SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Semiosis by Sue Burke

SF/F Review: Semiosis by Sue Burke https://t.co/Xbpuxc7rcu Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) April 30, 2018

Short Review (cont): When a human colony lands on an alien planet, they find that the native plant life has ideas of its own toward the new arrivals...and it may be in their best interests to comply. Fascinating exploration of the concept (Sentient plants!) makes this work(2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) April 30, 2018

Semiosis is a book dedicated to an interesting central idea - what if humans had to deal with plants who were actively intelligent and who tried to manipulate humans to act in ways beneficial to the plants themselves?  As the author put it in a post on John Scalzi's blog, this is simply an extreme version of what happens in real life, where modern plants have evolved in ways to encourage other animals to treat them in beneficial ways.  Taking place on an alien world, the book follows a colony of humans trying to learn from the mistakes of Earth, only to encounter a world where the plants seem to be deliberately taking actions - such as growing poisonous fruit and messing with human crops - in order to manipulate the humans, who are well out of their comfort zone.  The result is a piece of particularly interesting SciFi.

More after the Jump.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
Having seen what humanity did to the Earth, a group of humans embarked on a mission to take a spaceship and colonize another planet, where they will not repeat their mistakes.  The planet their ship takes them to they decide to name "Pax" and they decide to call themselves "Pacifists" in the spirit of their new name, and they believe they can live in harmony with their new planet's environment, and without murder or strife.

And then they discover strange things about the planet.  For example, the fruit of a vine plant near their landing site suddenly becomes poisonous without warning, and one of the two vine plants nearby seems to be deliberately interfering with their crops.  But that's just the start of the strangeness - for it seems like the plants of Pax might be more intelligent....and more manipulative than the colonists could ever have foreseen.

As generations of Pacifists are born, they begin to adapt to their new environments and learn to cooperate with the plants around them....but do those plants really have their best interests at heart?  Or will they be sacrificed for the plants' own purposes?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've had mixed/negative experiences with books like Semiosis - it's a SF book dedicated to exploring an idea (or group of similar related ideas) across generations of a character base.  My problem with these books, which often involve generation ships, is that they require us to get attached to new groups of characters every so often and in doing so fail to give these characters enough depth to get me to care about what happens to them.  Semiosis not only has an interesting central idea, but spreads its generations very close together (with the final four chapters taking place in a span of two years, resulting in common characters for the second half of the book) so it mainly avoids this problem.

Essentially the book is split into two halves (even if there's no actual two part division) - the first half, corresponding to the first four chapters, deals with the colony dealing with a new development in the colony's relationship with the seemingly intelligent plant life around them - the second half deals with three straight point of views that introduce and deal with the outcome of a major crisis that affect the colony (the fourth chapter straddles the two parts essentially).

Each chapter deals with a new character as its protagonist and point of view, from a new generation (although again, the final couple of chapters take place within a single year, even if the protagonists are all from different generation numbers).  The book does a pretty damn good job establishing each of these characters, to the point where I really wish we got to spend more time with each after the chapter ends - (due to the small gaps in time between each chapter, we do often see former protagonists from other perspectives, but they are relegated to the back bench and major events do unfold during the time skips between chapters).  So it avoids the general problem I've had with generation ship fiction.

It helps that the central idea is well focused upon and very interesting - you might not think a book about humans learning to deal with intelligent, and fully sentient at times plants would be compelling, but it really is.  Impressively, two chapters take place in part from the point of view of A SENTIENT PLANT itself, and the book manages to do so in a way that keeps the idea always interesting.

The book doesn't really have an ending....it concludes the themes involved with the second half, sure, but it still kind of feels underwhelming. But it's not a long book and it packs some really interesting ideas with characters who are generally interesting into a very nice package.  Definitely worth a read.