I’m a big fan of Dickinson’s Baru Cormorant series, so I was curious to see what he’d been working on in the meantime. I was excited to see how he handled a different genre but I think through reading Exordia I realized that what I liked so much about Baru Cormorant isn’t very specific to the genre, what grabbed me were the compelling, fully fleshed out main cast and relationships I became invested in, along with the great, intricate worldbuilding.

Other reviewers have mentioned that the first section stands out and was originally published as a separate short story. I think the first section is the strongest part of the book and Anna and Ssrin’s weird-ass relationship was super compelling and drew me in, and then we basically never saw these characters interact again until the very end of the book.

I also think Dickinson bit off more than he could chew with all the topics he covers in the book. Pure math, the history of outside interference in Kurdistan, the Obama-era drone program and military in general, alien technology that interfaces with souls- it’s an ambitious amount of ground to cover and even with how long the book is, to me it spent so much time jumping around that it didn’t really fully deliver on any of these aspects.

I found the overarching plot and the POV characters engaging, but I struggled with the choppiness of the narrative. At the climax, I was genuinely too confused with what was happening with all the different characters and their motivations actually digest what was happening. Overall, I liked parts of it but struggled with the book as a whole, and would recommend people go in knowing that it’s hard sci-fi and pretty different from the Baru Cormorant series.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a difficult book to review. I really enjoyed the Baru Cormorant books, though they took me a while to get through and had a little too much economics and politics for my personal taste, and the beginning of this book really captured me in a similar way. Seth Dickinson has a prose style that appeals to me, and his books thus far have had an imaginative complexity that I enjoy. This particular book turned out to be very much not my thing, but I can definitely see what kinds of readers would enjoy it. so I want to emphasize that I think the writing is great, the overall plotting is skillful, and that the opinions I'm going to express about the book overall were things I didn't like but things others surely will like, because I think Dickinson is a skilled writer. My experience was disappointing, but it's not really about the quality of the book, just that it was not at all what I expected in a way I didn't end up enjoying.

This started out as an alien book, with the fun combo of horror and humor that plopping aliens down in the very real modern world can produce. Anna, a young Kurdish woman living in New York, and Ssrin, an alien she spots in Central Park, have an immediate bond. The kind of fun, unhealthy, weird bond that two beings who have lived through horrors and are sharing an apartment can have with each other, accentuated by interesting alien biology and culture and the sense of a coming large-scale conflict on the horizon. I loved this part of the book, I think it will stick with me.

Then it became very much a military book--our military and foreign militaries--in a way that felt similar to how a blockbuster alien or superhero movie can sometimes be suddenly about the military response rather than the average person response. It also became a theoretical math book?? Which was rough for me, a person who does not understand math at all. Some of the characters we met after that initial introduction with Anna and Ssrin were interesting, but I didn't love any of them in the way I wanted to; I got overwhelmed by the amount of jargon I didn't understand and, personally, didn't care about. It was a very long book, and the bulk of it was really tough going for me, and the ending did not really pay off enough to make up for it (though I did like the ways that things tied up). So, very much not a book for me, disguised as a book I thought would be up my alley.

But! Complex and well-written, an intriguing premise, interestingly morally complicated, and I think it will please a lot of readers.

Seth Dickinson writes a fun book as a breather. Which for Seth means a brutally imaginative scifi cross-examination of sacrifice, genocide and the legacy of US imperialism. Somehow this ends up being really goddamn funny. I do not know how they do it.

If Baru took an elliptical path towards its subject matter, by defamiliarising and rearranging the material of history... Exordia gets straight in there.

Maybe you could call it philosophy-driven science fiction, a thought experiment about ethics. Maybe you could compare it to Arrival, but shot up with dark humour (it's a book that could make me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time) and real tragedy (at the core is [the genocide of the Kurds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal_campaign) in the late 80s, and the many betrayals and failures of American imperialism). It's got a lot of action and military details, with a good few spies and soldiers as central characters, but broadly it’s one of the sharpest eviscerations of the US military and its role in the world I’ve encountered in Western science fiction.

The first two thirds or so lay out the driving, fascinating ‘what the hell is this thing’ mystery lined with all manner of juicy body horror and drama—yet the core high-concept premise is laid out almost immediately, you know what's at stake. The last third… escalates.

It's full of the usual meaty Seth themes, iterating on the ideas first laid out in Baru. But it's a distinct flavour of its own. That escalation is... well, I can't describe in detail, not while the book isn't even out, but it's nuts. Not just for the scale, but for how convincingly it sells concepts that if I described them straightforwardly would sound completely ridiculous.

Equally, it's a study of a markedly diverse group of characters thrown together from all over the world, each constructed with very evident care and nuance. It goes places that so many writers would probably feel 'damn, that's probably *way too thorny* for someone like me to write about'---and yet somehow, it manages to handle it gracefully each time. Certainly, you can perhaps inevitably tell when Seth is writing from direct experience and when they are (as they used to say back in the '10s) Writing The Other, if only through what they assume you know and what they need to explain as much as everything---and yet there are always all these telling details (the scientist cursing out R) that make these characters come alive with convincing presence and humour.

(Of course the autistic-ass lesbians are my faves. It's not as overtly a Lesbian Book as Baru was, but there's a *strong* current of gay.)

A few other reviewers mention Crichton, but I haven't read Crichton, so... I'll have to make other comparisons. But then the thing is it's very self-aware about existing in the fabric of science fiction. This book is set in our world, not in the near future but the recent past, in the late Obama administration. A lot of the things you might compare it to (including a couple I've mentioned, Arrival, Crichton) will be invoked as explicit, in-character allusions as these very sharp, funny, modern people try to make sense of their crazy situation. Sometimes it feels like Tamsyn's use of memes as texture, but it never gets overbearing. The rhythms of Seth's prose have been refined by Baru into a powerful suite of devices to make you cackle and go, noooo, Seetttthhhhh...

It's a fascinating blend of hard-ish scifi, with the big ideas carried by *surprisingly accurate* higher-mathematical technobabble, and what you could probably best call occultism: narrative and ethics and gods and mythology. Seth always tends to deflect when praised for their ability to hop between a dozen different disciplines and pull them together into one unifying story, saying that they're just good at looking up summaries, or that they had help from the right people. Maybe so, but it *works*, it passes the smell test, and Seth's real genius is their remarkable ability to tie all these big grand ideas back into the world of character and emotion.

Since this is an advance review... I gotta be careful how much I say! Usually I assume you've read it if you're going to and dive straight into the spoilers and long quotes, but here I feel like I should take a little care to avoid describing too precisely the exact beats of the story. (Rest assured I will give it the thorough treatment when it comes out in full).

But, I feel like I want to say something a little more substantial. So here's a description of the mechanism. If all you want to know is whether you should read this book, hopefully I've given you plenty of reasons that the answer is god, yes, do it. If you want to know more, read on.

---

OK, so what's this book actually *about*? Like not in big themes (the trolley problem, genocide), but specifically?

The story expands on a short Seth wrote years ago called [Anna Saves Them All](https://www.shimmerzine.com/anna-saves-them-all-by-seth-dickinson/). Like in that story, it concerns a giant alien entity, named Blackbird by the Americans; like in that story, it centres on a woman named Anna who was the victim of a twisted experiment in complicity by an Iraqi genocidaire in the Anfal genocide, her encounter with a rebel alien named Ssrin whose species is marked as evil by nature, and the constant question of sacrificing few to save many and its lasting psychic impact. But the terms of the short story are very simple, and the book goes a whole lot further, drilling much much deeper into just about everything.

One of the structuring elements of this story is essentially the trolley problem, or the Lisa scenario: situations where you have to *actively* kill a small number of people in order to prevent a much larger catastrophe. Several characters are defined by how they act in this situation, and a great many more by the lasting impacts of it. But rather than abstract thought experiment, this book is determined to make you see all the consequences.

Unlike the original story, we open with a kind of prelude chapter in which Anna encounters Ssrin in New York, which serves as an opportunity to introduce us to the big-picture premise. This is a universe where the line between 'ought' and 'is' has been rather muddied. We have a notion of dualist souls, distillations of agency existing on a kind of second level reality and interfacing with certain physical things like brains. This is the 'areteia', a layer of reality whose material is intention, decision, and stories. We're told that this 'areteia' layer is intrinsically flawed, exploitable. We're given a frame to interpret the events that will play out, the 'seven great passions' that the aliens consider to be universals that the areteia tries to enforce---one of which links Anna and Ssrin, acting as a kind of metafictional protection for both.

We learn about a space empire ruled by intrinsically-damned snake-headed centaurs, that has found exploits in this system, using calculated cruelty for space travel and weaponry, and a habit of 'pinioning' souls to make rebellion intrinsically impossible. We learn that Ssrin is here to exploit the humans to manifest a weapon that will either corrupt their absolute authority or save them all from hell. Ssrin, the rebel, wants to bring about the former, but she's pursued by vicious, smart and endlessly cruel Iruvage, the space cop who wants the *latter* outcome for his species.

This opening act of the story is very funny, with an abrupt turn to the cruel at the end. Anna is an entertainingly embittered protagonist, one of the strongest narrative voices in the novel. She starts with everyday problems; she can't keep a job, she is paranoid and pushes people away. She is sardonically unimpressed by the American institutions that struggle to digest her, and holds a fascinatingly fucked up mindset where her trauma is wrapped tightly around the idea of having a choice.

Then we reach act 2 and things *really fucking escalate*.

The bulk of the story takes place after two big things happen. Thanks to Ssrin, a mysterious, gigantic alien entity manifests in Iraqi Kurdistan, on top of Anna's home village, which has now become a jineologist commune by historical accident, and starts corrupting things that come into contact with it. Also, aliens set off a bunch of nukes, causing a worldwide EMP and setting the stakes for the rest of the story.

There are a *lot* of nuclear detonations in this story.

So. Scientists and soldiers from (in order) Canada, Uganda, Iran and China, Russia and finally the US converge to try and figure out what the hell it is. A lot of very very nasty things happen, Roadside Picnic/SCP type shit. Many of the humans are being manipulated by the two aliens, who are both trying to secure the object while keeping themselves safe from the other.

I won't spoil exactly what the 'Blackbird' is or does. Only to say that you could call it 'post-Deep Dream horror'.

From this point the story rapidly switches POVs and timeframes. The core cast expands, first with the addition of Erik and Clayton, who are kinda the Cairdine Farrier and Cosgrad Torrinde of this story: two powerful bastards with history, who represent opposing poles of a central question. They're childhood friends who are now linked by that time they organised a secret assassination program within the US military.

For Erik the straightforward virtue-ethicist soldier, 'Paladin' was a manner of extralegal execution for untouchable American war criminals; for Clayton the utilitarian spy and face of the drone program, a very alienated Black guy firmly embedded in the machinery of American power, it could be expanded an instrument of policy with a much broader remit. These two boys are united by their love of the third childhood friend, Rosamaria, who once married Clayton but ultimately cut ties with both of them in disgust when they explained what they'd been doing. They're pretty sore about it.

Rosamaria could be called the Kindalana of this story, in a number of ways---the sexy erudite one who's the centre of a love triangle (there's a certain amount of Tau and Abdumasi in Erik and Clayton as well). We get her POV only a little, but her presence in the story is enormous. We encounter her through Erik and Clayton's eyes in flashbacks, and there she functions as a bit of a vehicle for discussing how we are shaped by many overlapping and contradictory stories. Without saying too much, something really messed up happens to drag Rosamaria back into the story that she tried to leave. Sorta.

This, and so many other things, tie back to the sci-fi: much as in Baru, the 'soul' in this story is a kind of 'inner law', an overriding authority over brains, that grounds decisions. But here, it's less of a metaphor or frame of interpretation and more an absolute fact of the universe, something that can be manipulated. The metaphysics of it can be pretty fucky.

Alongside Erik and Clayton, we have Chaya and Aixue, respectively a Filipino-Ugandan mineral prospector with a background in black hole physics, and a Chinese genius mathematician with big autisms. These are the lesbians, a butch-femme pair of them no less; they're some of the first people to encounter Blackbird and the key to figuring out what the hell it is and does. Much of the story has two arcs evolving in parallel: the past story of Chaya and Aixue investigating the object in increasingly fraught circumstances, and the present story of what happens after the Americans arrive.

Through these two, as well, we bring in a lot of classic Seth themes about the way we relate to the big social stories. Chaya and Aixue both have complicated backgrounds, shaped by multiple cultures (Aixue studied in the States, Chaya moved to Uganda from the Phillipines), and---spoilers!!!---they are able to gain a measure of protection from some of the weird cosmic shit by leaning into the simplest stories of who they are, but of course people can't be so reduced.

Then there's Davoud, the Iranian fighter pilot who made a deal with Iruvage. I wasn't initially convinced by Davoud, since he seemed a little one-note (he *really* fucking loves planes), but he definitely grew on me over the course of the story---he has some great moments, because he's the vector for Seth to be a plane nerd.

And finally of course there's Anna's mum, Khaje.

If you liked the scenes of Baru's mum in Tyrant, you'll probably have a great time with Khaje. She has huge PTSD after what Anna did, regarded with pity as something of the town drunk, but she's a potent narrative force, and the main POV Kurdish character besides Anna. A number of chapters end with a character pointing a gun at another's head and firing (with various consequences), and the very first instance is Khaje pointing one at Anna. If Anna's 'story' is about biting the bullet and sacrificing others, then living with the consequence of that choice, Khaje's story is about trauma, protectiveness and *self*-sacrifice. Khaje is standoffish towards the others in her village, but also willing to go to all sorts of lengths to protect them when the world shows up, yet again, with bombs. Khaje remains in contact with Ssrin for much of the story, carrying out her own little subplot which eventually ties back.

These might be the 'main characters' but there's a bunch of others who move in and out of the story, often violently. If it sounds hard to keep track---it really isn't! The story is so snappily paced and the characters so distinctive that I never had trouble remembering who was who.

Eventually of course they figure out what the deal is with Blackbird. At this point the story shifts gears again, and things start going *very very* hard. It's a magnificently apocalyptic action sequence, what seems like perhaps a conventional climactic battle at an insane scale---but remember, this is a Seth Dickinson book. It's a story about what you do when there isn't an easy out. I hope that's not saying too much.

In some ways, I can see what Seth was getting at by saying this was supposed to be a 'fun' book in between instalments of Baru---but Seth is Seth and Seth can't help complicating things, it's their 'inner law' manifesting. I am reminded a bit of Seth's writing for the game Destiny, notably the [Books of Sorrow](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/books-of-sorrow) which also featured galactic conquerors motivated by the nature of violence and coercion itself. In some ways this book feels like a thought experiment on the idea of an 'evil species', trying to draw out what that would actually mean. Ssrin and Iruvage's people are branded "evil" on a cosmic level, their instinct is towards coercion---there are some very funny parts in the opening act where Ssrin gives her dismissive assessment of humans. And Ssrin is definitely not simply 'the good alien', even if her counterpart will happily monologue about how much he loves genocide---she's trying, but more ruthless even than Anna or Clayton.

Because their nature is so extreme, because they are in large part narrative devices the two aliens remain fairly opaque to us readers. We only get hints towards their world, filtered through an imperfect translator that's prone to coming up with neologisms. (The book mostly translates everything the characters say into English, but occasionally will include passages of untranslated text when the POV character wouldn't understand it.) But what is evident is that they're *smart*. They want things and they come up with nasty, convoluted schemes to get it. The role of these aliens is essentially that of the wizard: their purposes are occult, their visions are grandiose, and their morality severely askew from human norms. In this way they sidestep a lot of the radioactive associations of an 'evil species'.

And of course, by collapsing the 'is-ought' barrier, we get to question what exactly the 'Cultraic Brand' represents. The 'souls' may be a crystallisation of decisions, pushing most of all towards consistency, but by bringing them into something with direct causal effect, it pulls the 'areteia' from 'ought'-land to 'is'-land in disguise. Empiracally, the aliens provoke automatic reactions of loathing, and have gone through many cultural eras that ended up in imperialism; but they are clearly not *fated* to 'only do evil'. Ssrin herself is a defector. She may claim to be 'objectively' evil, but... well, I guess this is something to dig into at length later, when the book is out and I can quote it.

What's very funny to me is that, so far as I know, Seth does not really watch anime. Because I think this novel is *anime as fuck*. Sure, Evangelion gets mentioned by characters, twice, and that's relevant as both a similar scale of cosmic scifi and the paradigmatic '<i>sekaikei</i>' where the small-scale interpersonal relationships are the fulcrum of cosmic events. (Yes yes, I know a lot of people think <i>sekaikei</i> is a meaningless category.) But what I think of is equally the grail confronting Kiritsugu with his nature in Fate Zero, the lotus-eater dream of the Anti-Spirals, Bondrewd's instrumentalisation of affection, the final stage of Revue Starlight. It's kind of the abstract, structural stuff---the way the story unfolds into a spiral of causality, the deployment of a flashback at the climactic moment.

\[I also think, at points, of Homestuck and its 'ultimate' versions of characters. Perhaps that's a theme to elaborate on later. (...I suddenly recall once telling Seth that Homestuck was a true <i>gesamtkunstwerk</i>. They replied 'excuse you'.)\]

There's a *lot* to draw out of this book. The mathematics alone could take several articles. The different ways it depicts military power. The story it tells about the Kurds, whose tragedies and resistance are invoked throughout this novel, who look on ideology from various angles. The tour of historical atrocities it invokes, large and small.

In the acknowledgements, Seth thanks sources from academic articles to Discord servers which helped them with everything from translation and cultural accuracy to black hole physics. It paid off. There was really only one point in the story where I was like 'that's a technical error' (an incorrect description of ferromagnetism and induced current, but not a mistake that had bearing on the plot)---and while I can't tell how it would come across to a Kurdish, Ugandan, Chinese, Russian or Iranian reader, I can recognise the effort that has gone into the depiction. Everyone in the geopolitical clusterfuck is rendered understandable.

And true, it is a story by an American and it is America that the story shines its most critical light on, but it is *very* careful, noticeably so, to avoid making Americans the protagonists of reality, or let them off the hook for anything. The characters all come alive, fleshed out and funny little bastards that break free of the cage of anthropologycore they could have been reduced to. Instead, it is the efficient, sociopathic American operators who feel like bugs on a plate.

The most mysterious character, the Blackbird itself, as the item so much of the plot revolves around---well, it's absolutely intriguing. Hard-ish science fiction (which this sort of is, and sort of isn't) must paint itself into the gaps of known science, make story-important connections out of things that are almost certainly mere coincidence in the real world---and this story manages it with aplomb. Considering that a reasonable chunk of the story involves a mathematical physicist making a discovery that unifies disparate branches to reveal the fingerprint of an unknown logical force, considering it touches on branches of maths like fractals that attract a lot of woo, that's *no mean feat*. I'll say much more about that when the book comes out lol.

Some of the allusions flew over my head. Names of actors, stuff like that. But I could generally infer what was being suggested by an invocation, even if I didn't know the source, so it was never a speedbump. And the times I did catch it, it definitely cracked me up---oh, of course the phone password is 0451, just slip that one in there. I laughed so many times in this book, Seth has such a talent for deadpan lines and characterisation that is just too perfect. There is a phone call scene towards the end of the book that is just brutally tragic and simultaneously so goddamn funny, I think I was in a superposition. Seth has developed such a sharp sense of cadence in prose. The most noticeable device is to end a section or chapter with one short, declarative simple sentence describing something huge and dramatic, then cut.

And it was so absorbing to read: it felt *right*. Knowing how thoroughly Seth edits, I can see the effort paying off. When I read this book, when I got a chance to slip back into Seth's worldview, I felt a sense of connection: finally someone who thinks in a way that I can connect to, finally somewhere I can slip inside to be less alone. The web of connections that build into meaning here, look, I get to see it again. The questions it's struggling towards, the determination to avoid easy outs. It's here again. Come and taste it.

All in all. Seth *did it again*. I'm hooked. God, I hope there's a sequel after Baru 4 is done. It is simultaneously set up to angle towards a sequel and also---well, let's say that it rules out the idea of book 2 looking anything similar. So I can only imagine.

This is an excellent novel, both thrilling and conceptual, literary and human, serious and fun.

It is also going to piss a lot of people off because it does not automatically reveal all the kinks and knots in its worldbuilding. This isn't to say the worldbuilding is particularly cryptic or difficult. It's just extremely detailed. Even then, it's structured in such a way that the important parts are almost always re-explained as soon as they become relevant. But a lot of readers, especially SFF ones, immediately break at the thought that something isn't immediately, transparently obvious. It's okay, guys. You're not supposed to understand everything. The people explaining are aliens and quantum physicists. Be at peace.

If you can get over that hurdle, you'll find a highly emotional and philosophical and fun story about humanity, colonialism, failure, pain, moral philosophy, and love. The moral philosophy part was a particular treat for me, because it slapped me in the face. I've said before that moral philosophy is 'the most useless' philosophy because its main purpose seems to be obfuscating theoretical models of behavior for the amusement of privileged old men who will never have to face those choices. This book gave me the finger. It points to the ways those theoretical models are in fact real and are faced by real people daily. I love it when books prove me wrong.

My only substantive complaint is the pacing, though I am personally extremely sensitive to pacing because my attention span hasn't been the greatest since COVID. The... second eighth of the book? There's a bit of a lag, when we're jumping between timelines, that feels a bit like this novel was at one point a novella or a novelette that was elongated. But I am also just personally not a fan of switching around in timelines and POVs too much. And it's a credit to this book that the switching POV didn't turn me off completely.

All and all, I'd love it if this became the new SF, especially MilSF. I want more morality in my space battles, more questioning the fabric of existence, more reckoning with America's seedy colonialist past and present and, let's be real, future. More military SF should question the military industrial complex. Shake the foundations of the genre! Feed me good food. This book was a feast.

This was for sure the longest 400 page book I have ever read. Also I think the weirdest book I've ever read. It was confusing at times, but also very funny. The first part was really good, and it was a preview of that that made me want to pick up the whole book, but a lot of the sociopolitical stuff went over my head, and all the science technobabble. The narration was very unique, and I think others will either love it or hate it. Overall a bit of a baffling read, but not one I didn't enjoy. A lot of it felt very X-Files-esque, and the characters really did grab me. 2.5/5 stars.

Seth Dickson's Exordia is a fun beachy read. It did not pop off the page for me and felt it played on familiar tropes, but it's a bright, sunny read and can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

This was--hmm, not quite sprawling, but Dickinson has an enormous range of ideas that he employed in building this book. The trolley-problem theme, and how Anna, Erik, and Clayton had each been faced with their own real-life version of it that informs their approach now with the much larger-scale alien-overlord version, was incredibly well constructed. The political parallels, too, between the role of America in Kurdistan, or Europe in the New World, and now aliens on Earth, were skillfully drawn. Dickinson is very, very clever at weaving these broad sociopolitical and philosophical commentaries into the structure of his books. Good character work too; each individual's motivations and values were consistent and their actions made sense. Specific mechanics of the actual speculative world-building were a bit vague. The whole logic of aretaia and Exordia were kind of info-dumped, and never really developed. I would have liked to see the same skillful weaving of motivation and political structure for the aliens that we saw for the humans. But if there are going to be sequels, maybe we'll get them there.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

The Evangelion novel I never knew I needed, full of plot twists on plot twists, confusion religion-science (in the best of ways), and characters whose morals are as varied as their diets.

"History has suffered an intervention."

Reading Exordia felt like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle while being chased by wolves, if the puzzle pieces were defense industry contractors and the wolves were also defense industry contractors who were laughing at you. This is not a fun, easy read. It's a book about hard truths and hard lies and the way everyone needs to believe they are the hero of their own story. It's violent and unsettling, but sometimes beautiful, and often darkly funny.

Exordia follows the same characters as Dickinson's short story "Anna Saves Them All," but expands far beyond that original story. Anna and Ssrin, bound together by fate, set off with a ragtag group of scientists and soldiers to save the world. Unfortunately, "save" and "world" mean different things to everyone involved.

It's difficult to talk about most of the content of Exordia without spoiling anything or needing essays worth of context, but be aware that this book focuses heavily on traumatic subjects like genocide and the military-industrial complex alongside its discussion of more abstract concepts like metaphysics and the nature of moral action. I expect other reviews will address these elements in more detail.

There were some characters I didn't like (Erik and Clayton almost made me put the book down), some I liked, and some I absolutely loved (Chaya and Aixue!!), so I appreciated the way the POV changed frequently. I didn't have to spend too much time in anyone's head(s) in particular. I was deeply drawn into the mystery and took more notes than I've ever taken on a first read before, and then immediately went back for a second read to find layers of foreshadowing. Exordia also happened to reference a lot of my favorite mildly obscure works of speculative fiction (Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, Interstellar Pig, etc.) so I may just be the exact target audience.

Recommended for fans of The Library at Mount Char, Annihilation, The Andromeda Strain, SCP files, Roadside Picnic, and the web serial Worm.

The opening act of Exordia is extraordinary. It’s witty, engaging, and sets up a super intriguing first contact alien scenario. What follows that cracking start is a dense, technobabble bonanza that prioritizes impenetrable science abstractions over story and character. 

It’s frustrating because I’m fairly certain Seth Dickinson is brilliant. But he’s so brilliant that most of what he was writing about went well over my head. Or maybe I’ve just outed myself as an unlearned, poorly-read student of science fiction literature – but that’s for me to grapple with. 

I wish I had put this down and chalked it up as one of the many books that are “just not for me,” but the promise of that opening section left me hopeful that the story would eventually sink its teeth back into me. I lost the plot and never got it back as Dickinson dove deeper and deeper down a cosmological rabbit hole that I just could not follow (literally, figuratively, metaphysically). 

There will be a bloc of readers who love Exordia, and I wish I could count myself among their numbers. But consider me among the lesser mortals who could not connect with the frequency at which Dickinson is operating here.

Seth Dickinson's voice is as clear as a bell, and I am delighted to have gotten a chance to read Exordia. This is a story I will be thinking about for a long time. The characters were unbelievably rich, complex and flawed. Unputdownable. Also, Exordia, while deathly serious and horrifying 85% of the time, is also HILARIOUS. Seth is a must-read author.