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A review by rg9400
Exordia by Seth Dickinson
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Exordia has a ton of different elements, and I feel like I need to review/discuss them individually in addition to discussing the story as a whole. Because the story as a whole failed to land for me, and I got progressively less invested as time went on. Yet, still, the individual elements seem fascinating in retrospect, so this is also just my attempt to try to figure out why it didn't all come together.
First, the first part of this book, roughly 10%, is fascinating. It's a sitcom-style odd couple approach with eccentric Anna Sinjari finding a crazy 8-headed alien in Central Park and becoming roommates with her. It's funny and filled with personality. And somehow, the rest of the book never even attempts this tone again. Anna doesn't remain one of the main POVs really, and her relationship with Ssirin is pretty much dropped after this opening act. Which is a shame, because honestly, the beginning of the book is extremely strong.
Second, the main focus of the story suddenly shifts to this mysterious ship that is causing weird sicknesses, and suddenly we get thrown into a multi-national (Uganda, Chinese, Russians, Iraqis, Americans, Iranians, Kurdish) group of scientists and military trying to figure it out. The closest analog I can think of is the Three Body Problem, and the book is certainly inspired by it due to numerous references to concepts and theories from that series. However, it decides to use a weird structure to the narrative, jumping in time across different events for really no reason. I think, had it been told chronologically, it would have been significantly stronger.
The characters outside of Anna vary a lot in quality. You have various pairs of characters, Clayton and Eric, Chaya and Aixue, Anna and her mom, but I only really enjoyed Chaya and Aixue's relationship. Clayton and Eric feel interesting as symbolic opposites, but their weird love-hate relationship didn't work for me. There is some action, mainly in the second half of the book. I struggled with the military aspects, and so the action didn't exactly work super well for me. I ended up zoning out through most of the second half because of this.
The main thing I want to discuss are the themes though. The book is bursting with ideas, and so many of them are really fascinating. It heavily revolves around mathematics, the interplay between math and science, and sort of the philosophy of math. I was kind of familiar with this area, but Seth Dickinson is very smart and pulls in a lot of new ideas and does a decent job explaining them. I found them fascinating. But it is very very theoretical and abstract. Think some of the most abstract parts of 3Body (Death's End) and this is still more abstract. The book is also very interested in the military industrial complex, and I really liked how it frames this concept of an alien invasion to the invasion of the Kurdish people by different nations. The book is almost entirely set in a village in Kurdistan, and it's a heavy part of the thematic heart of the story. And also, the book is, at its heart, a moral exploration of the trolley problem. We get multiple framings of this problem, at multiple scales. All of this is excellent. I just wish it all connected together a bit more, where each of the distinct themes weren't so disparate, instead working together, integrated into the narrative, and evenly spread out throughout the book (a lot of these disappear in the last half until the very ending).
Oh, finally, this book is setting up a series though the First Contact storyline is very much resolved here. I do find the aliens very alien and interesting, and you get concepts like narrative destiny, weird relationships between souls, objective morality and species that are predetermined to go to hell, morality engines, and explorations of free will. These are all very cool concepts, but we just get morsels of them as this takes a backseat to the rest of the story
First, the first part of this book, roughly 10%, is fascinating. It's a sitcom-style odd couple approach with eccentric Anna Sinjari finding a crazy 8-headed alien in Central Park and becoming roommates with her. It's funny and filled with personality. And somehow, the rest of the book never even attempts this tone again. Anna doesn't remain one of the main POVs really, and her relationship with Ssirin is pretty much dropped after this opening act. Which is a shame, because honestly, the beginning of the book is extremely strong.
Second, the main focus of the story suddenly shifts to this mysterious ship that is causing weird sicknesses, and suddenly we get thrown into a multi-national (Uganda, Chinese, Russians, Iraqis, Americans, Iranians, Kurdish) group of scientists and military trying to figure it out. The closest analog I can think of is the Three Body Problem, and the book is certainly inspired by it due to numerous references to concepts and theories from that series. However, it decides to use a weird structure to the narrative, jumping in time across different events for really no reason. I think, had it been told chronologically, it would have been significantly stronger.
The characters outside of Anna vary a lot in quality. You have various pairs of characters, Clayton and Eric, Chaya and Aixue, Anna and her mom, but I only really enjoyed Chaya and Aixue's relationship. Clayton and Eric feel interesting as symbolic opposites, but their weird love-hate relationship didn't work for me. There is some action, mainly in the second half of the book. I struggled with the military aspects, and so the action didn't exactly work super well for me. I ended up zoning out through most of the second half because of this.
The main thing I want to discuss are the themes though. The book is bursting with ideas, and so many of them are really fascinating. It heavily revolves around mathematics, the interplay between math and science, and sort of the philosophy of math. I was kind of familiar with this area, but Seth Dickinson is very smart and pulls in a lot of new ideas and does a decent job explaining them. I found them fascinating. But it is very very theoretical and abstract. Think some of the most abstract parts of 3Body (Death's End) and this is still more abstract. The book is also very interested in the military industrial complex, and I really liked how it frames this concept of an alien invasion to the invasion of the Kurdish people by different nations. The book is almost entirely set in a village in Kurdistan, and it's a heavy part of the thematic heart of the story. And also, the book is, at its heart, a moral exploration of the trolley problem. We get multiple framings of this problem, at multiple scales. All of this is excellent. I just wish it all connected together a bit more, where each of the distinct themes weren't so disparate, instead working together, integrated into the narrative, and evenly spread out throughout the book (a lot of these disappear in the last half until the very ending).
Oh, finally, this book is setting up a series though the First Contact storyline is very much resolved here. I do find the aliens very alien and interesting, and you get concepts like narrative destiny, weird relationships between souls, objective morality and species that are predetermined to go to hell, morality engines, and explorations of free will. These are all very cool concepts, but we just get morsels of them as this takes a backseat to the rest of the story
I've already written a lot, but to summarize, there's a lot to like about this book. Yet, I don't think I did? I can't place it. I think the shift to the military action in the second half is a large part of it. Also, Seth Dickinson can clearly write more personality and witty and funny moments (indicated by Anna), yet a lot of the book maintains the sterile style he used in the Baru Cormorant series, which I did not enjoy at all. Finally, though the book is bursting with ideas, it jumps between them too much rather than managing to have them work in synergy, which combined with the jumps in time creates a story that fluctuates a lot in terms of how engaging it ends up being