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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Gary Beene’s The Word of Gods is a speculative visionary anthology following the human belief that divine voices can direct earthly life. The journey begins in prehistory, where communities read meaning into the natural world while leaders turn those meanings into guidance for their people. As settlements become kingdoms, Beene moves through ancient societies whose rulers claim sacred instruction as part of everyday government. Bronze Age China brings that idea into an imperial court, where loyalty to heaven becomes inseparable from service to the state. Centuries afterward, North Africa places religious language in a rebellion where taxation becomes entangled with belief. The collection then enters documented history through Too Few Bullets, an examination of the Armenian Genocide that traces how sacred language can be used by political leaders to make persecution sound divinely sanctioned.
Gary Beene’s The Word of Gods is an incredible piece of visionary historical writing, delivered with conviction. Beene has a gift for turning an ancient worldview into something visible. That gift comes through when Mesopotamian soldier Anan-el watches an aurora glow across the night sky before priests interpret the spectacle as a celestial war. Beene’s imagination is in full flight there. His philosophical dialogue has a conversational rhythm that gives questions an unmistakably human voice. At a Berber campfire, well-traveled rebel soldier Abakada asks poor fighters why they are ready to die over a tax his wealthy family pays, changing the atmosphere around the fire through one question. Beene’s historical grounding is truly impressive, using ancient records before documented testimony carries the fiction into the twentieth century. Readers drawn to visionary fiction grounded in the past should put The Word of Gods on their list.
