david_eberhart

Reads like young adult Science Fiction. What really gets you is what is not said in the book. Its a very fascist society. When you become 20 you have to enter the military. This is mandatory and the best schools are all military schools. School is designed around hand to hand combat and martial arts. Not critical thinking skills and traditional education. This hyper militarization is due to tow things. The first is that mankind is at war with an overpowering extremely advanced monstrous race of aliens. The second is God’s Sanctuary. It's an Isekai-like place where you can kill monsters and get stronger. This results in the strong surviving. It's not a morally gray place, people are doing whatever they can to advance. Our protagonist is the everyman concept of this world. Ambitious, driven, but also a sneak thief and a kill stealer. He is also very young as graduation from mandatory school results in you getting into God’s sanctuary. So you have 4 years to improve yourself in God’s sanctuary before you have to join the military. The brutality of God’s Sanctuary results in a society where money and physical prowess is valued over anything else. There is no talk of the arts and the only entertainment mentioned are gladiatorial style combats where people display their powers granted from God’ Sanctuary. It is a brutal, unforgiving world, and that is the world outside God’s Sanctuary. In the end you realize that the author is holding a mirror to the extreme brutality brought about by juxtaposing the primitive world of God’s Sanctuary and the modern techno world of Roaka. Good read.