One thing I’ve noticed reading fantasy is how differently Gods are treated.
Sometimes they walk the world, answer prayers, and intervene all the time.
Sometimes they exist… but feel far away, almost silent.
I’ve always found the second approach more interesting.
It leaves space for doubt, fear, and interpretation, not just divine problem-solving.
When Gods don’t answer, people have to decide what they really believe.
Which do you tend to prefer when you’re reading?
Either can work but I want the author to have thought that through and have the religion feel like it actually reflects it.
If the gods are very distant, and everyone's faith looks exactly the same, that seems very implausible to me.
If the gods are very active/present and have followers that are clearly acting wildly against their teachings--that can be done well, but I would have follow up questions about why the gods are putting up with that. I've seen various settings try to do "Big Good" gods that are very active but also try to do "evil religious guy" without addressing why this Big Good god is putting up with their priest being terrible.
Yeah, I feel that too.
A lot of fantasy uses religion as background noise instead of something people actually struggle with.
If Gods are distant, belief should splinter and get messy. If they’re present, it should really matter how they react to what their followers do.
Otherwise it all starts to feel a bit hollow.
Both can be good. My only problem is when present Gods are used to Deus Ex Machina the plot.
Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks comes to mind for the second sentence
It's been a while since I read those books but I don't remember anything particularly jarring as far as how plot resolution happened
The Christian god flies in on a plane and resurrects the MC
Spoiler tag is for climax of series. Passers-by that might read the series, beware
Yeah, this annoyed the shit out of me. There were so many EXTRA loose threads added to the story which went unresolved because the author wanted to deus ex machina with their idea of god instead of just telling a compelling story. Im personally of the opinion that BW wanted to write a trilogy to start, realized he couldnt tell a complete story in that time (which is fine), then wanted it to be 4 books, before it ended up being 5 (and probably not more because his editor got annoyed with the length) that there was tons of stuff just crunched into the last book and shoehorned in out of nowhere to fit what was possibly always the end goal. Like there was minimal metaphysics and overpowering christian iconography until the very last book, then it was 90% Gavin on some religious bender and Kip trying to figure out wtf is going on with all the rest of us at the same time.
And again, SO MANY DROPPED PLOT THREADS. God that series ending makes me so mad / sad.
I'm still upset about this. I don't even care if he was influenced by his faith or whatever, it was just a genuinely awful ending to the series after a great first 3 books. Book 4 was bad but book 5 was absolutely dire.
I like Weeks but he has released 3 absolute stinkers in a row now (last 2 Lightbringer books and the newest Night Angel which was so so bad).
I'll give the next Night Angel a shot because I enjoy the world but if it's bad then I think I'll just be done with his books personally.
Are you talking about The one dude who can use all the colors and was the head of his church, (kind of like the avatar but for colors instead of airbending), and could build planes and other cool vehicles with his powers?
Nope. Literal Christian god. Weeks called him Orholam, but it was the fundamentalist Christian god in a wig
I feel like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria: I have no recollection if this place
That's because OP is wrong. It's not LITERALLY the christian fundamentalist god. It's a parallel. Just because the god (Orloham) in that universe has parallels or inspirations from Christianity, doesn't mean it is the 'LITERAL CHRISTIAN GOD.
All fiction has influences and parallels. Game of thrones has religions ranging from pantheons to monotheism to sacrificial religions.
Wheel of Time has religions, beliefs, etc. Even Brandon Sanderson has dozens of religions, one of which in Mistborn is a "one god" reshaping/creating the earth at one point.
Just because it's a god with parallels, powers, etc of a "real life" god. Doesn't mean it is LITERALLY the Christian god. Maybe it is FIGURATIVELY the Christian God but even then...I don't think I'd consider it that either.
EDIT: Hell, even Narnia, a christian allegory, Aslan isn't God/Jesus, but he is essentially a similar figure or draws inspiration/parallel/supposal of it.
It's the Christian god with a wig and a wink. Weeks calling him by another name is only fooling those that wish to be fooled.
The other examples, not so much, and they are superior writings for it.
You're just wrong. It's like you don't understand the difference between literal and figurative. Just because a god like figure who preaches forgiveness, of a monotheistic religion exists in fantasy, does not mean it is the "literal Christian" god.
Again, Aslan has every single characteristic of Jesus/God and is clearly inspired by him, but it is not Jesus/God.
If that series had ended with them saying "And then Jesus Christ floated down and forgave sins" sure, you could argue it.
But Orloham, the godlike figure who has been mentioned countless times throughout the series and alluded to, appears and is shown to have a crazy amount of power with the magic system and creates a plane called Machina...doesn't mean "Oh...this is just Jesus".
It's like people calling Anakin Skywalker Space Jesus. Inspiration from Jesus at times sure, but it's not Jesus.
World Of The Five Gods series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. In a world with Gods who are active, how can the Gods intervene while preserving the free will of people? Most interesting, coherent, and cohesive take on a fictional religion I've ever read. Each book is a slow burn. Won the second-ever Hugo Award For Best Series. The first three novels were all individually nominated for the Hugo Award For Best Novel in their respective years of publication, with book #2, Paladin Of Souls, winning. Please DO read in publication order. Bujold is now continuing in this story universe with the Penric & Desdemona sub-series of novellas.
EDIT: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43463-world-of-the-five-gods-publication
That’s a great example, the free will angle there is really interesting.
Have you read The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone? Out of all the fantasy I've read, it handles religion and gods the best. It feels like the author is well educated in western theology and plays both sides well. The gods do exist, but the ones that haven't been killed by magic users, which only started 150 years ago, are bound by magical contracts and limited by how much devotion they have or by how much people invest in them, depending on how you look at it. The tension of the series is largely about whether the magic users, craftsmen, are really better than the gods. Is the world better without gods, or do they have their uses? Or perhaps the craftsmen are destroying the world and we need the gods to return. Each of the cities we explore in the different books have different ideas, and different consequences based on their choices.
Just one more example. In a desert city, they relied on a god for rain. In exchange, the god required human sacrifices, which culturally was seen as acceptable and people seemed to have volunteered. Now that god is dead. So what are they supposed to do for water? Steal it from other locations of course.
Give it a shot if that sounds interesting to you.
That actually sounds really interesting, especially the idea that devotion literally limits or empowers the gods. I like when divine systems have consequences that ripple into everyday life like that, instead of just being background lore. I’ll have to check it out, thanks.
I prefer Gods be absent, distant, or extremely involved with cataclysmic consequences. Gods can easily cheapen a story by being a get out of jail free card for characters whenever things seem tense, or create questions as to why a powerful God who can help and wants to help, doesn't just solve the problem. If they are involved, it should be more like an Eldritch being in a plane it doesn't belong.
The best gods I've read are based less on activity and more on unknowableness, which is more what I'd expect when it comes omniscient/omnipresent creator beings. Even the Abrahamic God is borderline eldritch in much of the Old Testament (as middle school me learned when he first found out about the Thrones). Ted Chiang's "Hell Is The Absence Of God" is an amazing example of that.
Oh yeah! When Gods are unknowable, even their silence feels heavy. Or even when you can see what they’re doing, you still don’t fully understand it, because they’re Gods, not just powerful people. They have their own reasons, their own problems. That gap between what mortals see and what the divine actually means is where the interesting stuff lives.
I am craving lately fantasy where there are no gods or religion. Because most western fantasy is based on europe it always seems to have either a christian like deity or greek/norse like ones. But fantasy could easily be without religion or gods
The Earthsea series is pretty sparse in that aspect, as far as I recall. Book 2 is kind of an exception, but even then it's a more about cult-style indoctrination than religion itself as a theme.
Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy is incredibly light on religion. Barely anyone ever references any sort of god or religious practice, and those that do are mostly considered to be insane cultists.
That's great! I have them on my shelf waiting to be read
If you just don't want Western gods I recommend The City of Brass
It's not the what, it's the how and why.
That’s what makes it feel real.
I’m definitely a sucker for gods being distant and long gone only to be rediscovered. I feel like ones that are current and present are trickier to work into a story line where the stakes remain consistent.
For me, Distant, for sure. If you can actually petition the gods then it's too easy to literally "deus ex machina" everything. So the gods in those direct contact stories have to be underpowered to at least provide some drama to the point they are just humans with superpowers. At that point it's just The Avengers.
I quite liked the gods in The Misenchanted Sword who are pretty much completely absent and then obliterate a large part of the world and then are absent again, for reasons that form a nice backdrop to the story.
That kind of “distant but catastrophic” presence can be really effective.
I like the gods in the Dandelion Dynasty, they are both distant and present. They are often doing their own thing, but their existence is directly tied to their worshipers. They aren't supposed to directly interact with the people, so they have to find ways to bend the laws they operate under to guide the people.
If the gods never do anything, then they might as well not exist in the story at all, unless the author is going for realism when it comes to religion.
Yeah, that balance is great. Gods with limits still feel powerful, but not like a cheat code.
I like when gods are present but as characters are distinctly nonhuman and untame even if benevolent. I like it when they are hard for the human (or humanlike) characters to understand or interpret.
It depends on the story
But GENERALLY I prefer capital G gods to be as removed from the plot as possible since their inclusion leads to either deus ex machina or hand waving away problems because they're literally Gods
Lower case g gods are fine and have a lot more variation in power and so are more flexible in stories usually.
Some lower case g gods are basically just really powerful mages and are immortal* but a lot of upper case G gods can wave their hand and change literally everything
I really like the use of the gods in The World of the Five Gods series by Bujold though. The gods are present and their hands are felt throughout the world BUT the gods can't directly act in anyway. And there is no debate in universe of the gods are real or not
So it leads to a lot of situations where the gods steer the course of the world but not in a "and then a god directly intervened" more like "I was in the right place at the right time and did I do the right thing or not?" kind of storytelling
The Magicians by Lev Grossman does both approaches at the same time quite well. Me personally, I think present gods, DONE WELL, is the best. I need them to not snap their fingers to fix everything and have a good reason for it.
If gods are super present, I want them to be genuinely godlike and inhabiting higher levels of existence, like in Malazan. I am deeply put-off by the "forest spirit" type "gods" where they are basically human-level entities that do one thing and can be toppled by a strong gust of wind, or - even worse - the Greek pantheon style of "these are just douchy immortal humans with magic powers".
The fun thing about Malazan is gods are very powerful, but can also be effectively enslaved by their followers
Books where they are probably not real. Or books where they aren't really mentioned except in passing.
Both! Though I don't capitalize "gods".
I like stories where the religions are well thought out and feel true to the settings and shaping the characters.
Books where religion is everywhere, in various forms, but the truth of the gods is unknowable have some of my favourite world building!
I don't particularly like gods taking an active or a direct role in the books, but it can be done well, especially if they're acting through another character, and can't necessarily affect things directly or easily (McMasters-Bujold's World of the Five Gods being an example that I particularly like)!
For the most part, the more powerful/useful they are, the less I want to see them.