Alright, Curious One. If you read my last Curiosity, you will be aware that this is officially my second audio book! I cannot say how thankful I am that the The God Project audio book was amazing. It was good enough that I am contemplating visiting another thrift shop to find some more for my next few trips!
The God Project is written by John Saul. Mel Foster was the reader and in the very beginning I was amused at the sound of his voice, but after probably 30 minutes, I got used to it and fell into his rhythm.
Time Will Tell
All-in-all, The God Project is honestly pretty dated. If you pay attention, you can easily tell that was written in a time where women were trying to break out of the “hysteria” and the “you run the home” kind of thinking. There were many references to mother’s just “knowing” something was wrong and mother’s taking care of all issues involving the home and women having to be sedated after hearing distressing news. It happened enough times that I honestly rolled my eyes a time or two and couldn’t tell what side of the fence the author was trying to be on. And there was a lot of repeated emotional distress that I felt was unnecessary to the full scope of the story.
Even with those issues though, I loved the story. There was betrayal, fear, stupidity, heartbreak and the smallest bit of romance with a dash of science involved in the overall storyline. I was impressed. You can easily guess some of the suspension points and how they would work out, but with others you were left mouth agape with many questions. This is the first John Saul book I have read (or listened to in this case) and I must say that I would read more of his work and suggest him to others who enjoy the genre.
A Heartbreaking Start in The God Project
The God Project follows a young mother who had an infant girl a few months ago. You get to feel her uncertainty at being a mother again and how unsure she was about having another child. It was a refreshing perspective for me since I am often thinking about if I want children of my own and what I would do if I wound up pregnant unexpectedly and not fully prepared for it. Sally (the new mom) seems like a strong and independent woman. She writes code and solves bugs within the code of other businesses for a living and her husband seems fully supportive of her and her success.
She goes to bed and wakes suddenly with an uneasy feeling and checks on her children. When she checks on her new baby girl though, she had died sometime in the last hour and you go through the denial and grieving process with Sally.
It honestly is a very heartbreaking way to begin a book, but in hindsight, it made the most sense to write it up as it was.
The Scarier and Sicker World
There was a bit of back and forth after that and it did confuse me for a moment, only listening to what was happening, not physically reading what was being said and what was changing in the character point of views, but I caught up relatively quickly and it didn’t bother me much at all.
You are then introduced to another family where the boy had just gotten kidnapped. The boy was a friend of Sally’s other child, so you knew that something had to be connected to all of this. There was also something very unsavory about the doctors involved in these situations. I honestly didn’t really like either of them from the start, but like I’m sure happened to you as well, I was eventually lulled into a false security about one of them.
You get to explore an even scarier and sicker world where doctors betray you and your bodies, your children aren’t “human” due to experiments started from inside the womb and kidnapping/deaths of your children all without your consent or knowledge that it is even happening to you. Doctors betraying other doctors is a hard theory to swallow as well.
The boy who gets kidnapped in the beginning runs away and gets back to his parents, but he starts the collapse of the corporation that is in control of the experiments. You would think this is a good thing, but it ends up not being such a good thing. The corporation and evil scientists kill the other children and search him out to kill him as well. In this process, the detective helping these families and his parents are all killed while he lives.
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The God Project’s Uneasy Pit
I forgot to mention that the experiments on these children cause them to heal at accelerated rates as well as grow resistant to whatever had hurt them. For example, the boy who was kidnapped got electrocuted and almost died, but after he healed he got electrocuted again by an even stronger voltage and it just tickled him. Super scary concept! I think the DoD was in on the experiments too. Probably wanting super soldiers that can withstand excessive amounts of pain and endure anything they may encounter while “serving their country”.
The idea of the government being involved in military grade human DNA alterations is certainly not a new theory or storyline. However, the way that Saul relayed it you really get an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Especially when it’s all the girls involved in the experiment that die before they reach the age of one year. I was curious why that was the situation, but it was never explored.
Concluding The God Project
In the end, Sally and her husband end up adopting the other young boy (the one who was kidnapped earlier). After a few years, they begin to realize what exactly their children are becoming and that they truly aren’t human. Even with extremely human upbringings and pasts, their genes have mutated them so that they are invincible. They begin to believe that they are above the rest of the children and even the adults in their lives. Sally and her husband believe that the only way to save them and the rest of the world is to kill them. So, after consulting the “you know who” doctor, he gives them a syringe of stuff that will theoretically kill the boy. However, because of their enhanced abilities, they survive the “poison” and the book ends on them threatening to kill Sally and her husband if they try anything like that again.
I was proud of Sally. Aside from the annoying amount of time spent on her emotions in the beginning and what was to be expected from her vs. what she was feeling, she was an amazing protagonist. She was strong willed, determined and didn’t give up, even when literally everyone who she was supposed to be loved by wanted to commit her to a mental asylum. That was something I didn’t understand in the timeline. This all happened within less than a year and yet her family wanted to commit her? I didn’t fully understand that. Especially after her mother said “there is always a reason why babies die. SIDS is an excuse for lazy doctors…” etc. I expected her mother to be more on Sally’s side than she was. It just didn’t make sense to me.
I feel there are a few cliffhangers that didn’t get addressed that I would have loved some more information on, but I won’t be too picky. I really did enjoy the book in its entirety and would definitely read the physical book in person if I ever came across a discounted copy. It was truly a wonderful escape while I was driving the other day I may even listen to it again if I feel like a mind-blowing ending kind of book!
Final Thoughts on The God Project
I would love to know what you think about this book, Curious One, whether you have read it in book form or listened to it in audio form like myself. I think it’s a creative book for it’s time and even has a bit of science fiction in it. I know it is super dated, but if you can put that aside or even just acknowledge it while reading it, you will love The God Project, I am certain!
John Saul has an amazing way of pulling you in with a false sense of serenity or comfort right before ripping the rug out from underneath you. I think he has around 36 books published and many of them has been featured on bestseller lists! I will definitely have to check out more of his work. Especially is later works that have been written in the early 2000’s. I would like to see how much of his representation of women and the environment surrounding his characters have changed. It could be a fun experiment. The God Project is supposedly the 6th novel he has written, so I would love to see how much he grew with his writing technique and style!
Hopefully you were as intrigued by The God Project as I was! The audiobook version I have is only 5 discs, so it was a nice length to listen too. Not too long and only a little bit too short! Let me know your own curious thoughts about The God Project, written by John Saul. I love to discuss theories and ideas about books with anyone who wants to partake!
I think it is time for me to find another book…
Check out author John Saul’s Website and Mel Foster on Tantor!
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