EXORDIA BY SETH DICKINSON

I was at first hesitant to start Exordia, not because I didn’t anticipate much, but because my expectations were sky high. Seth Dickinson is arguably my favorite author, with The Masquerade series being the most ambitious and thematically dense books I’ve ever read, and their short stories are also incredible. I’ve even read Anna Saves Them All, the short that evolved into this 500 page tome, and adored it. But I’m the type of person who is anxious to get into other franchises by creators I enjoy, because I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed. This was made even worse by the fact that the rather messy marketing by Tor Books compares it to some of my other favorite media - the 1997 sci-fi horror film Event Horizon, Jeff Vandermeer’s surreal and absorbing collection Southern Reach, and the (mostly) excellent techno-thrillers of Michael Crichton. At this point, you’d be doomed to failure, right? Making comparisons before release to such highly-regarded pieces of fiction is just gearing the readers towards disappointment. Surely there’s no way you can cram all these ideas and influences into a single novel that doesn’t fall flat, right?

Well, I’m here to tell you today that Exordia absolutely delivers on (the publisher’s) very lofty ambitions. It’s an intense read that will leave you both in awe and horror of the world around you, and I guarantee you’ll be thinking about it long after you close the cover.

Are you familiar with the trolley problem? The thought experiment that has become a meme in recent years? It goes like this: there’s a runaway train hurtling down the track, and there are two paths before it. It’s currently set to go down the left path, where it will strike and kill five people tied to the tracks. The other track only has one person tied to it. Now, imagine you are given a lever to change the tracks, and don’t have enough time to rescue anyone strapped down. Do you do nothing, letting the train kill five people? Or do you intervene, sparing them but sacrificing another who was originally safe? What is the morally right thing to do? This ethical dilemma is a pervasive theme in Exordia, and can be seen immediately in the backstory of Anna, our opening protagonist. Anna is a survivor of the Anfal campaign, a Kurdish genocide carried out by Iraq in 1988, who was given an ultimatum as a young child by a captor - if you shoot these five hostages, then I will spare everyone else in your village; otherwise, all of you will be killed or sent to camps. Anna accepted, and is (very understandably) traumatized, especially since two of the men she killed were her father and her brother. Her mom, horrified by what she had done to save them, sent her away, and now, 25 years later, Anna is living in New York City and still contending with her past, and the very real effects it has on her future.

And then she finds an alien.

Ssrin, who resembles a seven-headed hydra, is shocked that Anna can see her, and realizes that it must mean their fates are entwined. I mean that in a literal sense - Ssrin drops a lot of lore on Anna over just a few dozen pages. For example, souls and the afterlife are real, and her species (the Khai) has been damned to hell since their inception for no apparent reason. They don’t take it well, and have become genocidal intergalactic conquerors, with the goal of pinioning the souls of other species - meaning that their rebellions will always fail, as they’re no longer favored by the universe. Yes, there’s some sweet metafiction here, with the Khai basically making themselves the protagonists of the universe, which also favors specific connections between souls, called the seven great passions, and are thus constants in everyone’s life. And oh yeah, the Khai are planning to pinion humanity and nuke Earth into oblivion, so unless Anna helps the rebel Ssrin get her hands on an artifact that crash landed in Kurdistan before the the rest of her species does, the entire planet is doomed. It’s a lot to take in, almost leaving you breathless.

The vast majority of the remaining book takes place at the site of the artifact (nicknamed Blackbird), where it then becomes a race against the clock for the book’s grand total of seven POV characters to solve the mystery of the ship, and how to avoid it falling into the hands of the Exordia (the Khai empire) before they annihilate the planet. While I liked some of the protagonists more than others, they’re all fantastic in that they have detailed motives and histories, each with their own moral codes. Of them all, my favorites were Anna’s bitter and often funny mom, Khaje, and Chaya, a masculine* Ugandan-Filipina lesbian who never finished her PhD. They all come from very different places in life, and throwing them together with all these clashing ideas of what is or isn’t right makes for glorious, messy conflict.

I have to give major props to both Seth and their editor(s), as unlike Baru Cormorant, this is set on our Earth circa 2013, and the amount of research and fact-checking that must have been done over the course of the past ten years of the book’s development is impressive. While Kurdish political movements and culture is at the forefront here, everything from the queer scene in China to the history of Catholicism in the Philippines is referenced here in a way that feels natural. The characters all feel genuine; oftentimes, I feel as though authors include a diverse cast of characters without actually putting in any effort to make them feel authentic. There’s no acknowledgement of how different cultural backgrounds color our views of the world. There are plenty of instances in novels I’ve read where you could change all allusions to a character of color’s skin tone and it has zero impact on their arc or upbringing, because they were written like the author would write any other white person. It’s wonderful that this isn’t the case here, with some of the most authentic personalities I’ve seen in a long time, and I was eager to google to learn more about the cultures they come from. I’ve learned quite a lot, and enjoyed every minute of it! I also want to add that Seth specifically mentioned in an interview that they spent some time talking to Kurds just to know if they were even comfortable with them publishing this; was commenting on and exploring the factors and aftermath of a real genocide in an alien invasion story appropriate or respectful? Seth leaves it to the world to decide, as no community is a monolith, and I truly admire and respect that admittance.

Of course, this is a sci-fi novel, and Seth really enjoys and excels at creating hard fiction, as any Baru Cormorant fan could tell you. While those novels are fantasy, all of the political and economic theories discussed and dissected within them are true to life, and are probably a wet dream to someone who studies them specifically. While Seth notes in the dedications that they had to use some liberties with tying various scientific observations together to create the main mystery the characters are solving, everything else is as accurate as they could make it, or at least based on their understanding of them. And wow, for just as much real world politics are mapped out, there’s an equal amount of various fields of science. Expect to see a lot of physics, biology, math, cosmology, and chemistry thrown at you. I’m a huge hard sci-fi fan, so this was definitely another highlight; in a way, it reminds me a bit of a less dense and misanthropic Blindsight by Peter Watts. Math and physics are subjects I tend to struggle with a lot - I can do all the basic math required in everyday adulting, but concepts like fractals and high-level theorems, or anything about how quarks work, for example, have always seemed to be beyond me, even though I think they’re fascinating. While it doesn’t explain them all right away, this book does so in such a way that I could actually grasp them for perhaps the first time. A book that leaves you feeling smart, and not with a headache, is a sign of greatness in my opinion. The middle third of the book, where the scientific investigations are at the forefront, reminds me very fondly of The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, one of my favorite novels; this is a very high compliment.

The final third of the book is nonstop action, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It all comes together in a gripping climax that has you both excited for and terrified by what might be on the next page. If you’ve read other works by Seth, you know they have a penchant for creating some of the most tense, stressful buildups where you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, with truly memorable resolutions. You’ll find yourself cheering, gasping in disbelief, or on the edge of tears often in those last 100 pages. I won’t spoil any of it, but this is easily one of my favorite roller coasters of a book, and it’s rare that a novel can make me feel so much so intensely. Unexpectedly, Exordia ends with what is a prominent sequel hook, which is a truly wonderful surprise. Considering the fourth Baru book is still in the works, and these are meaty, no doubt taxing to write books, I definitely don’t expect it to be coming remotely soon, but the ending is still so satisfying that it’s a great place to end on, even if a sequel never arrives. Let’s just say that, like the ending of Traitor, it’s going to open up the universe and cast significantly more.

Ultimately, I think Exordia is one of Seth’s greatest works yet, and I would consider it a masterpiece. Some may be put off by its density (Seth said in an interview that they probably could have made it roughly 40k words shorter, but they and their editor could not for the life of them figure out how) but those who love hard science, pulpy alien invasions and dark thrillers balanced with humor and humanity, there’s plenty to love here. Exordia has so much to say about ethics, and how we decide right from wrong, and it’s definitely impacted how I perceive the world. I have a greater appreciation for physics; I can at least see what’s so magical about math; I am now aware of so many instances of perseverance throughout human history that fill me with hope for the future. Do not expect a definitive answer to the trolley problem this book revolves around - every character would make a different choice, and none of them are ever presented in a way that says “This is the correct answer.” There isn’t one, and there never will be. It’s meant to make you think, and encourage analysis of how we define good, and the means we will go to to manifest that good. This is, as Seth calls it, a “fun novel.” It is undeniably fun. But it may also make you rethink your entire life.

*I use the term masculine here and not butch because butch/femme are very western concepts and don’t always translate well to other cultures. For example, as mentioned in the novel, China has their own take on the butch/femme spectrum, with different terminology that better reflects how gender is viewed there. I don’t know what label Chaya would use, as I can’t remember her ever using one for herself, so I feel that masculine is the best descriptor at the moment.

Final Rating: 9.5