And if that's not bad enough, Umayma's dominant indigenous life form seems to be insects - lots of insects, of all shapes and sizes. People walk around with oozing cancer sores. Chenja and Nasheen have been using nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on one another for centuries. Umayma is scarred by centuries of warfare. There are other countries who are neutral parties they have their own religions too (and likewise, they are not named, but it's heavily implied that Christians and possibly Zoroastrians or Jews are still around). They share the same religion, though of course they each claim to practice the pure and correct form of it, and have been at war with one another for centuries. There are two main countries on this planet: Chenja and Nasheen. While the religion obviously is Islam (though it's never actually named - I don't believe the words 'Muslim' or 'Islam' actually appear anywhere in the book), it's an Islam mutated by 3000 years of history on another planet. The culture is actually kind of Assyrian.
At some point, colonists "descended from Umayma's moons" (I'm not sure if this means that initially the planet's moons were colonized, if there are still people living there, or what) and settled on Umayma, bringing their religions with them. The setting of God's War is the world of Umayma, 3000 years in the future. Umayma - scarred by religion, NBC contaminants, and really nasty cockroaches
The sum of the novel is not stronger than its parts, so let me look at the parts individually. I really wanted to love this book, but I had to settle for "liked it quite a bit and hope the author improves." It gets full marks for being an imaginative, complicated setting that's just full of directions to go in future books, but story-wise, it has much of the look and feel of an Urban Fantasy in the "bad-ass chick who's a hot damaged mess" genre, and all of Hurley's creativity seemed to be expended on her world, at the expense of her characters. The head they want her to bring home could end the war-but at what price? The world is about to find out. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx's ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there's one thing everybody agrees on- There's not a chance in hell of ending it. On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. One prayer more or less wouldn't make any difference. Inverarity One-line summary: Bad-ass head-chopping bugpunk in an Islamic far future.
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