Hello, here we are at Nerd HQ with a new book to talk about. Today it's Unto The Godless What Little Remains by Mário Coelho.
So, What's the book about?
ABOUT THE BOOK
The internet is a lonesome god.
Liverloin is a fractured man, a collection of personas—artificial constructs of wants, fears and needs—created by underground science-artists to help him hide in a hyper-connected world. But he can’t hide from Big Momma.
She is the living internet, a benevolent AI who knows everything and everyone… and somehow is in love with Liverloin.
Agent Stevly works for DAIS, an AI on the other side of the internet: the darkness to Big Momma’s light. DAIS’s agents manipulate news, information and media and pull the strings behind world events, but DAIS cannot control Big Momma or understand why she loves Liverloin. Agent Stevly, bound body and soul to DAIS, will stop at nothing to find the answer.
The Internet of things has fallen in love with Liverloin, a collection of injected personas and wants them to be together in electric dreams.
She follows Liverloin everywhere, proclaiming her undying love through the billboards on the streets of neo futuristic Lisbon, through the adverts on buses. Her electronic omnipresent devotion screaming at Liverloin wherever he goes, whatever he does.
Agent Stevly is a member of DAIS, the body of big government that she has given her whole self to. She is searching for Liverloin and for the reason why The Internet of Things in her quasi personhood has fallen in love with him.
Right, let's get this out there! More people need to read this book. It's amazing, and I think it's one of my favourite books this year. If you like cyberpunk, Unto the Godless What little remains is a cracking example if the genre.
The story itself is set in a lush futuristic version of Lisbon that at points reminds me of William Gibson, but also gave me the feels of Mega City One in its sprawling grittiness,and I think this adds to the books allure and adds to the layers of the tale.
However, it is the story about memory that captures the imagination. As we move through the story and learn the background to the reason why Liverloin has altered themselves to become who they are drives the narrative. Not only that we learn the reason why The Internet of Things has taken a liking to Liverloin, and whilst Liverloin seemingly has very little connection to his friends we learn and realise that there is a deep connection and as the layers of the story are peeled away it is soon revealed that nothing is actually down to chance.
Whilst Unto the Godless what little remains is a short book, Mario Coelho' s prose is scalpel like in its precision and gives a heady sense of disorientation as you delve deeper into the characters and their motivations. One of the things that I liked about this book was the constant change of writing style for each character, like on Stevly's POV, there is an absence of capitalisation, whilst in other POVs the writing becomes scathing as the character's stream of consciousness inflitrates the the story.
The story itself is not linear but move forwards, back and sideways through time creating an overlap of how each of the characters impact on each other and how their interactions have shaped each other and their future.
Unto the Godless what little Remains is a little gem, full of depth and exuberance and is sure to win you over.
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