Scan barcode
A review by justabean_reads
Exordia by Seth Dickinson
3.5
It's hilarious that this got published, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but also, OMG! How did this get published? Dickinson mentions in his notes that he was working on it as a brain break from his other series (which I haven't read), which I guess is why this book is just wall to wall idtastic shenanigans, with long chapters of the characters talking to each other about story tropes and the interface between physics and theology. Everything about it is so bonkers and dialled up to eleven that I took four weeks to read it, because I kept going, "that's too much, put some back." It's over 500 pages, and could've been a solid 150 pages shorter, and also just... kinda ends. (It also would've made sense if I'd found out Dickinson had been doing some kind of a Triple NaNoWriMo challenge.)
Overall, I did enjoy it! The general plot is that Earth becomes a battleground between two aliens, who both employ the worst people ever in order get to the MacGuffin first. The MacGuffin happens to be in Kurdistan, and the Kurds are very much not impressed by any of this, especially the part where the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and American militaries are all also trying to get the MacGuffin, on top of the Ugandan and Canadian resource exploration teams already there. Also, the aliens are threatening to wipe out all life on Earth.
Each of the half dozen or point of view characters (who tell the story under the auspices of an omniscient point of view) is fairly strongly characterised, and their relationships were deliberately dynamic and interesting, but the story careens forward so breathlessly that I didn't feel that invested in any of them save on the level of "Lol, what will happen next!?" I did appreciate the variety of queer characters, and that at least a few of them survived (the kill count is generally pretty high). I could've used less of the all caps evil alien slaughtering everyone.
The book is hyper-violent body-horror-soaked mil-SF that simultaneously wants to have a lot of fun talking about missiles and helicopters in loving technical detail and point out that Russian and American imperialism are bad. Which I guess is better than the former without the latter (ala Tom Clancy), but did make me raise my eyebrows from time to time. I'm seriously not kidding about the body horror, which was probably another reason why I kept taking breaks from it.
Overall, I did enjoy it! The general plot is that Earth becomes a battleground between two aliens, who both employ the worst people ever in order get to the MacGuffin first. The MacGuffin happens to be in Kurdistan, and the Kurds are very much not impressed by any of this, especially the part where the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and American militaries are all also trying to get the MacGuffin, on top of the Ugandan and Canadian resource exploration teams already there. Also, the aliens are threatening to wipe out all life on Earth.
Each of the half dozen or point of view characters (who tell the story under the auspices of an omniscient point of view) is fairly strongly characterised, and their relationships were deliberately dynamic and interesting, but the story careens forward so breathlessly that I didn't feel that invested in any of them save on the level of "Lol, what will happen next!?" I did appreciate the variety of queer characters, and that at least a few of them survived (the kill count is generally pretty high). I could've used less of the all caps evil alien slaughtering everyone.
The book is hyper-violent body-horror-soaked mil-SF that simultaneously wants to have a lot of fun talking about missiles and helicopters in loving technical detail and point out that Russian and American imperialism are bad. Which I guess is better than the former without the latter (ala Tom Clancy), but did make me raise my eyebrows from time to time. I'm seriously not kidding about the body horror, which was probably another reason why I kept taking breaks from it.