The Genesis of Misery is an intense and compelling examination of the Chosen One narrative. It follows Misery Nomaki (who uses she/they pronouns) as they come into their role as a Messiah of the Empire of the Faithful. There's a constant tension as Misery slides from not-quite-lying in order to stay alive to something much worse, and I'm genuinely in awe of how smoothly Yang draws Misery's character over the course of the story so that every slide felt inevitable. Revelations felt well-paced, and it was hard to put this down. I also loved the way they handled queerness in this world, which felt extremely deliberate and thoughtful! I'll be recommending this book to any sci-fi fan who will hear me out.

This book is a wild ride. Gideon the Ninth combined with the Catholic church and mechs, what else could you want? At the beginning of the text, Misery is an unwilling participant in fulfilling prophecies and imprisoned by the throne, by the end of the book we've experienced mechs, space battles, political intrigue, and some crazy religious imagery. Misery is also an unreliable narrator, you're heavily in her PoV and trying to filter her reality to what is actually going on. I really enjoyed this, it's a romp from start to finish.

I think this was a matter of writing style not being my jam but I think I'll pick up a physical copy when it comes out and try again!

5/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: sci-fi, space operas, prophets, false prophets, political intrigue, LGBTQ+ rep, morally gray characters

This review has been posted to Goodreads and will be posted to my book review blog and Instagram on 8/9.

I found this book to be really intriguing in a multitude of ways. For one, the stone bending and holystone stuff is interesting to me and I liked puzzling out holystone vs normal/dead stone, and I kind of like that the distinction is left to the reader to figure out. I also liked the interplay between an advanced sci-fi civilization that, at the same time, has bans on things you would typically think of when you think of 'sci-fi.' Then there's the religion aspect. All of this put together makes for a book with a lot of layers to what's going on, all of them complicated.

I've seen in a couple places that there's a Joan of Arc aspect (retelling?) in the book, which I can definitely see, though it isn't super obvious if you aren't aware and/or if you aren't familiar with Joan's story. I can see the parallels between the war in this book between the Heretics and the Faithful and the real 100 Years War. The religions are obviously different, but there are veins of the same stuff in an altered form, which I found to be interesting.

I really liked Genesis (she/they). She's gotten herself caught in this big lie about being a messiah in order to avoid being arrested for a crime. Naturally she knows she's lying, but most everyone else is eating it up and so she plays along. I thought their attitude toward what's going on was very relatable and realistic, and I enjoyed how they were able to use their practiced smooth-talking to come across as this wise and all-knowing mystic. She does kind of tip in an interesting direction toward the halfway point, and there's some stuff that's revealed to Genesis that makes her uncomfortable and she does react to that in a way that I'm not sure I like. I definitely like their character, though by the end I have mixed feelings, but I'm 100% interested in seeing where the next part of their story goes.

I also particularly liked Ruin, who has all sorts of interesting ideas and advice. Is Ruin a delusion? An angel? Something else? Who knows, Misery certainly doesn't. Ruin is in parts a helpful guide and an annoying near-constant presence for Misery, but I liked hir mysteriousness and attitude. I do hope Ruin will be in the next book.

Lady Lee Alodia Lightning (she/her) is also an interesting character. A princess, she gets wrapped up in what Misery is peddling and ends up as one of the mech pilots in Misery's group of 'outlaws and outcasts.' She's quite antagonistic for the first half of the book, angry and defensive in different parts. But she opens up more to Misery and becomes a staunch ally. Lightning also makes for a fantastic liar, and her fast talking has been created at the hands of a monarchy, which makes her a good person to have on your side once she decides she's on it.

The cast of characters is pretty decent in size, and while not all the characters get the same attention, I did feel like they each had a backstory and life of their own. I would've liked to get a better feel on Ghost, who I feel like gets mentioned once or twice but is otherwise looked over. Also Tank is someone I'd like to know more about, so hopefully we'll see more of her in the next one.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book and can't wait for the next one. There were some things that felt a little predictable or obvious, but that kind of happens with every book, so it didn't really take away from things. Misery makes for an interesting main character and they were enjoyable to read.

The Genesis of Misery and I didn't exactly gel together.

On both a narrative and craft level, I struggled with The Genesis of Misery. Narratively, it is just too insular. For almost 50% of the book, the only character that's developed in any kind of capacity, who we get any insight on, is Misery. During that span of the novel, other characters only exist for Misery to react to: to agree with, or act against, or listen to, or speculate about. They are not, in any real sense of the word, developed characters. It's only after we get past that first 50-60% of the novel that other characters start making a place for themselves in the narrative (i.e. start actually being developed), but by that point it was just too little too late for me. To put it simply: there weren't enough developed characters in this novel, and by the time we did get some, it was too rushed and just not enough.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Misery. She has a very strong narrative voice, a fallibility and a rolling-with-the-punches kind of attitude that makes it easy to be endeared to her. Thing is, we were in her head--and only in her head--for so long. It got to be a little frustrating: I wanted her to do something that wasn't just thinking or speculating or ruminating or dreaming. It's why I was desperate for more characters, an opportunity to let us get to know Misery through her interactions with other characters, who could then be developed themselves. Also, none of this was helped by the fact that the plot of the book is very sequential: Misery talks to some people, Misery goes to a new location, Misery trains, Misery does a mission, Misery is given another mission, etc. etc. It made me restless, especially because, like I said, all of this was heavily focused on Misery with very little development from other characters until much later on in the story.

In terms of craft, I struggled a bit with the writing of this novel. On the one hand, I liked how colloquial Misery's voice was (she swears a lot, uses a lot of slang, etc.), and I also didn't mind the way Yang incorporated some internet lingo throughout the story (there is, in fact, a "yeet" in this book). The thing about The Genesis of Misery, though, is that it operates on two kinds of registers: the super personal, colloquial one, and the super grandiose, larger-than-life one. At a certain point, some things happen in the book that change Misery's perspective, and that's when she starts looking at her world with a much grander scope, and where that grandiose register starts popping up. And it's even not that I didn't like it, or that it was badly written--it was just so repetitive. We have to read the same kind of super grandiose, over-the-top language over and over and over again, and frankly it started irritating me by the end of the novel.

The Genesis of Misery was the kind of novel that structurally did not work for me--and that in fact could not have worked for me. A novel whose story is primarily invested in only one character, a novel that only substantially develops that one character, is just not the kind of novel that I, personally, enjoy reading. I'm a reader whose investment lies in the interpersonal moreso than anything, and at the end of the day that's really what I was missing from The Genesis of Misery.

Thanks so much to Tor for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!

Misery (she/they) can move stones and sees things that no one else can see. They dismiss the visitations as hallucinations as their mother also had hallucinations before madness killed her. Other people are under the impression that they are the Messiah. As their power grows, they start believing that this is true.

The progression of Misery was captivating. In the beginning, they disbelieved that they were the Messiah and thought they were losing their mind. As their mother was crazy their entire life, this was understandable. But then, when they started believing that they were divine, they became horrifying with their conviction. As a reader, I knew something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t stop reading to find out what it was.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for this digital ARC.
As a non-binary person, I was excited to read this novel featuring non-binary and gender fluid characters. However the overly distant 3rd person narration was very difficult for me to follow. It was overwrought in a way that made it difficult to connect with and therefor sympathize with the characters. I felt like I was playing a video game and reading the scene description as I was playing. This might be great for some folks, but it just didn’t work for me. Introducing pronouns in the 3rd person narration was also jarring. It seemed an unusual choice instead of just using the correct pronouns as the narrator referred to the characters.

Thank you NetGalley, Tor/Macmillan, and Neon Yang for an eARC of this book.

Equal parts bizarre, thrilling, hopeful, and devastating, this tale of hubris and hamartia is a deeply enjoyable retelling of the classic messiah narrative through the lense of a queer Joan of Arc in a mech-fueled future. The pacing got a bit stilted at times, but overall this is an incredibly fun ride I recommend to any sci-fi fans who are newer to LGBTQIA+ fiction.

Neon Yang continues flesh out their own brand of sci-fi. The Genesis of Misery features a spin on the age old messiah tale. It is about belief in one's self and that being a bad person in the past doesn't make you a bad person forever. It's an amalgamation of ideas that blend together to form a strange yet cohesive world. I haven't been this thrilled by worldbuilding since reading Gideon the Ninth. Stating character pronouns in the 3rd person narration was jarring at first, but by the end I adapted and fell in love. I hope it's a convention more writers will use. My one gripe is that this story does require a lot of patience from the reader, there were points where I became a bit frustrated with the plot or a device used only to be rewarded much later than I would have liked. Fortunately, after reading the Tensorate series, I had no doubt that Yang would deliver on what they promised. They did, and then some.

The Genesis of Misery brims with the best kinds of overstylized action, costumes, and characters. The mystery/intrigue pieces of the story don't work as well as in books like Memory Called Empire or Goblin Emperor, largely because the book doesn't take the same care in establishing culture, politics, and power structures. A fun read - and one that I will recommend - that brushes with but never quite reaches greatness

WHAT DID I JUST READ AND WHERE CAN I GET MORE OF IT?

... actually, I'm pretty sure there's nothing else quite like this. (Dare I hope to add 'yet'?)

This was just... so much. So great and so complex and so enthralling. So fast-paced and so intricate. So many genders and so many alliances and betrayals and things-aren't-as-they-seem; so many space battles. Also angels and messiahs and heretics and possibly divine intervention. Also an irritable and foul-mouthed protagonist who is out for the main chance and whom some people think might just be the path to salvation. Of some sort.

Where do I even begin? The story starts with one person (probably human) asking another (not human, taking many different shapes throughout the conversation) for 'the story of Misery Nomaki' - and what follows is that story, with all the narrator's caveats about truth and consequence and revelation all being problematic. At the start of that story, Misery (she/they) is having a bad time, trying to make her way through a very large space station; she's able to manipulate any holystone she comes across, which is useful, but that doesn't necessarily help when you're stuck in a warren of tunnels and don't know where you're going. Her delusion, Ruin, isn't being of any help, and there are weird all-white, maybe-cloned saints that are freaking her out.

... and it just gets more quirky, and more clever, and more intricate, from there. Fighting princesses, treachery, giant battle mechs. Zero clear explanation of 'holystone' - holy obsidian, holy jasper, and so on - but some very tantalising hints; no real explanation of how saints actually happen, except that somehow they can live on starlight alone? Sometimes an author's expectation that you'll just go along with whatever whacky things they've created for their new world is overwhelming or irritating or enough to make a book Too Much Work. Not so here: there's just enough explanation to make everything hang together - surely you don't need saints _explained_, this is what they're doing! - and the writing is so gripping, and Misery so enticing, that explanations can wait; I need to know what's happening next RIGHT NOW.

Everything about this book worked for me.

Finally, something I've seen a couple of people mention that to me, at least, is a bit of a spoiler (in an odd way), but may be just what someone else needs in order to read this... it's an historical thing that the story seems to be inspired by (I haven't read confirmation of that, but it does make sense)... only read on if you're now intrigued!

...

...

Joan of Arc.
If you know about her, you can probably start to make some guesses about how this story might unfold.

The Genesis of Misery is a story within a story, a Joan of Arc tale set in a science-fiction world with spaceshups and mecha figts

As the Jeanne d'Arc story goes, Misery (she/they) - note that in this universe everybody is introduced with pronouns and names the same way that we simply introduce ourselves with names- is from a nowhere town but has certain abilities which are only attributes of saints or voidmad. It's clear that Misery isn't a saint but she fears that she is succumbing to voidmadness like her mother before her. Misery starts seeing a spirit, Ruin, trying to guide her towards her destiny. They are brought to the capital to convince everyone that they're the destined Ninth Messiah and save the Empire from the conflict with the Heretics.

I have compared this book to Gideon the Ninth before, especially when it comes to the writing style a mix of gorgeous complex prose and humor and memes. There are more similarities: complex plot which definitely necessitates a reread to fully get what is going on, a Christianity-like religion in a powerful Empire with our protagonists being a sort of Messiah [i am weak for the exploration of religious themes in queer speculative fiction].

Without spoiling too much, Misery does exactly what you expect out of a character who is suddenly an all-powerful Messiah and who falls victim to her religious righteousness and hubris. Anyway, something something perfect handling of Christian-like religious themes and this is my weakness.

A little word about lady Alodia Lightning who was introduced as your enemy/haughty princess but who will 100% be a love interest and turned out more complex than that.

People will be interested to know that most of the characters introduced are queer and use different pronouns (in this world the neutral pronoun is zie/hir) such as she/they , xe/xem, zie/hir, they/them, he/they. But while this is the norm Misery has a small conversation about their pronouns with another character which I think will resonate with some readers.

I realized afterwards it was going to be a trilogy and I am so excited because I thought it was a standalone and I was curious about some loose ends (but I think the ending wraps things up enough that it can be read as a standalone)
Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book.

I was drawn into this book by the stunning cover and the concept of Joan of Arc in space that wasn't written for a YA audience but I was blown away by this book. It reads like poetry, like an epic or sacred text, with a truly unreliable narrator... a literal narrator who appears in interludes... who doesn't reveal their identity until the bitter end. This world felt so well constructed and laid out before the reader without having to painstakingly describe each iota of the cosmos, religious or military structures, etc.

This story wraps you up in a bouquet of lyrical language and takes you on a journey to discover the meaning of identity, of destiny, of our choices, and leaves you with the age old question of what is truth and is it universal.

I started this journey not realizing that this book is the start of a trilogy and boy am I so eager to dive deeper into the saga of Misery Nomaki, the ninth messiah of the faithful... but also to discover the bigger picture of the Larex Forge and, perhaps, a deeper understanding of the Heretics.

Do yourself a favor, pick up this book! I cannot see a world in which this doesn't end up nominated for a Goodreads Award.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this after about 20%. I was really intrigued by the world and concepts presented in The Genesis of Misery, but I was just not connecting with the story or characters. Others will surely like this more than I did.

I just know this is going to be one of new favorites series. The first in a trilogy, The Genesis Of Misery follows Misery, she/they pronouns. This is a science fiction space opera LGBT+ Joan of Arc retelling. How many favorite genres can you include in one book? Misery is from a place not really known but has a powerful ability. I loved the world building and the ending had me constantly screaming. This has so much LGBT+ rep, nonbinary, sapphic, and neopronouns. At times was a little confusing/long. Tw for murder, gore, violence.

Listen, this book is WEIRD. If heavily religion-based sci fi with giant mechs, magic stones, and prophecy sounds like something you'd be into, you should absolutely check it out. The worldbuilding is off the charts weird, the prose is at times very poetic, the narrative doesn't pull any punches.

I wasn't super sure about the ending - I'm unclear if this is the start of a series? But I enjoyed the ride.

3.5 stars if i given the choice!

Great prose and good characters. The passages can drag on at certain points but for fans of LGBT content, I highly reccomend.