Act of God Review: One Man’s Journey to Save Humanity

Reading Time: 4 minutes
(Image by Javier Miranda on Unsplash)

Jan Byron Strogh’s novel Act of God presents a simple premise: What will happen when Earth becomes inhabitable? In the novel, the apocalypse comes in the form of ice spreading from the poles towards the rest of the world. And because ice has frozen all fertile land, humanity now faces not only extreme climate change, but also famine. As is the case with humans, they come up with a solution that only makes things worse. Scientists develop The Bean, which is a crop that can grow virtually anywhere and starts killing native flora.

To make matters even worse, The Bean is also virtually unkillable and spreads like a wildfire. Soon enough, the eastern hemisphere is lost to ice, The Bean, war, and famine. This is just the background for Michael’s story, the novel’s protagonist. Michael is a normal child who is hand-picked to lead humanity to salvation, though the reasoning behind that is not very clear. He quickly grows and becomes the commander of the mission to colonize other planets where humans can thrive.

Our protagonist cruises the universe in a spaceship called the Ark, which was previously loaded with half a million humans. Consent to being shipped into the Ark is dubious at best and straight-up inexistent at worst. Most of the novel is spent inside one room of the Ark—the Garden. If you think this is getting too Biblical, it’s because it is, indeed, Too Biblical.

Passengers on the Ark are for some reason stranded in this one room and can’t leave. That is until Michael tells three other guys to do just that. One of them, Buck, leave the Garden and the Ark altogether, and lands in a planet with humans that speak English but can’t read. So, it turns out the mission had already been successful, and the Ark is going for the second try.

The novel mostly deals with the implications of starting a society from scratch and humanity’s fierce desire of survival, even if undeserved. The relationship between science and religion is established as the backbone of the narrative as it presents a new way of ruling where both can coexist peacefully. The book emphasizes this greatly, but it never shows and always tells.

The story’s strength lies in speculation about how society can work when humans are very evolved and specialized knowledge, but the environment is primitive and lacks technology. The book introduces interesting questions, possibilities, and alternative scenarios to our current reality, but is more preoccupied with seeing Michael’s story through. It doesn’t dwell too much on bigger topics like genocide, cult mentalities, consent, and doesn’t even consider alien intervention.

Execution is sorely lacking quality. The story is written mostly in simple, short sentences. The stilted way it is written makes the narrative choppy. There are several typos, spelling mistakes, repeated sentences, and the language veers between British and American English without picking a side. It takes a while for the reader to get used to these issues and look past them to get into the plot.

Other areas of opportunity are the characters’ voices and females characters. For the former, the dialogues fall a little flat. They don’t seem to be exchanges between people but rather a means to move the plot forward. All characters sound the same, and exchanges between them feel transactional and inorganic. Female characters, for their part, leave a lot to be desired of. Women in the novel are either caregivers, bitter old ladies, or objects of desire. None of these three options is ideal for the creation of a new civilization in another planet. But maybe the point was that this portrayal of women was meant to be critical of patriarchy and gender roles. Just maybe.

What the novel lacks in space exploration, it makes up in the creation of both the Garden and the new planet. The landscapes are full of nature, a clear indicator that humans haven’t ruined everything. These descriptions are reminiscent of some parts of Earth, creating a tang of romantic nostalgia. It also has the feeling of going on a big adventure into the great, dark vastness of space.

Overall, the book is a classic tale of The Chosen One with a dash of Humanity Needs Saving. There are some mystic elements in there and commentary on the human condition. It also praises power institutions, particularly the military and the church. If you like narratives that pit goodness against evil and in which a jaded and mature goodness comes out victorious, give this book a try. If you’re into religious retellings of the creation of the world and witnessing an Old-Testament-like God in action, Act of God is going to give you exactly that.

Adriana Acevedo is an editor, writer, and sleep paralysis demon. She's been published in magazines like samfiftyfour and Impostor. She's bilingual and living in the monstrous Mexico City. Whenever she's not reading horror stories or watching horror movies, she's baking sourdough bread. Read more of her writing here.

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