-mouth” and discovers that the majority of the populace on the planet believes her to be the Third Goddess, a mysterious entity whose glass coffin disappeared from the city of Eerensed years before her current awakening, but who is believed to be the only hope for the people on a planet that is out to destroy all life. Andra begins a death-defying adventure to learn about her missing family and the First Goddess and Second Goddess, which means that she has to return to Eerensed with the lying and mischievous rogue named Zhade as her guide, whose charm is both irritable and irresistible.

While it is obvious that the author, Lora Beth Johnson, has a love of language and linguistics, her envisioning of a futuristic English dialect leaves more questions and confusion than answers and clarity. Yes, Johnson’s creativity and willingness to explore how the English language could shift in the future is admirable and it is on full display in Goddess in the Machine when she crafts a unique dialect of English set 1,000 years into the future. However, the dialect (High Goddess) seems to be used by every character we meet, and it is hard to figure out if there are actually any other languages present in this world or not. Zhade mentions toward the beginning of the novel that Andra’s “accent” is identical to the First Goddess’. All in all, while the linguistic drama has its ups and downs, the technology “magic” that is on full display in Eerensed with its mech’bots “angels,” an old-world technology that is now believed to be both magical and divine is eye-opening and merits attention. Andra’s only saving grace that will keep her alive is to help the Guv (Maret, the ruler of Eerensed) repair the failing gods’ dome that protects the city and its citizens from horrible dangers.

Although I enjoyed Andromeda and Zhade’s playful banter and angst in the first half of the novel, I did begin to be put-off by Zhade’s obvious refusal to share all aspects of his life with Andra when she had already chosen a path of honesty and self-reflection, not self-reliance, almost immediately after her awakening into a new world surrounded by strangers who believed she was a deity. Toward the second half of the novel, I began to get really annoyed with all of the intentional misinformation that was being shared with Andra, and all of the lies that were being kept from her. One particular character, Zhade, knows some really important information and clues, but he chooses to be a selfish idiot, instead. Three powerful plot twists toward the end of Goddess in the Machine made it much more intriguing and it began to give the feeling that there is a promising sequel to come. This is definitely a book that I would recommend giving a read, particularly if you are not generally a science fiction fan... Some surprising elements in this book will have you rooting for Andra while trying not to get too impatient while waiting for the sequel.

A warm-hearted and much-appreciated thank you to Penguin Group and NetGalley for providing an advance copy! Please make sure to pick up a copy of Goddess in the Machine in July of 2020 at your local book depository.

3/5 stars!

A huge thank you for NetGalley and PenguinTeen for sending me an E-Arc of this book for an honest review!

I really wanted to love this book. I really, really did. In the end, I liked it, but I did not love it. I thought that the idea of this book was brilliant, but the execution was not the best. The pacing of this book was all over the place, and I found myself getting bored halfway through. I liked the characters, but I found that the romance was not well thought out, happened way too fast, and very unbelievable to me.

I just wanted a lot more from this book. Will I pick up the sequel?  I don't know, I might. If you like Science Fiction books like Across the Universe by Beth Revis, then I recommend picking up this book. It is a fun read, I just had really high expectations that weren't met.

Thanks for reading!
Caden

*I received an e-ARC from Penguin Teen and NetGalley for an hOnest review.*
Goddess In The Machine by Lora Beth Johnson is the first in a new YA Sci-fi series. Andra went into cryogenic sleep in 2102 and was supposed to wake up 100 years later on another planet. Something went wrong and instead she wakes up 1,000 years later and all alone.
The people in this new place call her Goddess, and they have been waiting for her to save them. Zhade, an exiled bastard prince, takes Andra back to Eerensed so he can be welcomed back home. Once there, Meret the Guv of Eerensed wants her to perform a miracle and fix the dome that is the only thing keeping them alive. Awake in a new time and place, Andra has to figure out who she can trust because failure could mean her death.
This is an interesting series opener. The author explores the evolution of language so it may take you a minute to catch on to the slang used in the book. It took me a few chapters to get invested in the characters, but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed the book. This book also has a plus sized heroine, so it was nice to have some body positivity in YA for a change.
This book is perfect for fans of YA sci-fi and dystopian.

I really really wanted to enjoy this book, especially because the lead was plus sized, which is something very important to me as a plus sized reader! But I could get past the new language. I understand the reasoning behind it, and it’s a cool idea in theory, but in reality it just kept taking me out of the book and frustrating me. I also just couldn’t stop comparing it to Aurora Burning because the premises were so similar 🙈

Lora Beth Johnson's sci-fi world is so deeply immersive in a way that completely threw me for a loop, but once I got used to the language and operation of the universe, I grew to love it. Heads up - if you're like me, you might have a hard time switching back and forth between the protagonist's chapters because your brain is so caught up in the pseudo-English of the future.

Andra is an unconventional protagonist in personality, appearance, and role in the story (with extra points to her for being plus sized, a rarity and welcome change from YA women). Her POV was incredibly fun to read. Zhade, on the other hand, was harder to grasp. It's interesting reading from a character's point of view yet still not understanding their motivation. I can't tell if it added more intrigue or frustration to my experience.

Some turns were more predictable than others, but over all the pacing and story beats were laid out well.

My biggest qualm is the romance - every bit of flirtatious interaction between any two characters in this book felt unnecessary at best and distracting at worst. The adventure/mystery is such a strong story that it can stand alone without romance.

I'm curious to see where this series goes.

This book was amazing. With so many plot twists and questions that you have to keep reading in order to find out the answers to, I could hardly put this book down.

Andromeda was put into a cyrogenetic stasis years ago with the expectation of awakening 100 years into the future to help colonize a new planet. So, when she wakes up 1000 years into the future instead, life as she knew it drastically changed. Not to mention, everyone is calling her Goddess. Now Andra seeks the help of a bastard prince named Zhade to get her out of this mess.

I really liked this! The two main characters are both great and I loved learning more about each of them. I was completely invested in the plot and these characters. I loved the idea of the nanotech and learning more about what it was capable of. Zhade was sarcastic, hilarious and charming all wrapped into one. The tension and banter between Zhade and Andra was by far my favourite part of the book and I wanted them to fall in love DESPERATELY. There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, making sure there is never a dull moment. The biggest complaint I had about this book was the dialect that the new civilization used, its completely made up, but once I got the hang of it it wasn't so jarring as when I first began the book.

Overall, a really entertaining sci-fi that I definitely recommend!

Andra has no idea where she is or what planet she is currently on. She was supposed to be on the way to a new plant, to start afresh life. Yet she is stuck on a foreign planet with a population of humans she cannot understand. Will she be able to find her family and her purpose or is she stuck on this odd planet forever? Goddess in the Machine transport readers into a world that is filled with Angels, magic, and danger. Goddess in the Machine will have the reader guessing who is evil vs who is good. Johnson weaves an intricate plot of political power and social-economic structures. The pace starts off quickly and will soon have the reader absorbed into the story. Although the pace is swift, it is a little hard to adjust to the dialect of the native individuals. The dialect is an evolved version of English and takes some time to calibrate it. Andrea's character isn't fully fleshed out until the end and makes for a great climax. Technology and how it is infused into the society and culture is a huge part of this plot. Forging the question of how far should technology be used and when does AI qualify as human? Johnson also touches on technology to perfect humans and their bodies and superficially goes into this theme.

Like so many other readers, I was excited for this one. I had it as one of my most anticipated releases and could hardly contain my excitement! Sadly, this failed to deliver for me. I struggled to stay interested in what was going on for several reasons, the biggest being the made up language. That bothered me more than anything because it felt as if it brought the entire story down. The pacing slow down to a crawl and nothing the people said made sense. I shouldn’t have to fight so hard to figure out what is being said.

If it wasn’t the strain to figure out the people are saying, it was the main character constantly repeating herself. Andra was a tough character to get behind. I wanted to rally behind her but she didn’t make it easy. She constantly reminded the reader that she was a “fat” biracial character but never dove into what that meant or how it was truly relevant to the story. She was always fat-shaming herself but never had the character arc that turned her size into something positive, it was always negative for her. For all I knew she had a mental illness, like BDD, that caused her to see herself differently than how others see her. I was never given the backstory on where the label came from and that was frustrating.

The premise of the story itself was enticing but the delivery was expected. I saw the ending coming a mile away so I wasn’t surprised. I struggled too much with this first book to say if I will pick up the second or not. It’s sad because the cover is so striking.

WOW!

This was everything I was hoping for and more. Andra is supposed to be waking up on a new planet with her family, but instead, she wakes up with a strange boy in front of her in the middle of the desert and has no idea what is going on. From here Andra, also known as the locals as 'Goddess', is taken to the city where she must meet the Guv and prove she is a Goddess. At the beginning, I was getting very much Mad Max vibes, but as the story progressed it kind of morphed into a King's Landing type of situation.

The story will keep you guessing the entire way through and there were parts that had me screaming and thinking "OH MY GOSHHHHH!" I cannot recommend this enough to anyone with a love for sci-fi. There is also a pretty good romance plot to the story that doesn't make you cringe, which I appreciated.

So gooD! Can't wait to see what happens next!

This just failed to deliver for me. It felt like the first 2/3 dragged, and I suspect that was less because of the story and more because you're bogged down in trying to figure out the language the people are speaking (which reads like alt-history British street slang). There's a lot of things introduced - for example, a biracial, "fat" character - that don't really go anywhere. You never get a sense of what her biracial identity means to her (which irritates me as a biracial person), and you never understand if she's actually plus-sized or if it's a label that was placed on her because she wasn't super thin. (And this is where we get into cover art; does that look like a plus-size teen to you?) I appreciate books trying to be more diverse, but not when it's shoehorned in. Some of the twists were pretty good, some were okay. TBH, I'm not sure that I'll read book 2.

literally don't have any words other than THIS WAS AMAZING. If you're looking for an amazing new sci-fi novel, this is the one for you. I don't read much sci-fi, but I really liked this one and think it would be great for other people who are also trying to get more into sci-fi. I went into this not knowing much about it, and truly think that also helped my experience while reading. This has to be a 5 out of 5 stars...period.

Andromeda was put into stasis to leave Earth and travel to a new colony, and she was supposed to awake 100 years later on her new planet. But when she wakes up, 1000 years have passed, society has devolved, and everyone thinks she's a goddess.

Andromeda is a great character. She's a normal teenage girl who wakes up and finds she's a goddess, something she's completely unprepared for. She's forced to make an uneasy alliance with Zhade, an exiled prince. He's maddeningly attractive, but also rather shady, and Andromeda has to figure out how much she can trust him, while she's working her own angle in the alliance.

For me, the most interesting part of this book was the examination of how a culture can change over 1000 years. Although they technically speak the same language, a lot has changed and the slang is almost unrecognizable to Andromeda at first, but she's a word nerd and she quickly figures things out. (It's a little weird for the reader at first too, but most of the language is easy to figure out in context and you get used to it pretty quickly.) The book also looks at how a culture might handle technology they don't understand. This society has inherited technology, but they didn't invent it and they don't know how it works, so they view it as magic and they invent a religion to explain things.

This book is really inventive, and the author does a lot of interesting things with standard sci fi and fantasy tropes. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

3.5 stars! I did really enjoy this book, but there were a few aspects that kept me from rating it higher.

I liked most of the characters decently - I thought Andra was a fine protagonist who kept the plot moving forward, and I especially liked Zhade's personality and snark. He was probably my favorite side character, but I didn't really connect with any of them in a super strong way. As far as plot, I was kind of bored until the 50% mark when the first plot twist happened, and then things started to pick up. I think the writing was the strongest suit of this novel, because ultimately, it's what kept me interested enough to keep reading and see what was going to happen next.

One of the best sci-fi novels of the year, Lora Beth Johnson shines in her debut novel and spins a tale with electric twists and turns at every corner.

This has quickly become a favorite for so many people since release day and I'm so incredibly grateful I received a copy to review. This doesn't always happen to me, but every now and then there's a book that comes along that immediately grips me and doesn't let go. I was so addicted to this book; I <b>COULD NOT</b> stop reading it! Not only was I immediately immersed in this futuristic sci-fi book, but the REPRESENTATION!!!! I'm ALL here for it and that just added just another fantastic layer to this incredible story!

<blockquote><i><b>"We will never forget the sacrifice and achievements that allow us to move past what we are and become something more."</b></i></blockquote>

Our heroine, Andra is put to sleep with her family expecting to wake up with them in 100 years in a new planet. But she wakes up after a 1,000 years, her family is all gone, and everyone thinks she's a goddess. <b>THIS BOOK WAS EVERYTHING!</b> When I find books I wholeheartedly fall in love with, I have a hard time putting into words what I think about this book. If you are looking for a truly amazing, sci-fi book, this is it. <b>HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMEND!</b>

In the 22nd century, Andra is put into cryogenic sleep for a hundred year trip across the galaxy with a million others to colonize a new planet. When she wakes it’s 3102 and everyone is calling her “Goddess”. The other colonists, her friends, and her family are long dead. Zhade, the bastard prince of Eerensed and the one who woke Andra, plans to use Andra to take the crown and save his city.

I’m such a fan of fiction that deals with tech and technical ethics but in a creative and unique way. The author imagines what changes the English language would undergo over the course of a thousand years. The language changes intrigued me but also slightly annoyed me at the beginning. Once I got into a groove with the book, I got used to the style.

Goddess in the Machine is told in alternating third-person focused on Andra and Zhade. I struggled a bit with Zhade’s perspective, given that it heavily relies on the futuristic improvements to the English language.
I highly recommend Goddess in the Machine for fans of futuristic sci-fi that comments on technical ethics in a fun way.

Thank you to Penguin Teen, BookishFirst, and Netgalley for my gifted copies. All opinions are my own.

I adore good YA-Sci-Fi books, you all know that. So let’s talk about this YA-Sci Fi gem <3 so here a short review.
Andra fell in a cryonic sleep in a spacesip. She and her folk want to discover a new planet to live. Andra wake up too late.. well about 900 years too late. Everyone from her folk is already dead. She is called Godness by everyone and she doesn’t know why. There is also our other main character who is called Zhade. He is a typical mysterious YA. But we learned he is an exiled bastard prince who has his own plans with Andra. He is like Zuko from TLA.
You can see this book as a sleeping beauty Sci-Fi Version. “Goddess in the machine” is like a rollercoaster. It starts slowly and then you’ll feel the rush of this extraordinary YA Book. The future is not so modern as you think. It’s more like a dark middle age. First I was annoyed of this concept but then I loved it 😅 . The world building was very interesting. Lora Beth Johnson is so creative and even created a new dialect. Not so easy to read, but you’ll get used to it. The plot has so so many twists. I was not able to predict this story. I had no expectations to that story and I was blown away after finish that book.