The Mercy of Gods

Captive's War, Book 1

By: James S.A. Corey

Narrated by: Jefferson Mays

From the Hugo Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of the Expanse, James S. A. Corey, comes the start of a monumental new space opera series.

HOW HUMANITY CAME TO THE PLANET CALLED ANJIIN IS LOST IN THE FOG OF HISTORY, BUT THAT HISTORY IS ABOUT TO END.

The Carryx—part empire, part hive—has waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy in its conflict with an ancient and deathless enemy.

When they descend on the isolated world of Anjiin, the human population is abased, slaughtered, and put in chains. The best and brightest are abducted, taken to the Carryx world-palace to join prisoners from a thousand other species.

Dafyd Alkhor, assistant to a prestigious scientist, is captured along with his team.

Even he doesn’t suspect that his peculiar insight and skills will be the key to seeing past their captors’ terrifying agenda.

Swept up in a conflict beyond his control and vaster than his imagination, Dafyd is poised to become humanity’s champion—and its betrayer.

This is where his story begins.

“No one builds a universe like James S. A. Corey. The Mercy of Gods is wilder and weirder than you can imagine, and when it ends, all you’ll want is … more.”—John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author

©2024 Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (P)2024 Recorded Books

Original, deep, and beautifully imaginative

The imaginative worlds, characters, and many possible directions that the story can take will keep you running after the narrative. Story gets a bit tangled and slow towards the end, but then revived and came to life again to close with anticipation and thirst that one needs to wait for the second book. The performance of the narrator is 5 star, only because that is as high the rating goes. Half the experience is the perfectly patient and harmonious deliverance.

Slow start but the end is solid

Great set up. Take a long start, but gets there. It’s definitely like the preamble to a big story. Go in expecting no big explosive gotcha moment at the end like their prior works and just expect build up to a big continuation

Not as spectacular an opening as I'd hoped

I enjoyed and finished every bit of the expanse but here I found myself bored through large portions of it. I knew some of it was important info but it was hard to understand which and why.

I was really confused by the perspective. I think it was first person throughout but seemed to jump into 3rd person omniscient sometimes without explanation. Sometimes it was difficult to know which character was being followed. Maybe there were unlabeled breaks that I wasn't following.

It set itself up reasonably well for the next books and I will be listening to the next ones when they are done.

Creativity, performance, depth

As a fan of The Expanse this was a welcome and refreshing return to the humanity, depth and creativity of that series. It's building on the possibility of where the first series ended but making a new and wholy independent story line with it's own questions and ideas. I caution readers too listen carefully and give this one time to build. Especially at the beginning, it can be mysterious as to where James S. A. Corey is taking us. It's light on tech and heavy on story and people. Solid work. Jefferson Mays is excellent as ever.

Amazing first book to an incredible saga

Absolutely loved it. Firstly the narrator has a way of saying things which is so objective and without emotions that you are just spellbound. The story line is incredible and I can’t wait for it to end. The nature of creatures and order of things and hierarchy is going to be played out at a universal scale

I LOVED this book!!

I have been searching for a smart hard sci-fi series". When I saw the author(s) I knew this would be great and it did not disappoint. Now for the agony of the wait for the next book.
Jefferson Mays is amazing - again.
Now to listen again...

Great Sci Fi

SA Corey fans will thoroughly enjoy this first installment of a new series! Vey glad they’re sticking with the same reader.

Stick with it

Starts slow but once it gets going it’s pretty wild. The aliens are really interesting.

Looking forward to more

I was pleased that this seems fundamentally different from the expanse but retains a similar voice. Regarding the audio book - I found that occasionally a paragraph from one characters perspective seems to transition with no pause to another character. I found this awkward. I was surprised as I greatly enjoy the narration on the expanse novels. I don’t know if this was intentional in the editing

Lets fkn go

delightful, the expertly crafted characters and the way they relate with each other is addicting, especially in a alien space prison science camp setting 🤘🏼🛸