Weird but fascinating, can I add those two words in the same sentence? Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden made for one interesting space opera. Told through two characters, next in line for the matriarch Seske and beastworker Adalla. Forbidden to be together because of class status, these two secret lovers are willing to risk everything to be accepted in their society.

Because the novel is character-driven, it did have a slow start, but once I got into groove of what was going on, I was all in. Drayden’s imagination is something else. This world these characters lived in…between the walls of a beast’s body, lol, what?! She was also able to use the term "tentacle-cooch". Y’all when I saw that I feel out!!!

As I was reading this novel it gave me Octavia Butler’s Lilith's Brood vibes. Drayden did a great job with this novel. At times it was funny, she was very descriptive, characters, and the world building was so well done, just mesmerizing. Sci-fi fans will appreciate this one. 4/5 stars for me.

Thank you Harpervia & NetGalley for gifting me this review copy.

I was glad to see adult sci-fi by a black author so I eagerly requested this book. Ive never read soace opera and this one had the twist of the characters flaoting through space in a giant floating beast versus a ship.There's so many strange occurrences in this story that I'm at a lost for words. At times it was hard to look away but I can't say it was particularly satisfying.

I was given this ARC for review from Netgalley and Harper Voyager(Thank you so much!)

Nicky Drayden has done it again! This book was a rollercoaster of political machinations, love spats, and very curious tentacles.

This story takes place in space on a living ship. That might sound familiar, but this ship is alive and very unhappy with the people taking up residence inside it. As, usual humans have managed to mess up where they're living and the ship is dying. While Seske is dealing with that, she also has to deal with her love life and becoming the next queen. This book is full of surprises and hilarious moments. If you loved Nicky's other work, you'll love this too.

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<p>Review copy provided by the publisher.</p>
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<p>Nicky Drayden is one of the most creative writers working in speculative fiction at this time. One of the ones with the most pleasant, happiest work...I can't say that, really. But creative, oh Lord yes, and this is no exception. <em>Escaping Exodus</em> takes a generation ship saga and moves those ships inside <em>massive gigantic space beasts</em>. Y'know, just another one of those.</p>
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<p>So if you are thinking, human parasitism inside the organs of a truly epic-sized space herd, wow, cool, yes, you are correct, and if you are thinking, that has the potential to have some really gross bits with sphincters and bodily fluids, you are also very correct. Drayden does not wimp out on including pus and goo here. Our characters carve bone, but also they deal with organs galore.</p>
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<p>It's all in the service of real, flawed human relationships and science fictional conceit that goes beyond "ooh lookit," though: the lives of the giant beasts are tied intimately to the lives of our protagonists in ways that go beyond the understanding their culture has evolved. They have to come up with new and better ways to manage their own lives--which they can barely do under the current cultural norms--and the beast's life and life in space, if anyone is to survive. If you're thinking about the interdependence of life and fragile ecosystems--which, ahem, please do--or if you're thinking about the way people who love each other manage to hurt each other anyway, you probably want this book. Pus and all.<br></p>
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Seske is to be Queen of her people, wandering through space, taking over a beast's body to provide shelter and resources. The book follows Seske's journey from youth to adult. In the midst of her transition she faces adversity from her sisterkin, her ama and tries to fight her feelings and love for Adalla while fulfilling her destiny. The futuristic view of colonization within space was amazing. I could picture the inside of the beast, hiding places of the waifs and the patina covering the faces of the men.

Within the pages men are invisible while women rule. Seske will change the fate of her people as well as how they treat the beasts that provide them shelter. Will she prevail? You will have to read the book. Be forewarned you will fall in love with the characters. This would make an awesome movie, rivaling Ellen Ripley.

It starts off slow and kind of dense, but once the action begins, it's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. It reads as a true epic, one that makes you feel the world really has been reshaped as you read it. Would recommend.

I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

<i>Escaping Exodus</i> is a space opera/generation ship book unlike any I have read before. Innovative, brilliant, outright weird at times, and fascinating in its execution--I struggled to get into it at first, because it was so different. Soon enough, though, everything began to click for me, and the rest of the book zoomed by.

Descendants of Africa departed for the stars. Now, centuries onward, they rely on space-faring whale-like beings to keep them alive. They quite literally carve out cities within the bulk of the beast and reside there until the beast begins to die. Seske is heir, set to be the next leader in the matriarchy. Her best friend--and love--Adalla is of a lower caste, so they cannot marry. This is a polyamorous society that completely twists around gender expectations (which brought pleasant surprises all the way up to the end). The book bounces between their two viewpoints as they each discover the horrible truths behind the matriarchy's power and the status of their current starship.

The worldbuilding is what really gripped me, once I got past my initial disorientation. The way Drayden describes the workers in the heart, and the manipulation of bone, and the way society is divided within the beast--wow. Seske, I wanted to slap at times, but she did grow up in the course of the book. There were some things brought in near the end that I wish could have been explored more, but overall, I like how things came together. The book is a wild ride through space. On a giant whale. I've had a thing for space whales since I played the RPG Final Fantasy II (IVj) at age 11, so of course, I had to love that part of the book most of all!

This book set in a distant future filled with polyamorous familial structures but... with very little sex. Seske is destined to be Matriarch (queen) of her people whose families are made up of 6 women, 3 men, and 1 child shared between them. Do to the lingering amount of space left on the ship, one can see why only 1 child is allowed, but to have family units made of 9 adults while achieving that takes more planning than must now would be able to muster. The society is built on a hierarchy with women of all castes being on top. These hierarchies are even observed within the family structures with certain husbands being unable to be intimate only with certain wives. Even male to male or female to female relationships can be forbidden within the familial unit if the castes don't match up.

Why is this important? Seske is in love with her best friend, another girl by the name of Adalla but is forbidden to marry her due to her low caste. Add a young man by the name of Wheyett and another named Doka and it would seem that with Adalla in a place, a nice little family unit could start to form. But when the sister Seske should have never had begins to connive against, things get hairy. Not to mention the ship is alive and looking for vengeance of it's own... lovers of Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood will love this book as well.
*** This review is based on an arc copy received for free via Netgalley ***

This novel was a wild ride. I really like how it tipped the gender norms completely upside down. Men needed to have guards to protect their honor. Bwahahahahahaha. Also, the world building was really unique. I'm not sure if I would want to live inside of a space beast, but the idea is interesting. I actually just wish there was more of about the first 80 percent or so of the book. I wanted even more world building and more of a story. I sort of wish this was a three book trilogy with a lot of buildup and angst. I feel like it could have been a little more successful if there was more, this just felt a little rush and a bit like a teaser for me.

I would highly recommend this if you want some science fiction, with a little commentary about modern day issues, and a dash of WTF!?!?!?!?!

Daidi’s bells! What a weird, wickedly funny, and ultimately empathetic ride.

** Trigger warning for slavery, mass murder, rape, and animal abuse. This review contains some general spoilers about the world building – so please skip it if you want to read the book with fresh eyes. **

“She?” I ask, eyes wide. Never in all my dizzy dreams had I thought that our beast was something other than a thing, an animate object, a sustainer of life. The idea intrigues me. Scares me some, too.

###

We are careful, taking only what the other offers, knowing that a connection like this is deeper than either of us can fully comprehend. He reads poetry to my spleen. I tell fairy tales to his bile ducts. The inside of his navel is a vast, unexplored desert. He lounges upon the cushion of my lips. His desires rise, and I pretend not to notice, diving right into the pool of tears caught in the corner of his eye. I don’t make a single splash. And while I swim laps, he hikes across the boundless expanse of my molars, and then I’m climbing up his chest hairs.

We’re curious, playful. Adventuresome. The landscapes of our bodies like the foreign world we orbit. Is this how the beasts communicate with one another? A life without secrets? Becoming intimately familiar with everyone you touch?

###

“All throughout our history, we sing of two kinds of women … those born into power and those who disrupt power. I intend on being the latter.”

###

Excavation, extinction, exodus: these are the phases that define humanity’s existence hundreds (thousands?) of years in the future.

Forced to flee a dying earth, humans took to the skies, eking out a rugged existence; searching, in vain, for a habitable planet. Instead, they found the Zenzee: enormous, tentacled animals whose rough hides and bodily secretions allow them to soar through space, as if it was water. Social creatures through and through, they travel in great herds, communicating through touch and flashing lights. Humans being, well, human, we did what we do best: attacked, dominated, conquered, oppressed. Captured, consumed, culled. In short, we made the Zenzee our ships; our homes.

When a new beast is taken, a contingent of workers is sent ahead to make its barely-living zombie carcass habitable (excavation). Its hide is harvested for leather; its flora reshaped into fields; its parasites, harvested for food. Bones are reshaped to provide infrastructure. Every part of the beast is twisted, bent and broken to serve out needs. And what of humanity? We reshape ourselves into parasites.

And we are greedy ones, at that: beasts with a natural lifespan of thousands of years, we deplete within a decade (extinction). Then we simply repeat the cycle again, killing and abandoning one animal after the next (exodus).

So it has been for roughly six hundred and fifty years. But the newest ruler – a young woman named Seske (or Matriling Kaleig; Seske Ashad Nedeema Orshidi Midikoen Ugodon Niosoke Kaleigh if you’re feeling especially stuffy) – is poised to change things. She’s not the only renegade on the ship, though: also working to effect change is Adalla, Seske’s childhood bestie (and soul mate), a lowly beastworker who Seske was forced to shun once she reached marriageable age; Sekse’s betrothed, a man named Doka; and Wheytt, one of the few male Accountacy Guards.

I almost passed on ESCAPING EXODUS. As an ethical vegan (read: vegan for animal rights reasons), the thought of plunging into a make believe world where animals are routinely and brutally oppressed in such a way … let’s just say, it’s not my idea of relaxing escapism. But I also love interrogating pop culture from an animal rights perspective, so there you go. And, y’all, I am so glad I made the leap. ESCAPING EXODUS is a wildly inventive, wickedly funny, twisty turny science fiction story that, at its core, has a giant bleeding heart (both literally and metaphorically). This book is brimming with compassion and examples of humanity at its best.

ESCAPING EXODUS is told from the alternating perspectives of Seske and Adalla, as each girl hovers on the precipice of adulthood. For Seske, this means taking a wife or husband – the first of eight. You see, in order to keep the ship’s population in check, family units are strictly regulated:

“Matris Tendasha made the Rule of Tens that helped to counteract the population explosion after the Great Mending. Ten fingers.” Pai opens his hands and wriggles his long, slender fingers, patinaed with the deepest shade of orange. “Ten persons in the family unit. Three men, six women, and a child shared between them all. Ten for Tendasha.”

Seske’s is a matriarchal monarchy, and she’s next in line to rule after Matris, one of her six mothers, passes away. As such, her choice of mate is especially important (read: political, calculating, stifling). Yet Seske’s position – her very existence – is but a fluke of nature. Seske was the second child conceived in her family unit, but arrived four months early, thus beating Sisterkin by a hair. By all rights, Seske’s younger sister (“sister” being a slur in this culture), deemed so unimportant that she’s not even granted a name, should be the next ruler. Paradoxically, and by a mere technicality, she should have been killed upon birth, and fed back to the ship. But Matris’s weakness may prove to be Seske’s downfall, as Sisterkin plots against her in the background (I said this was a twisty turner thriller, did I not?).

Meanwhile, a natural talent for sensing the rhythms of the beast’s heart scores Adalla a coveted promotion to caring for the creature’s heart. But life comes at you fast, as Adalla wryly observes, and her grief at losing Seske quickly spirals out of control, eventually landing her in the slums of the boneworkers. Vapors aren’t the only thing whispering through the working class; before she can say “Daidi’s bells!,” Adalla is fomenting her own kind of revolution.

What’s interesting is how each woman arrives at the realization that their society is corrupt, built on the broken backs and brutalized bodies of others, rotting from within. Early in the story, when she’s off getting into mischief as plucky heroines are wont to do, Seske accidentally stumbles upon the womb of “their beast” – and it is not empty. The beast that Matris has chosen for them is pregnant, and the fetus is draining precious resources, further taxing the Zenzee’s already injured body … and hastening another exodus. The workers are trying in vain to kill the fetus. And this is when the young Zenzee reaches out to Seske for help.

Through her interactions with the fetus – and, later, an adult Zenzee – Seske comes to accept that which she already knows, if only subconsciously: the Zenzee are sentient animals. They are capable of feeling pain and suffering; of experiencing joy and happiness. They form bonds and love their children, their mates, their friends. And they are forced to sit back and watch as we capture and colonize their loved ones. Because of the intimate way in which they communicate, they feel their loved ones’ pain as acutely as if it was their own. Their lives predate human existence; yet, as we continue to deplete their herd, they likely will not survive humanity. What gives us the right to put our survival above their own?

Adalla, for her part, comes to epiphany along two parallel roads. Caring for her heart, cutting away murmurs, learning to anticipate an arrhythmic beat: Adalla forms an intimate connection with the beast, which eventually results in her humanizing their would-be vessel. The beast transitions from an “it” to a “her”; a something to a someone. From there, it’s just a short hop to accepting that the animal has her own thoughts, feelings, and desires – not the least of which is the will to live.

The second road reveals yet another crack in the foundation of Adalla’s society. The grisette – colloquially known as a “bucket waif,” for the mindless, repetitive job she performs – assigned to Adalla looks achingly familiar. After some digging, Adalla discovers an especially nasty open secret: in order to excavate a beast as quickly as possible, slave laborers are grown in vats – and then destroyed when their services are no longer needed. (Dissolved into fertilizer for the ship, in an especially grisly scene.) Skilled beastworkers and their husbands are paid a handsome sum to “donate” their eggs and sperm. In a society where siblings are unheard of, Adalla’s “brood sister” is destined to become plant food.

So while the world Drayden imagines here is rife with suffering and oppression, there is hope: in Seske, in Adalla, and in the world they want to rebuild on the ashes of the old one. But complications about, as they always do, and Escaping Exodus has some pretty jarring twists late in the game. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the ending; we certainly didn’t land where I expected. But it’s an ending that’s replete with hope, trust, and empathy, and that’s good enough for me.

I also thought it a bold choice to make Seske’s society a matriarchy. It’s not unusual to think (hope?) that a society ruled by women would be a kinder, more peaceful and equitable one. Yet interrogate this idea further and you’ll see that it rests on some gender essentialist BS. As a whole, women are not naturally more compassionate or nurturing than men; rather, these are the traits that society fosters in women. Women can be just as brutal, selfish, and hateful as men. Why *wouldn’t* Seske’s culture be marked by stark class differences, poverty, inequality, slavery, sexism, and other forms of oppression, when women are in charge … yet still place a premium on stereotypically masculine traits?

Even more interesting, imho, is how Seske’s ship came to adopt a matriarchy. As we discover at the end of the book, hers is but one of seven surviving ships from Earth, each having evolved along separate lines, developing its own unique culture, rule of governance, etc. How did women seize control of her ship? And why are the citizens predominantly (or exclusively) Black? How did b influence a, if at all? I am dying for a prequel!

Social justice and animal friendly plot lines aside, ESCAPING EXODUS is a just a darn good book. The world building is simply breathtaking; crafting a sky-faring creature into a ship is hella inspired (if heartbreaking), and the descriptions of the ship’s interior are fascinating. Seske’s encounters with the Zenzee – arguably more humane than us – are marvelous. These are some of the most beautiful and bizarre passages I’ve ever encountered. Really mind-bending stuff. Think: Octavia E. Butler.

And Drayden’s sense of humor? Truly gross-out wicked. I mean, talk about your body horror! Between Seske tricking her new groom Doka into deflowering a gel puppet, and Seske expelling a Zenzee fetus from her vag, there are plenty of WTF moments that will either make you hysterical-laugh, or else chuck the book across the room in disgust. It’s not for everyone, okay.

I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book starts with a very intriguing premise. I loved how creative and original it is.

The story does a really good job of pulling the reader into a world of the strange and weird. It's a bit confusing at first but once you get into the story, the concept and world-building were mesmerizing.

The pacing of the story was fast and with every page, there was a new twist.

The characters were well written and had a lot of emotional development. I really like that this is a very character-driven book.

If you are a fan of science fiction, I think that you will enjoy reading this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Very creative and interesting read. This is a talented author, and she developed the characters well. It has good pacing and if you like Wierd (yes, with a cap W), then this is probably for you. Good not great. Recommended overall.

I really appreciate the copy for review!!

While I loved Nicky Drayden’s two previous books, this one didn’t entice me as much. She’s a great storyteller especially about the weird and strange, and while I typically like the weird and strange and sci-fi, all the body horror stuff left me feeling bereft.

I always enjoy science fiction that offers an original concept and is thought provoking. The plot is fast paced and every page offers a new twist. I am awaiting Drayden's sequel to this saga.

I LOVED the first two thirds of this in all its weirdness and originality and gross body horror. Fabulous world building and quite unlike anything I've read before.

The final third, though, took a big downturn in quality- suddenly plot threads were left dangling all over the place, emotional development stalled, and character consistency went out the window.

It just felt, overall, like it was too ambitioue; it really needed another 100-200 pages to flesh out the story more. Or alternately, it could have worked well as a solid novella if the focus had been narrowed slightly. Either would have been better than this messy, disjointed ending.

This is my first book by Nicky Drayden and I can say that she knows how to make it interesting. This book is heavy with science fiction and when it first started I was a bit confused about what world I was in. I was wondering for about 3 chapters am I seeing what I think I am seeing? Are they really living in a beast and pretty much killing the animal slowing in order for them to thrive?

Yup. I was reading exactly that. However, that did bother me as much as it felt like I had jumped in the middle of a conversation. I love when books suck you in and get you going but I felt like I was missing something and something important as I was reading this book. This felt like it was a book two and not a book one.

However, I would recommend this read. It is a colorful work that despite everything going on leaves a lot the imagination. The characters are developed and although I was a bit creeped out by people living in the guts of a beast riding through space, the overall story is creative.

I wish that I didn't feel as if I was missing something; maybe some more backstory would have helped with that. But overall, this was a solid read.

Escaping Exodus, by Nicky Drayden. an unusual book. Felt more like a YA coming of Age novel than not, however Seske is where she should not be, and when caught things take a turn for the worse.