Thursday, October 10, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 15, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 Escaping Exodus is the third novel from author Nicky Drayden - after 2017's The Prey of Gods (Reviewed Here) and 2018's Temper (Reviewed Here).  Both books were incredibly ambitious, filled with tons of ideas, and I really enjoyed The Prey of Gods even if I didn't quite love Temper nearly as much.  I've said before on this blog and I'll say it again - I much prefer books that take chances to ones that are conservative, so when I saw Drayden's third novel available for request on Netgalley, I requested it pretty quickly, knowing it was unlikely to be anything like conservative.  And unsurprisingly, Escaping Exodus is another book filled to the brim with ideas and concepts that it tries to explore throughout.

More surprisingly is the fact that Escaping Exodus is significantly shorter than Drayden's prior novels, which already had issues fitting in enough room to explore their ideas - and that problem rears its head again here.  The book features a far our scifi setting, with themes of discrimination based upon gender and class, about identity and personhood, about coexistence and leadership, not to mention themes of love across all these things....and there just isn't enough room to either fit it all or really explore much of it in satisfying ways.  Drayden's first two books were also somewhat kinds of a mess, but there was at least one or more threads and character arcs that managed to work despite it all - with Escaping Exodus, it all feels way too truncated, with the book ending just as it becomes clear where some of the events were all going.  I really hope that the next Drayden book goes up in page count rather than down, because it's a problem for Escaping Exodus, which often feels like its relying too much on cut material to work.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
In a future where humanity has fled the planet and no new planet has been found, humanity now exists in a continuous state of flux.  In order to survive, the remaining human spaceships have found a colony of gigantic beasts in Space, whose insides they colonize, until the human presence there causes the Beast to die, necessitating a jump to a new one.

Seske and Adalla were childhood girlfriends on their last beast, but emerge onto their latest one knowing that womanhood will force each into choices that take them away from each other.  For Seske is the daughter of the Matris, the ruler of their colony, while Adalla is from the beastworker class - a highly respected one sure, but still a member of the class whose job it is to maintain the organs and health of the beast for the others to enjoy.  Moreover, as this new beast is the first one they've seen since childhood, they're soon going to have extra responsibilities that will make being with each other impossible.

But as Seske and Adalla learn more about how the Beasts work and their new responsibilities, they find themselves each horrified with different aspects of their society and how the Beasts truly are maintained.  And as each of them are challenged by family and supposed friends who seek to take over their own responsibilities, they find themselves struggling to stay afloat and alive.  And Seske and Adalla will thus be forced to make choices to do what they think is right, choices that may very well tear them apart, but which may be unavoidable to saving their own society from a cycle heading towards extinction....
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Whereas Nicky Drayden's prior two novels had settings that were spins off of our own world - even if pretty big spins - Escaping Exodus features a setting that is incredibly far out, to a really wild degree.  Our story takes place mostly within a giant "Beast" who lives in space, after humans have moved to it from a space ship and tried to colonize its insides.  The workers within have to excavate the organs and ensure the beast's health to a certain extent to ensure that it will last long enough for the colony to settle peacefully, and the natural organic processes of the Beast can kill if the workers aren't careful - for example, workers in the Beast's heart must maintain a precise count at all times for when the heart will beat to avoid getting overwhelmed by bodily fluids and ichor pumped through the chamber.  And as the Beast is an organic creature, its other bodily concerns can have major ramifications for the colony.

Moreover, this state of the world creates a setting that features multiple class and gender distinctions.  Sexual Orientations aren't a concern to the colony (whether one loves women or men isn't treated as a concern worth having), but reproduction must be limited to one child per family - and families involve more than pairs: six women, three men, and one child shared between them, with different roles ("will-mother," "Heart-mother" etc.) for the members of the family between them.  Women are treated as superior to the men due to how much more needed they are and are considered the only ones appropriate for leadership, with ones "Matriline" being of high importance for status.  And then there are the different classes, with the upper classes relying upon the beastworkers who rely upon the waifs who must remain silent and do work as directed.

It's a hell of a setting, with lots of interesting aspects to explore - even more than I've gone into above - but with a lot of this setting already familiar to our two protagonists, Adalla and Seske, whose first person perspectives tell the story, the book never really stops to explain much of it.  The result is that good parts of this setting are pretty unclear to me even after finishing the book, to the book's detriment given how important some of these aspects are to the plot and characters.

Speaking of those characters, every chapter is told again from the first person perspective of either Adalla or Seske, with the book usually (but not always) alternating between chapters told by one with chapters told from the perspective of the other.  Both Adalla and Seske want to do good and both have decent moral hearts....but those hearts find themselves in conflict quite frequently with the world they live in, a world they're only now beginning to understand as they take adult roles in a Beast for the first times in their lives.  This concept works really well with Adalla, whose life as a beastworker takes her straight through this class conflict, through heartbreak and making new allies/friends, as she discovers that the real world is far harsher and crueler than she knew and tries to take a stand against that.

It works a bit less for Seske, who feels more than a little bit like a spoiled brat for a large part of the time - entitled to the position as the next Matris (ruler) of her people, even though she shows very little interest at times in doing things for the good of all as opposed to her own personal self.  Now some of that is not her fault - the Matris, who is supposed to be her mother and teacher to Seske would clearly rather be teaching Matris' own daughter of her own body, Seske's unnamed sister Sisterkin (although we see this from Seske's perspective, so its skewed and Seske may very well have caused this attitude herself).  But it makes Seske hard to root for, especially as she does some things that have terrible effects on others who clearly do have the people's interests at heart.  Moreover, Seske's main antagonist, Sisterkin, is pretty easy to be sympathetic for, given that Sisterkin is shunned by her society simply for being allowed to be born (as a second child in the family unit, she was supposed to be aborted) and is supposed to watch Seske take over her mother's position despite Seske's aloofness and not caring.  It's a bit of a problem because so much of the book depends upon Seske and Adalla's lives and relationships, and it's kind of hard to really like Seske too much.

Alas, Seske's character isn't the only issue with this book - as I mentioned above the jump, the book has some serious issues in bringing up ideas and plot points only to either never do anything with them or to never really develop them in satisfying ways.  A major character conflict for Seske highlights much of her troubles, culminating in a major problem...and then is never mentioned again for the final act, despite it never being resolved.  Character relationships grow and break apart at incredible speeds and then come back without enough actually occurring to really justify the changes in the relationships.  Class and Gender conflicts that are brought up early are just sort of resolved at the end without issue despite everything else that's gone on.  And the book takes it sweet time setting up all of these issues/conflicts, leaving the reader wondering where we're going for much of the book, making how it all plays out all the more unsatisfying.

Spoilers in ROT13:  V'z ersreevat gb gjb fcrpvsvp punenpgre eryngvbafuvcf/pbasyvpgf va gur nobir cnentencu znvayl nygubhtu gurl'er abg gur bayl bar.  Svefg, fb zhpu bs gur obbx vf n pbasyvpg orgjrra Frfxr naq Fvfgrexva, jvgu Fvfgrexva gelvat gb xvyy bss Frfxr fb gung Fvfgrexva pna or urve zhygvcyr gvzrf.  Naq ng gur raq bs gur guveq npg, jvgu Frfxr ba nabgure Ornfg gelvat gb jbex fbzrguvat bhg sbe gurve shgher, Fvfgrexva fnobgntrf gur wbhearl gb gel naq unir Frfxr xvyyrq ba gur bgure Ornfg fb gung Fvfgrexva pna gnxr bire.  Frfxr naq Nqnyyn znxr vg onpx gb gurve Ornfg naq Frfxr nfxf Jurlgg gb unir Fvfgrexva neerfgrq, qrfcvgr Jurlgg orvat n thl jub jvyy unir gebhoyr znvagnvavat nhgubevgl gb chyy guvf bss, fb gung Frfxr pna gnxr onpx pbageby gb fnir gur qnl......naq gura FVFGREXVA VF YVGRENYYL ARIRE ZRAGVBARQ NTNVA, NF VS FUR ARIRE RKVFGRQ.  Qrfcvgr Fvfgrexva pyrneyl univat nyyvrf jub'q cersre ure gb Frfxr.  Frfxr whfg gnxrf pbageby jvgubhg rira n gubhtug be vffhr rira gubhtu abg bayl jnf Fvfgrexva n ceboyrz rneyvre, ohg vg jnf pbafgnagyl zragvbarq nobhg ubj gur Zngevf zvtug ybfr pbageby vs Frfxr pbagvahrq gb rzoneenff gur yvar, fhttrfgvat gurve tevc ba cbjre jnf grahbhf ng orfg.  Vg'f yvxr gurer jnf n jubyr svany nep gb guvf fgbel gung jnf whfg phg naq gur nofrapr fubjf.

Rira jbefr vf ubj Frfxr naq Nqnyyn'f eryngvbafuvc vf zraqrq va gur svany npg.  Frfxr unf Nqnyyn juvccrq orpnhfr Frfxr'f nggrzcg gb fubj yrnqrefuvc vanqiregragyl yrnqf gb Frfxr - abg haqrefgnaqvat be gelvat gb ernyyl haqrefgnaq orsber fur npgf jung Nqnyyn'f cebgrfgref ner qbvat - univat gb qvfpvcyvar Nqnyyn'f tebhc, naq Frfxr znavchyngr gur Zngevf gb abg trg Nqnyyn xvyyrq....ol juvccvat Nqnyyn urefrys.  Vg vf ubeevslvat naq oehgny naq oernxf Nqnyyn'f urneg, nf lbh zvtug vzntvar - naq Nqnyyn ol guvf cbvag unf nyernql sbhaq bguref jub pner sbe ure naq fur ybirf.  Naq Nqnyyn'f pyrne ybire fnpevsvprf urefrys gb fnir Frfxr ng gur raq bs gur guveq Npg, naq Nqnyyn ungrf urefrys sbe abg orvat jvyyvat gb pbaqrza Frfxr sbe vg.....naq gurernsgre, Nqnyyn naq Frfxr ner ba gur fnzr fvqr nsgrejneqf naq onpx va ybir nf vs yvggyr unf unccrarq?  Vg'f yvxr gurer jrer 30-50 cntrf bs erpbapvyvngvba gung jrer oyngnagyl bzvggrq, naq gur obbx srryf ubeevoyl vapbzcyrgr naq qvfwbvagrq jvgubhg vg.   

The end result of it all is that I have a hard time recommending Escaping Exodus.  It just feels like a book that was failed by the editing process, which should've recommended either cuts to some ideas or more importantly expansion of others and other plot points so that the character arcs, ideas, and concepts could be resolved in a satisfying fashion.  But as it is, it just feels horribly disjointed and incomplete, which is such a shame.
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