Hello, hello fellow YA readers! I’m coming at you today with a review of a soon to be released YA sci-fi novel. I know, this is exciting. Two things I always want to see more of are more YA sci-fi and more YA horror. Goddess in the Machine, by Lora Beth Johnson, follows a young woman named Andra (short for Andromeda—badass, I know), who goes into a cryogenic sleep in order to travel with her family and other “colonists” to a new planet where they will set up a home away from Earth. But when she is woken, she is alone, in a foreign land, and it’s 1000 years later than when she was supposed to wake up. The current residents of the planet she’s on—who seem to have undergone a technological regression or a “dark age” of sorts—don’t understand what cryogenic sleep is and think she’s a goddess. The teenager, who up until this point thought she was ordinary, finds herself plunged into an existence that couldn’t be more different from her former life—along with a bastard prince named Zhade, who makes her his reluctant companion in trying to buy his way back into his kingdom and save his people.
If you’re a fan of YA fantasy novels, you’ll probably like this one—even if you’re not usually a huge fan of sci-fi. It reads a lot like a young adult fantasy. It may not be a lost princess story, but it’s a lost princess story. In this case, Andra is a goddess, but at its heart of hearts, it’s classic lost princess: she doesn’t know who she is, she comes to find out as the story goes on, she doesn’t know her own power, and it’s up to her to save the people. And of course, we’ve got a somewhat arrogant male companion in one of everyone’s favorite tropes—hate to love. Or at the very least, reluctant cooperation to love. Zhade actually reminds me of a more futuristic, more royal Jace Wayland/Herondale/Morgenstern from TMI (which means, of course, I liked him). Once Andra and Zhade make it to Eerensed, Zhade’s city inside a biodome, it also reads like a YA fantasy in a lot of ways as they spend their time in the palace with the current prince (who is called a “guv” in this rendition of our classic tale) and servants, and make their way through hidden tunnels under the city. It’s like a princess-y fantasy with touches of sci-fi as they incorporate futuristic technology and talk about space travel and AI. Toward the end of the book, it gets more heavily into the sci-fi and feels more like straight sci-fi, but throughout the novel, it’s definitely a sci-fi/fantasy blend.
Andra as a main character is very likable. She’s relatable and feels super real, especially because she talks about her body and her own insecurities about it when she’s woken up naked and drowning in her cryo tank by a boy she doesn’t know and yet has seen every inch of her very exposed. It’s nice to see a YA heroine who isn’t described as flawlessly beautiful (though of course she doesn’t know it) and stick skinny and perfect, but is instead a real person like you or I with a real young woman’s body.
Although the blurb makes it sound like it’s entirely Andra’s story, we actually get a lot from her companion, Zhade, as it alternates POVs to show us his thoughts and what he’s going through as someone who has been awake, and as the person who woke the Goddess in the first place. He knows Andra is in danger if she admits what she knows—that she’s not a goddess but a teenage girl—and needs to protect her not just for her own good, but for his intentions and goals, as well. And Zhade’s chapters are…well, interesting. Which leads me to my next point…
The language of the novel. Johnson actually developed her own new and unique language for this book, which is a vision of what the English language might look like thousands of years down the road as it has developed and changed over time, as words get shortened or even entirely repurposed.
I want to be clear, I think a lot of people are going to go crazy for this aspect of the book and will absolutely love it. For some, it will probably be their favorite thing about it. And also to be clear, I 100% respect the sheer amount of work and ambition that went into inventing this futuristic language for the author. I can definitely see why she did it—it’s natural to assume that as time goes on, language will continue to develop and alter, just like it did over the past centuries up until now. But I didn’t like it.
I really found the newly invented language more distracting than helpful. It’s easy enough to get used to and after a little bit of it, you slip right into it, and despite the fact that it’s a very, very clunky language, you can easily discern (for the most part) how the words are being used and what the characters are talking about. But I found it distracting because my brain would get too busy dissecting the language to pay attention to what was actually going on. I’d find myself wondering why the language would have developed in exactly that way, or why they would use the word in that way, pondering the etymology behind it. I’d wonder why some words were shortened (like “certz” for “certain”) but others somehow became longer and more awkward (like “boyo” for “boy”), and then I’d have to reread the section because I got so wrapped up in that, that I missed what was happening. Some of it sounded like the characters were speaking out loud in lazy teen Internet slang (or at least someone’s interpretation of lazy teen Internet slang), which resulted in making the characters sound a little silly. I’d also find myself wondering why some areas of text were more heavily developed into the language, and others remained the same. Zhade’s chapters are entirely in the new language (not just his dialogue), but some sentences still slipped back into modern syntax, and then I’d wonder why that particular choice was made. Again, I definitely think other people are going to love this aspect of the novel and I respect the work that went into it—but it was not my cup of tea.
What was my cup of tea was the fact that this novel is full of twists and turns that you will probably not see coming. Especially in the third act of the novel, things really pick up and there are so many twists and new discoveries and surprising moments, and I could not put it down because I had to know what would happen next!
Overall, I’d give this one four out of five stars. The language took away from it for me, and it’s a bit of a slow starter, but overall, it’s interesting, it’s got a good plot, its main character is sassy and relatable, it has a cute love story, and I loved the more sci-fi, futuristic technology aspects of it that hearken back to old favorites like Alien or Star Wars. Despite its minor drawbacks, it’s definitely set up to have a sequel, and yeah, I’ll definitely be reading that one, too.
She ran across the ground of a desert planet, surrounded by people who thought she was a goddess, a millennium after her family had lived and died without her.”
This book is perfect (and I mean perfect) for fans of The 100 and The Final Six (me) for its sci-fi aspects and efforts to save humanity through technology and space travel, and also for fans of Cinder and The Lunar Chronicles series. In fact, it reminded me of Cinder in a lot of ways! (And has an equally beautiful purple-themed cover.) Definitely check it out if you’re into any of those books, or if you’re just looking for a fun read, or if you are looking for a good entry point into YA sci-fi—this would be an excellent place to start.
What does everyone think? Does this sound up your alley? Do you plan to read it? Let me know in the comments! <3