Godfall by Van Jensen

A massive asteroid hurtles toward Earth and humanity is braced for annihilation – but the end doesn’t come . . .

Because it's not an asteroid . . . it’s a three-mile-tall alien figure that comes to earth outside Little Springs, Nebraska. Dubbed ‘the giant’, its body apparently pierced by a blade, its arrival transforms this quiet red-state farm town into a top-secret government research site and major metropolitan area, flooded with soldiers, scientists, government agents, bureaucrats, spies, criminals, conspiracy theorists . . . and a killer.

As the sheriff of Little Springs, David Blunt thought he’d be keeping the peace among the same people he’d known all his life, not breaking up chanting crowds of conspiracy theorists, busting drugs gangs, dealing with doomsday cults, struggling to control town hall meetings about immigrants, and invaders and the construction of a mosque. Or trying to catch a cunning and seemingly untraceable killer.

As the brutal, bizarre murders strike ever closer to home, Blunt – increasingly troubled by strange, unsettling dreams of a cosmos in chaos – throws himself into the hunt for a killer who seems somehow connected to the Giant.

With bodies piling up and tensions in Little Springs mounting, he realizes that in order to find the answers he needs, he must first reconcile his traditional sense of things with the town, and the world, he now lives in – before it’s too late.

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When the apocalypse doesn’t arrive, it just moves in next door.

Pre-Reading Thoughts:
I went in expecting a full-on alien encounter - the looming, unknowable kind of sci-fi that tilts your head toward the stars. Instead, I found a story rooted in the dirt and diesel of human behaviour: politics, small-town fear, and the way power shifts when the unimaginable becomes ordinary.

Post-Reading:
As I thought...
It’s clever, darkly funny, and sharply observant. Van Jensen doesn’t just drop a godlike being in Nebraska; he rebuilds the entire world around it. The logistics, the psychology, the sudden flood of outsiders and opportunists - every piece clicks into place like someone who’s thought deeply about how people bend reality to fit their comfort zones.

It surprised me by...
Turning inward instead of outward. I expected cosmic revelation; I got human entropy. Even guessing the culprit didn’t dull the tension - the mystery is less “who did it” and more “why are we like this?” It’s haunting, inventive, and oddly grounded for a story with a three-mile-tall alien corpse in the background.

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🎧 MUSIC PAIRING
🎵 “No Church in the Wild” – Jay-Z & Kanye West ft. Frank Ocean
🎶 OK Computer – Radiohead
🎧 Manchester Orchestra - for when you want your existential crisis sung through static and sorrow.

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🌌 VIBE CHECK
🎨 Colour Palette: rust red, storm-cloud violet, and sodium-light gold.
🎬 Soundtrack: cicadas, AM radio static, a low hum you can’t quite trace.
🍂 Season: late summer, just before the first storm breaks.
😶‍🌫️ Mood: disoriented awe - the sacred seen through smog.
🌾 Scent: hot dust, metal, and distant rain.

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🃏 TAROT PULL – The World (Galactic Star Tarot)
A vast alien floats above Earth, serene and enormous, the number 42 picked out in stars. It’s the perfect image for Godfall: an ending that isn’t an ending, a moment of completion shadowed by everything still unknown. Like David Blunt at the close of the story, we’re left gazing up - wiser, but not enlightened.

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For fans of:
📚 The Only Good Indians – Stephen Graham Jones
🎬 Arrival / Under the Skin

Disclaimer:
Godfall publishes on the 8th January, 2026. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.