What an odd, fun, queer space opera! I've seen this described as Joan of Arc meets Pacific Rim, and that's about as good of a logline as you're going to find! The book is paced like a rollercoaster, and there's a lot to love with the characters. I think it would have benefitted from a little more focus, but that's a minor complaint. People should check out this fun little ride!

The Genesis of Misery lost me in the first two chapters and never won me back. Many of the concepts in this world are interesting, but never fully explored resulting in a very flat story. This problem is most obvious with the characters. Misery's POV is incredibly limiting and all of the side characters felt like they only existed to interact with Misery. They were insubstantial and inconsistent which left Misery as the only character with only substance. Unfortunately, I didn't even like Misery as a character so I found myself very disconnected from the story.

I struggled with the writing in this book almost immediately. When the author is trying to be mysterious and otherworldly it comes across as overwritten and repetitive. The language choices screamed of unnecessary thesaurus substitutions. It is very difficult to successfully incorporate modern slang into SciFi or fantasy and unfortunately, it was very distracting in The Genesis of Misery. The combination of both grandiose and overly colloquial writing was jarring. I also found the inconsistent pronoun introductions incredibly distracting. It is very possible to create a queer normative world without ripping the reader out of the story with direct pronoun references in the narrative. The inconsistency with this element and many other aspects of the story made The Genesis of Misery feel incomplete and unedited.

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang is a groundbreaking science fiction novel that explores themes of identity, memory, and the human condition through a queer and LGBTI lens. The story follows a trans character as they navigate a post-apocalyptic world, grappling with their sense of self and place in society.

Yang's writing is both poetic and deeply introspective, delving into the character's innermost thoughts and emotions. The novel is a powerful exploration of what it means to be human, and how society's expectations can shape our understanding of ourselves.

The book is also a celebration of queer and LGBTI identities, offering a much-needed representation in the science fiction genre. The trans character is complex and fully realized, and their struggles and triumphs are both relatable and inspiring.

Overall, The Genesis of Misery is a must-read for anyone who loves science fiction and wants to explore themes of identity and self-discovery through a queer and LGBTI lens. Yang's writing is exceptional, and their ability to craft a rich and engaging story is a testament to their talent as a writer. This novel is a powerful and important contribution to the genre, and it deserves to be widely read and celebrated.

I loved the premise of this book but it wasn’t something that I could sink into. Sometimes I found myself really trying to imagine the place I was in or just getting the sci-fi aspect of it. It wasn’t horrible quite enjoyable really just not up my alley.

I really enjoyed this book but I would love to see it as a tv show live or animated. I want to see what this world looks like rather than just imagining it.

I really enjoyed this book. The beginning really pulled me in and I wanted to see it through. I think at some points the writing was childish and I don't really enjoy the use of popular slang. This book is set in the future and it just feels off to have slang that we use everyday. Overall, I think the story was well plotted and executed and would recommend it to someone who enjoys scifi!.

I started this book a month or so ago on audio and quickly realized I was going to get lost in the epic space worldbuilding. I DNFed and put a hold on the print book, thinking I might be able to follow it more easily if I could hold it and physically turn the pages.

I am still not sure if I’m super happy I stuck with it. The plot is amazing. A Joan of Arc retelling in space with futuristic politics, queer/enbee characters, and lots of twists and turns. It did feel like a chore to get through, though. I kept going because of the premise. The characters are sometimes unlikeable, which I appreciate, but sometimes it’s difficult to root for them. I set a 50 page a day goal and met it until it was finished. I do recommend if you’re into space operas with long descriptions to help immerse you in that world, but overall, not among my favorite reads this year so far.

It’s my pick for the Read Harder 2023 reading challenge prompt about giving a DNF book a second chance.

"The Genesis of Misery" by Neon Yang is a science fiction novel about Misery, a petty criminal from a backwater planet, who has found themselves in hot water again. Misery has the power to manipulate certain types of stones, but is all too aware that this means they will likely die of voidmadness like their mother did. In fact Misery has already begun hearing voices. However, when the voice starts giving more and more specific suggestions, Misery begins to listen and is catapulted from marauder to messiah. Misery's abilities find themself immersed in an ideological war. Increasingly extremist, is Misery's war truly righteous or have they become the villain?

This was a really interesting story with an incredible amount of character development. I think this book is a fascinating study on the progression of extremism and the corruptibility of people with power. At the beginning of the book, Misery is fiery, logical and caught up in the goal of escaping their troubled background. However, as she listens more to the voice and leans into her powers, her moral compass begins to shift towards a completely different direction. This is also a really compelling book on the morality of war, and Yang uses a really unique third person omniscient perspective. As a reader, you feel really immersed in Misery's thoughts and in the beginning, you feel really aligned with Misery. With great subtlety and effectiveness, Yang makes us question our continued alliance with this protagonist. This book embeds the use of preferred pronouns, building on Yang's previous work, and makes living your authentic self an unquestioned part of Misery's society.

However, I think that at times the book struggled in terms of readibility. A lot of the worldbuilding felt like broad brushstrokes and apart from some of the nuance of the religious war, I came away from the book feeling like I didn't have much of a sense of the setting whether it was planetside, in a spaceship or in a giant mecha.

A thought-provoking example of science fiction that didn't always bring the reader along with it.

Spent half the time in this book confused but in a a good way lol! Really liked Misery and I hope we get another installment because I have so many questions

3.5 stars

The project of this Joan of Arc retelling in space is incredibly fascinating, but it’s also one that can be very confusing and daunting to follow.

In a queer-normative universe, an empire is in the midst of a long-running religious war. Misery, a gender-fluid nixen from a fringe mining colony, gets caught up in the political mess thanks to her rare stone-bending abilities and a very convincing delusion. Soon they call her the new Messiah, but is she the real deal?

“There’s a power in sermonizing, a poetry that’s smoothened a groove in her mind since childhood. Misery hates it here. Misery is comfortable here.”

This is a story where the reader sees most of the plot through the eyes of an extremely unreliable main character. As Misery gained increasing clarity of purpose, I became increasingly uncertain, a not-so-enjoyable yet compelling experience in retrospect. Misery makes some very determined decisions that I absolutely hated, and this is no doubt the exact point but didn't feel as such in the moment.

Yang’s signature prose, descriptive and at times dense, provided a strong visual of this intricate world along with Misery’s visions and altered states via metal and mechs.

And while I’m very much intrigued by many of the distinct elements in this novel – a flawed MC who subverts the chosen one trope, a sapphic relationship, the question of is-it-divine-or-is-it-something-else, a diversity of pronouns, etc. – I wasn’t fully engaged in the storytelling itself. Because of the MC's unique character arc, my own sense of meaning and emotional investment was kept at a distance, which is not my preferred reading mode. I kept waiting for things to make sense.

Word on the street is that there will be a sequel with more povs, potentially answering some of the many questions we’re left with by the end…which may be enough of a tease for me to keep going.

Content warnings: religious extremism, moderately graphic torture scene, cursing, mention of mass death, and some drug use

Thanks to Tor Books and Net Galley for my review copy.

Really intriguing book but overall quite confusing. I found a lot of the terminology and jargon to be a little perplexing.

The storyline is compelling and Misery is a really unique character but is a bit of frustratingly unreliable narrator.

The writing and world-building are really strong but overall I don’t feel this book was a good fit for me.

The Genesis of Misery is the first full length novel from author Neon Yang, who previously wrote the Tensorate Novellas - which began with the acclaimed The Black Tides of Heaven. Those novellas were fantastic stories dealing with queer East-Asian (silkpunk) inspired settings and fascinating and often morally questionable characters and I was really excited to get an early copy of The Genesis of Misery to read as a result.

And The Genesis of Misery is a fascinating science fantasy space opera-y novel, although it kind of feels a little incomplete as the first novel in a trilogy. The story follows the origins of Misery Nomaki (She/They), who believes herself to be infected with a deadly void disease causing delusions but has made others believe they are a prophecized messiah, one who will break the stalemate in a fight betweeen faithful believers and heretics. Along the way we have love, sex, mecha fights, magic-like use of "holy" materials, giant space battles and more as Misery begins to believe in her own divinity...before things obviously go very wrong. The story works thanks to how entertaining its main character is, the irreverent, cynical, and fly-by-the-seat-of-their pants character of Misery. It's also really interesting as it deals with ideas about truths, beliefs, and faith, and how even one who doesn't believe can blind themselves by tricking themselves into it. However, the book ends its run just as revelations were finally being made about what was really happening, which left me not quite fully satisfied, although I desperately want for more.




--------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------
Misery Nomaki (She/They)'s mother died due to Voidmadness, and as a result Misery is familiar with the signs of being Voidmad. So Misery believes that the delusional being that only she can see, a being called "Ruin", is a sign that they are voidmad, with Misery's death a certainty. But following Ruin's advice resulted in her triggering an alarm that saved her poor outer colony of Rootsdown from an attack by Heretics, and led to Misery being called by others the prophecied ninth Messiah of the Larex Forge.

Now Misery finds themself caught up in a conflict between the Throne - which has established a tenuous truce with the Heretics - and the Faith of the Larex Forge, who believes the truce unwise and that Misery can end the conflict. And after a flex of Misery's ability to control holystone results in hundreds dead, Misery finds themselves part of a seditious movement to take down the heretics, through the use of Misery's powers as channeled through a holy mecha, a Seraph.

But Misery knows that she must be a fraud, with Ruin being nothing more than a delusion like the ones her mother suffered prior to her death, and that the strange dreams she has of various people are only further delusions that will be revealed the moment Misery fails to be able to lead her team of Seraphs to victory. But as Misery begins to succeed over and over, she starts to believe in her own divinity, and starts to ask the question: If she really is a messiah, what does that mean for herself and the universe?

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The story of this book is told by an unidentified non-human narrator (until the end) to another unidentified character, albeit human, with the narrator largely following Misery's story and perspective, except in Interludes where the narrator starts talking in third person from a distance, hinting at what will play out. It's a really effective style of writing that allows for the narrator to set up this world's background and to hint at events not quite being as true as the people we see really believe (a central theme of this book). And that background setup is really interesting and cool - as explained in an early Interludes - the book takes place in a distant future after a generation ship of humans had to cast off its AI before it froze them possibly forever, and were seemingly saved by a godlike being or object that conveyed powers over certain holy types of material....and different beliefs about that godlike entity resulted in the conflict between the Faithful and the Heretics, whose views are only hinted at (that the godlike being or object is not godlike but is of more technological origins).

In that story we have our heroine, Misery Nomaki, and the other characters she meets along the way. Misery is not a believer of the Faith at first, believing herself to be Voidtouched and doomed to die, and that her powers - seemingly unheard of control over Holy Stones/Materials - are just the short term result of that. She thinks of herself as a con-artist doomed to be exposed, who at first is desperate to get away from it all before people of power grab at her and force her to be their messiah, even as she sees this supposed genderless angel in "Ruin". Misery has a good reason for this non-belief, she comes from a poor outer colony far away from power, her mom was seemingly delusional before dying due to voidsickness and her brother grew up devout and was basically an abusive parent towards her due to how Misery was a burden. And yet Misery has a more than a bit of righteousness to herself despite her seeming non-believing, especially at seeing the hypocrisy of those in power, who are led by a ruler who isn't a "Saint" chosen by the holystone (a fact that is hidden from the populace) and whose rich people are trying to manufacture their own saints rather than letting the Larex Forge naturally choose...And Misery isn't a good person necessarily, she doesn't really care about the well beings of others she doesn't know, she just wants to survive and hates hypocrisy and others' who claim to be devoted but not acting upon it, and combined with her power this leads to some pretty monstrous and brutal actions.

And that may be hypocrisy in and of itself, except that Misery WANTS to believe; wants to believe there is some divine destiny for herself when things keep coming true as Ruin tells them to her and coincidences pile up. With the world so shitty as it is, who wouldn't want to believe there is some divine destiny for herself? And that leads her to imprisonment then freedom and into a divine mecha alongside a team of similar people whose faiths were shattered and find it in Misery to regain it, believing once more than their hardships were simply part of some divine plan that they are now going to get satisfaction from. The characters and their portrayal, starting with Misery, work really well at illustrating this belief, with Misery sharing platitudes even as she remains cynical and irreverent in her internal monologue, even if she claims she hates the bullshit she's spouting. And of course in the bit parts where Misery is given hints of truths that might contradict this worldview, that she is a divine messiah meant to fight Heretics who MUST be wrong and evil and not people, her belief is so strong that she cannot shake such beliefs - as one character puts it in the end "No one can convinece her of a truth she doesn't sell herself."

And the world that this book takes place in is highly innovative and really fun to see even as it deals with all of this, from the Seraph Mechas, to Misery's power over holystone, to the space battles and more. The book is dedicated to "fellow EVA copilots" and well you can see the Evangelion influence here, and its an influence that's done incredibly well, such that you can see it but it never feels like a stale copy. This is cool and fun and interesting, with strong characters in Misery and her supporting cast, and a really interesting universe to see how things turnout.

The only problem really is that, like a lot of books I complain about, the book uses as a cliffhanger a moment that you know is coming, and so it's not satisfying for it to turn out that way. Without spoiling, I will just say that you the reader have to know from the intro and just how the book is told that Misery's belief in her own divinity is wrong and that something is going to go horribly wrong when she continues to follow the being known "Ruin" - and well it does, but the book ends before we really get to see the implications of that ending. How is Misery wrong and what's really going on? We only get glimpses, with that saved for book 2, and that makes things quite frustrating and unsatisfying. The Journey here is excellent and plenty happens, so this is not some first novel that is completely unsatisfying (like in the worst examples of books I complain about) and I'm happy to continue this series and find out but I kind of wish we got like 2-3 more chapters before this book ended, to get more clarity on the reveals.

But other than that I really liked the Genesis of Misery and would definitely recommend, so I do suggest it for readers looking for really interesting space fantasy opera or EVA like books, who want fun different action but also some underlying ideas behind it all.

It was hard to get into at first. A lot of terms are just thrown around with little explanation in the beginning. I liked the direction it took, but not Misery's character development. It feels like Book 2 is set up at the end but no indication of that in the works. I don't like this as a stand alone. It's intriguing as Book 1.

Very interesting read . Love the fluidity of sexuality and the drift from con woman to messiah. However the plot line is hella confusing and I finished scratching my head and feeling like I needed to speak to someone to explain it to me.

I love the character development - Misery expands from 2 bit con woman/petty criminal to a messiah (of the 9th coming lol). However the side characters are also well developed. I love Lighting and how she doesn’t take any shit from anyone. Also really loved the squad they built with Tank, Ghost, Spider and Diamond. I really appreciated the back story that was built in for each one that made them well rounded.

The plot/storyline as I said still confusing but looking forward to the sequel.

Misery is hallucinating, convinced that they are sick with something called voidmadness, but somehow they end up as a pawn between the Church and the Throne, with them believing that she is the Messiah. Even with her delusion/ messenger and fulfillment of prophecies, she isn't quite convinced that she is this Messiah. Even so, she continues the path on her so-called destiny.

This is a smart book. I really enjoyed the beginning and end of this story. The world building is great and the tie together/twist at the end is definitely intriguing. However, most of the middle just didn't work for me. The entire story is too close on Misery. It's entirely in her head, which is maybe not the most trustworthy place to be and makes for tedious reading. And at some point it begins to read like a evangelical wish fulfillment story, even if it's supposed to be a satire. None of the other characters are fully fleshed out, especially since the entire story is supposed to be a a close watch of Misery by two unknown characters.

I just didn't feel satisfied in the reading experience. It is definitely set up for more books, so I hope the direction is more global in the future. It's also space mechas, which isn't for me. But if you love an unreliable narrator, mechas in space, and an internal story of the transition into fanaticism, this might be a book for you!

Thank you to Torbooks for partnering with b2weird for a b2wtours book tour and the gifted copy!

DNF @ 25%

I think I've come to the realization that while I really love Neon Yang's writing and worldbuilding, their plots really just do not do it for me, and so my enjoyment of their books really comes down to how much I enjoy their characters. Similarly to <i>The Descent of Monsters</i>, the narrator in <i>The Genesis of Misery</i> has a very distinct personality and voice; however, while I enjoyed the narrator in <i>The Descent of Monsters</i> and found her to be very charming, the narrator of this book does not work for me, and ultimately it meant that I was not enjoying this book as much as I wanted to.

I will say, I do not think that this book sets up the story in a way that is easy to follow if you don't already know the story of Joan of Arc. While I can understand why Yang chose to do this, I do think that a reimagining should still stand on its own without prior knowledge of the original story, and I'm just not sure this one does based on the first 25% of this book.

I'm also realizing that books that are extremely overt and heavy with biblical language are perhaps not my cup of tea, but that's very much a me problem. I might return to this one in the future when the second book comes out, but for now I'm going to put this one down.

It is very hard to review this book, and I’m going to try and at least explain why.
The Genesis of Misery is about Misery (she/they) who has tricked authorities into thinking they’re the Messiah instead of suffering from voidmadness like her mother. The delusion who follows her around, “Ruin,” tries to assure her that this is what is meant to be, but she’s not buying it. Her lie takes her to the Capital where things don’t feel right in the center of the empire and religion.
I really enjoyed Misery as a character. She had a hard life growing up which hasn’t been helped by her apparent voidmadness. She’s flying by the seat of her pants at all times. My favorite part of her development is a major spoiler, but I’ll just say there’s a shifting point and that was my favorite part of their character.
I’m not sure if it’s just been a while, but this is much “harder” sci-fi than I’m used to. Because the book focuses on Misery’s role in their religion, you have to pay attention to those terms, like the types of holystone that are all around the empire. You definitely have to pay attention to the terms to keep up with the world-building. I did get the hang of it, but it did take me a while.
The writing, as I expected, is very lyrical and gorgeous, as I’d expect from Yang. However, it’s also contrasted by the dialogue filled with swear words and some modern language like “yet.” It worked together!
I love the use of pronouns. All people are introduced with their pronouns, there are multiple pronouns used, and neopronouns as well. Hir/zie is the default “neutral” pronouns or one used when you don’t know someone’s pronouns. Plus, queerness otherwise is normalized!
I rated this book 4 stars. This book is an experience, which makes it hard to review and describe this book. I recommend this book if you like sci-fi more on the complex side and like the idea of a Joan of Arc retelling!

The Genesis of Misery is ultimately weird and wild. Its protagonist is a wreck, someone who starts from the bottom and then drives deeper downward, and that chaotic complexity is to the story’s credit. For their part, Misery ends the story the same way they began: a prisoner trapped, missing crucial information, furious and bewildered as they are made a pawn in a larger game they do not know or understand; the war and the world moves on, even as the identities of Misery’s angelic voices are revealed, and the narrative completely tears apart and reframes the creation history that the Faithful tell themselves. If you ever wanted to see mecha anime transmuted to prose fiction, or if you are seeking science fiction that explores the role of religion in a queer and interstellar setting, or if you simply want something genre-bending and unorthodox, this is the book for you. I anticipate diving into the secrets of the Larex Forge and a deeper understanding of the wider conflicts in Misery’s interstellar world in the sequels.
-- Zhui Ning Chang

yang is definitely an inventive writer sadly however i found the storytelling in the genesis of misery to be trying too hard to be playful and self-aware. additionally, i felt disconnected from the characters and the events that were occurring in the narrative.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I really enjoyed the concept and the characters, but the pacing felt uneven, which made it difficult for me to stay invested. The action scenes were amazing and propulsive, but then the other scenes could feel like they dragged on. I still really enjoyed and will definitely handsell!