Weird Theology

Small Worlds #1

by Alex Raizman

The end of the world is non-negotiable. How it happens is still up in the air. Every god has a nanoverse, but only one will give its wielder the ability to end the world. After years of searching, it has finally been found, with the power to kick start the apocalypse. They never thought to look in a gift store's box of Knick-knacks. Ryan Smith didn't expect anything interesting to happen to him. He was a boring guy. The only remotely interesting thing about him was the man in a suit that no one else could see. Always watching, always taking notes. Ryan didn't know it meant he was one of the candidates to find the last nanoverse. Now that he has it, he has the power of a god, and it’s up to Ryan to try and save humanity, even though he can’t save the world. At least things have stopped being boring. Now Ryan finds himself in a fast paced adventure, caught in the power struggle between gods as he is forced to battle for his life against forces he can barely comprehend as gods try to stop him from fulfilling his duty. Foremost among them is Enki, a villain so terrible he...wants to save the world. A high octane battle between good and evil, where the heroes’ best hope is a kinder, gentler Armageddon. A Best-of award winning story for original writing.

Genres: Fantasy

350 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2018

Reviews

[Pyroclastic Ash]

DNF @ 20 %

Ya'll, this is a petty-ass soft DNF, but I do not care. I won't count it as a read or rate it because this book seems like it is good.
Ya'll ever get irritated reading something because one word keeps happening over and over? And you push through because oh that is just the character's personality!. It's just not gonna work for me right now. I don't have time to read something that will have me irked.

[Lukas Lovas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the concept and the writing wasn't bad at all. However, I must admit I have an issue with a few things I considered....rather illogical. Only spoilers follow from now on.

First of all...if you have a pocket universe where time flows slowly...it is an awesome resource. When the main characters were extremely pressed for time, hounded from moment to moment, why didn't the good guys utilise this more? I mean...I get that it's useless for training - but what about sleeping? Or satisfying the hungers? Why not go there and strategise, come up with a good response after thinking about it for a week or a year, and emerge back into the real world after only seconds have passed? Why not make sure that you guide your universe correctly by...let's say...staying there for longer than an hour, twice? Or making sure that a cash of weapons is left untouched somewhere for you to use, even if you decide to stop the warmongering empire that rose up? You know...so you won't end up using a stick in the crucial battle?

There are a few logical inconsistancies like this, where all I can think is "is that character an idiot, or would I also not think of that, if everything was dropped on me so fast like that?". Then again, why not going into the nanoverse to think it over so that it's not "all that fast"?.

I decided to give the book 5 stars, because it might be more realistic, that the characters are not perfect and they will make mistakes and not use their powers to their fullest potential. That said, I still think the character was a moron for not staying in his universe for several years to gain some mental clarity, have time to think about things, guide the development for a bit, possibly set up more than one "ascended" race right from the start... I love the concept, but the potential was not fully realised. Then again...I guess the next book would be devoid of progress, if the hero was perfect from the start.

[Joni Bosch · Rating 5 out of 5]

@alexraizmanauthor kindly send me his book “Weird theology, small worlds book 1”, I finished reading it last night.
So here you will have my honest review regarding this book:
The thing that stood out for me about this book is the world-building, this world revolves around mythology (and while I have read other books connected to mythology, this world was very unique and nothing like I have read before). The first 100 pages I had a hard time getting my head around the whole concept of this world, throughout the story you gradually get more information about this universe. It’s complicated, but the world-building is good! Alex’s writing style is very nice to read, his humor is a thing i appreciate very much.
Another thing I really liked about this book were the characters, I found them all very flawed (which made them human).
And because of this I could empathize with these characters.
I don’t want to tell you a lot about the plot, because I had a great expierence going in blank!
We have Ryan Smith (our main character), he’s a very nice guy and reacts in such a normal/human way to all the information which is thrown to his head. I really rooted for Ryan, which I always think is a good thing.
But my absolute faves were the goddesses Crystal and Athena, i love me some badass female characters!!
The last thing I really liked about this book were the multiple POV’s.
I think this is a really nice book to start with if you’re not that familiar with sci-fi (like me), would really recommend this book! Can’t wait for the next one 😊

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book one

Mistakes: I found five. Normally it was either an extra word or a missing word from a sentence.
Plot: New God must bring on the apocalypse in order to stop our sun from going nova, but first he has to deal with a mad and twisted God that is trying to “save “ everyone.
Characters: I found the characters to be extremely interesting and well fleshed out. Even the main villain, you are shown how he reached his point of madness and can feel for him.
8/10 I am off to read book two. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book. There is a lot going for it and worth a read. It does have a number of flaws however. I looked past them to enjoy the book, but they did ultimately diminish my enjoyment of the novel.

On the plus side, the use of the nanoverses and gods was something new that I haven't come across before. Finding something new is pretty rare these days! There is a huge amount of potential here. There was a good amount of action, and generally the pacing was pretty tight. The book was also relatively free of grammatical and spelling mistakes (something you can't take for granted anymore!).

The downsides. I thought our protagonist, Ryan, lacked agency. He constantly just "rolled with it", getting dragged along by whichever of his companions he was with at the time. This made sense to some extent, given context in the novel, but there wasn't a lot of growth or change, which from a reader's perspective got really old, really fast.

One of the things that bothered me was the "man in the suit" and how it was handled. Ryan's theoretically been traumatised by the continual observation by this man only he can see, to the point of having seen multiple therapists, ruining relationships, etc, but shortly into the book when the man goes away, Ryan is now totally fine, no lingering trauma, or glances to the corners of a room. Thirty years of psychological abuse by some sort of cosmic bureaucrat, whose role or point in the story is never really clarified - if they can be invisible to everyone else, why not observed their subjects invisibly as well???, doesn't disappear overnight.

Lukas' review mentioned some of the illogical decisions made by the main cast, which I won't repeat here.

The last thing I'll mention is about the antagonists. They were rather over-the-top, and almost cartoonishly evil.

The big-bad, Enki, was revealed to be straight-up insane, but the that doesn't give him a complete pass on being stupidly evil. The motivation of Enki's 'allies' was never really all that clear - one had something they were looking for, but it seemed like a poor reason to join forces with someone who was clearly not in their right mind. It also wasn't clear why none of the other gods had any knowledge of the whole, if the world doesn't end, the sun blows up thing. Yes, Crystal is much older than any of the other human gods, but theoretically other Eschatons have existed, and other stars with their own gods exist, some of which have gone supernova. Given how the gods already ignore the rules of physics to fly around the universe and teleport, could they not talk to the gods from other planets? Talk to the curators, who have theoretically seen this all before? I'm sure some of this will be addressed in future books, but it would have been nice to have at least mentioned some of these points in this work, even if the characters couldn't fully explore this in detail. Lastly, the American Admiral who is being set up to be a major antagonist in future books is almost offensive in how much over the top religious zealotry is foisted upon him. At least that's what I would have though if the world hadn't just watched 4 years of that happening in the USA. It was still a bit much, and could have been tempered a little, which I think would make for a more interesting, complex villain instead of a caricature.

Overall it was an enjoyable read, and I look forward to reading other works by this author in the future.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was really pleasantly surprised by this book! I bought it as a gift for my boyfriend, whose obsession started way back when this was only on Reddit, and picked it up out of curiosity. And then ended up reading it, all of it, in the span of two days.

It's a longer book, but the print is fairly large and it's pretty action-packed, so it makes for a quick read. The lead character finds a nanoverse (tiny universe, for those like me who had to Google it) where he can effectively act as God, the only catch being he is the God who must end the world. After the world ends, however, it will simply restart again. However, if he chooses not to, the sun will explode, forever wiping out Earth and all the planets.

Obviously, there are quite a few Gods out there that aren't too keen on the world ending.

I thought it was most interesting how Raizman tied in the world of the Gods - mythical and otherwise - with our world, going so far as to guess how humans would react to them. I won't lie, a lot of the science and practical parts of this book went right over my head, I skimmed most of the parts about math and science, but that didn't make it any less of an enjoyable read!

[David U. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting 4/5. This is a short review for the audio-version. This book really did well to display the perspective, ramifications and responsibilities of ‘gods’/beings with tremendous reality warping power. I enjoyed the character dialogue and found it to be just the right amount of intriguing to keep you entertained and wanting more. I really disliked the USA army involvement, human greed is always cringe to read about. On a side note, the book sort of reminded me of the Paternus book series (with regards to the different gods/pantheons/religions) and I would definitely read the next instalment.

[Noel Toh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I followed this story since it's start as a Reddit writing prompt, and was quite captivated by the storytelling.

When I found out it was a published book I bought it and re-read it because I had forgotten the details of the story.

To me, it is a very entertaining book with nice references to mythology with an interesting and somewhat original storyline.

Would recommend to people who enjoy fictional books that involve "magic" and superpowers.

[Brooke DiGiacomo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book!! There's a few minor typos throughout, but the story is so good I did not even notice. And I really loved the way the author characterized the gods. As a classics major, I have read a lot about Greco-Roman gods and a bit about others, and I think the author did a great job at interpreting their personalities accurately while also giving a realistic character development given ... the passage of time. Such a fun read.

[Sara Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this for anyone who loves fantasy! Alex has a real gift for character development and cliffhangers!

[Jeremy Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worse books I have tried.

[John]

DNF

[Jeff Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining read

I found the action ridiculous, the plot crazy, the characters over the top and some of the metaphors hilarious. And I loved it! This is not a serious work. It is however a very fun read.