The Idiot Gods

Quite simply the best book about a whale since Moby Dick.

The Idiot Gods is an epic tale told by an orca. David Zindell returns to the grand themes of Neverness in this uniquely moving book.

Two things should be remembered: the language of the whales is beyond us; whales have tens of millions of years of sentient history and humans possess only a few hundred thousand years of such wisdom.

There are secrets in our past known to whales. There was a covenant once. Otherwise, the Deep Gods – who have the Great Voice, the voice of death – could have killed us easily.

Arjuna of the Blue Aria Family, of the Faithful Thoughtplayer Clan, leaves his home waters at the top of the world to seek out the Idiot Gods and speak with them; but in doing so finds himself in the prison of Sea Circus, forced to eat dead fish. Other sad or crazy captives become his new family, but it is a human linguist who becomes the first to understand him.

Arjuna’s song of his beloved Ocean ponders the covenant, a final conflict between whale and man, and the sickening and death of Ocean itself.