Humans who develop their technology too far are in danger of being marked as heretics-and heresy leads to a bad end. The ordinary humans of this universe are spread across dozens of worlds, which are joined together by god-powered instantaneous gates and starships. They are served by angels, who become more cyborged as they ascend in the service of their gods, and who are not constrained by normal human lifespans. The novel’s preceding volume, The Outside, introduced a set of gods who are a form of artificial intelligence, dependent on absorbing human consciousness to retain a creative self-awareness. What happens when your good intentions come up against both the reality of power and the difficulty of making change happen? How do you make decisions when you no longer trust the old rule book, aren’t quite sure you trust yourself, but can be sure that those others who could lift the burden from you are even less worthy of your trust? This is a powerful existentialist theme, but it takes quite some time for The Fallen to develop it. Deciding for ourselves.” That was both the freedom and the terror of it.
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