Strange Horizons, January 11, 2016

“The Godbeard” by Lavie Tidhar

Reviewed by Kat Day

Lavie Tidhar’s story tells the tale of Iyob, a man who has lost his young daughter to illness. He lives in a land called Utz where, once each year, God (visible as the ‘Godbeard’) and heaven pass overhead, blocking out the sun. During this time priests speak the words of ascension and the bodies of the dead literally rise upwards into the sky. Grieving for his daughter and his wife who, we learn later, died in childbirth, Iyob hatches a plan with two friends to use a hot air balloon to reach heaven whilst still alive. This is a rather beautiful story, and certainly a thought-provoking one with an ambiguous, yet still satisfying, ending. Tidhar uses spectacular imagery to construct a detailed world in a mere four thousand or so words. We never discover exactly what the ‘Godbeard’ is–some kind of alien spacecraft perhaps?–but it doesn’t matter. Grief, and the desire to answer the inevitable ‘why that person and not me?’ question, is the real focus of this tale, and I’m sure it will resonate with any parent, or indeed anyone who’s suffered a loss.

Kat Day writes a successful, non-fiction science blog called The Chronicle Flask, which you can find at thechronicleflask.wordpress.com. She has a doctorate in chemistry and taught the subject for over ten years, but her first love was always science fiction and fantasy. She hopes to finish her novel one day, if she can get the kids to sleep. She lives in Oxfordshire, in England, and would like to apologize in advance for any stray letter u’s in her reviews.