Escaping Exodus: A Novel

Definitely the weirdest book I've ever read, but it was so good!

This is my first space opera but definitely not the last. This book is mind boggling! I am unflinchingly drawn to the oddities and struggle of the lead protagonist. There’s also serious messages on sexuality, duty, and morality.
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I could not imagine getting not one but nine sessions of “the talk” on sex! Talk about uncomfortable situations. ? I also could not imagine interacting with beasts and fighting the obligations of putting duty before self. I don’t want ruin this one for you, but wow! I aim to binge this one for the remainder of the day!

The approach of living in a beast in space was new to me. I like way it was exicuted. I really, enjoyed the story, but hated the ending. I'm not a fan of female characters reinforcing the idea, that women don't know what they want.
It was really hard for me to get into this, because the main character is supposed to be a 15yr old girl who sounds like a 40 yr old woman. At least the friend sounded like a little girl.

I thought I'd lost this draft and was almost happy about it. I do so much harping on details when all I really need to say was, "Look, this is a great world-building party, just hang up your disbelief by the door when you enter and get ready to embrace a lot of improbabilities."

In summary (because my reviews tend to be way too long), we've got a unique-from-the-ground-up culture that we get to explore from two entry points at near-opposite ends of a major class divide: Seske, who's the clan matriarch's heir, and the forbidden-love-of-her-life Adalla, who's from the lower working class and, therefore, not good political matchmaking material...even if a typical marriage in this world includes six women, three men, and one child.

Unlike many forbidden romance stories, where the would-be lovers are constantly near each other and tempted by each other, Drayden separates Seske and Adalla and sends them careening off into different directions around the class system of the sentient, space-faring beast that is their home: Seske to palaces and wombs, Adalla to hearts and bones. Pointedly, in this day and age, one will become an "environmental" champion while the other will take on social issues--and the two will seem too opposed to be compatible. Sound familiar? Don't let the beautiful bright colors on the book cover fool you: this may be populated by a colorful, detailed world, but humans are humans and will find a way to discriminate against and hurt each other so that they can be "better" than others. Sigh.

Still, the world building has so much to recommend it that I will forgive the book for not being quite as escapist as maybe I'd hoped. And in the end, what's more escapist than women who actually manage to find a way to change their world for the better?


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Want the whole thing that, apparently, wasn't deleted? I'm putting it under a spoiler tag to keep this review from being too long:


It's been so long since I was able to sit down and read fiction all the way through. The last thing I read was Watership Down back in March, and it looks like I didn't even review it here. I just haven't been able to concentrate for long stretches of time, and I didn't want to feel the artificial push and pull of emotions when I had plenty to be getting on with already. I guess that's why the ancient, impersonal (to me, now) Bible felt like a safe project to take on.

Sometime in July I started dipping my toes in fanfiction and Tor.com short stories again, and I guess I realized I was ready. (And what does that say about a voracious reader like me, that I had to be "ready" for fiction? I guess I'll just put it down to 2020 being a weird year.)

Escaping Exodus was an excellent book to get back into reading again, one that had been on my list for a long time and that was written by a Black author, featuring Black characters, which felt a bit important right now. I think I'm still one book short of my goal to read five books by Latin@s, but at least I'm reading something outside my experience. I mean, it's super sci-fi, so that was kind of a given anyway...

I found this book on a take shelf at the office and was immediately interested. People living inside giant space-faring creatures? How awesome is that? Plus, stand-alone--hallelujah!

There's so much remarkable about this book! The cover description on my ARC doesn't emphasize it, but Seske is one of two narrators, with the other half-ish narrated by her friend-or-maybe-more Adalla, who is from the working class and who can give us our window into how life on the space beast works. So the world building is even more incredible than I expected, spanning not just the environment but multiple levels of society. The people are a matriarchy, to the extent that the gender roles in our world our reversed, with men being looked down on and women in charge. This is in part because family and romantic structure are wildly different from our world, with ten people: six women, three men, and a child. Living situations are wildly different between the upper, lower, and absolute bottom classes, and each life is explored in detail without ever weighing down the story and the personalities. Drayden handles this incredible balancing act almost flawlessly, though the pace does noticeably pick up later in the book once the world is established.

[Tons of spoilers coming, all tagged, but you might want to stop here.]

Now, I do need to emphasize that this is not hard science fiction, so there are several things that require suspension of disbelief:

> A space creature, first of all, but one with lungs and a heart. It's hard to imagine that an animal living in space would have a familiar array of organs. But just go with it, there's so much other world building going on that we need some guideposts!
> For someone who's the presumptive future leader of the colony, Seske is wildly, impossibly ignorant of the practicalities of her people's way of life: she doesn't know that they are not the only surviving humans and she (and Adalla) don't notice the disappearance of a big chunk of the population. Forget Sisterkin being the favorite child--with this level of deliberate ignorance, it seems impossible that Matris wouldn't have just sneakily murdered Seske as a child and replaced her with Sisterkin.
>>> On the other hand, I appreciated how Seske was such an imperfect character, and how her slow realization of what she didn't know also led her to identify and rely on people who knew more than she did (and to acknowledge them, rather than taking credit for their work). For someone denied just about any kind of knowledge needed to lead, she's great at working with what she's got and making the best of it.
> There never an explanation for how the family structure evolved, the extent to which people are encouraged to reach maximum capacity, and--most noticeably--whether/(potentially) why there are about half as many men as women.

But frankly, the book was so cool, with each new layer of the world opening up one at a time, that I was more than willing to just go with it. Some of the social and environmental commentary is a bit on the nose, but it still fits.

The end did leave a few loose ends--though this is where I emphasize that I was reading an advanced reader's copy (ARC) and some of the issues may have been resolved by the time the book published:
> What happened to Sisterkin? She kind of just disappeared after her attempted coup.
> How can Seske spend the whole book trying, against great opposition, to buck tradition in small ways only to flout it in incredibly massive ones at the end? (Giving up the throne to a man she's divorcing, potentially settling into a couple-only partnership with Adalla...) (Maybe she managed because the upper/ruling class are basically all in stasis, so when they wake up, they'll just have to live with the changes. A bit optimistic, but pretty satisfying to imagine.)
> What kinds of changes are made to how Seske's people care for their creature? I would have appreciated a bit of a time-skip for the last chapter for an update.


And there was one deus ex machina choice that disappointed: despite the family structure, all the potential rivals for Seske and Adalla's affections are dispensed with so that they can, at least by the end, be a couple. It's hard to imagine how everyone would be able to reconcile their feelings, especially Laisze; and Wheytt was, early on, married to two women, and later single but highly disliked by Doka. But still, it seemed a shame that in a world with such different family and romantic structures, the main characters (presumably) ended up as a couple instead of incorporating at least one or two people into their relationship.

Also, structurally, there were to spots where Seske got two chapters in a row. Both times I was thrown off because I was expecting Adalla, and had to restart the page in the correct mindset.

Man, sometimes I hate being an English major.

So now this is where I emphasize again that I still enjoyed this book a ton and recommend it to anyone who likes very-much-not-hard sci fi. I mean, look at those four stars up there! I can't give it five because of, well, all the reasons above. But if you, like me, love a complex world that doesn't bog down a plot full of twists and turns, you'll probably like Escaping Exodus. It's full of wonderful characters, cultures, and environments. It has a bit of a slow start but the action ratchets up as the book goes on until characters are literally careening around in space.

This is a super original and different setting! I liked the different cultures within the beast and gradually learning more about what was going on. There's a lot of brutality, and sometimes Seske makes terrible decisions, but the ending was ultimately satisfying.

Listen. This book had me at the cover. But then it's about living in octopus-like space beasts with queer women of color? Well, not only did I pre-order, I signed up for the promotional team.My expectations were so sky-high that maybe it would have been impossible to meet them, but this book was still a fun and absorbing read. Delightfully weird world-building as workers shape wild space beasts into suitable spacecraft from the inside with knives and the creature's own biochemistry. The beasts' internal microflora can be classed as helpful, hazards, or sometimes pets. Add class dynamics, secrets, novel (but rigid!) family structures, queer tentacly almost-porn, sort of generation ship dynamics except they keep changing ships, coded braiding patterns, and did I mention the FUCKING WEIRD obscenely biological world-building?Delightful, even though it wobbled (for me) in a few places. Must prioritize reading Drayden's other work.

Pros: fascinating worldbuilding, thought provoking, interesting charactersCons: could have used more explanation at timesSeske Kaleigh is fond of breaking the rules, dragging her best friend, Adalla, a beastworker, with her on adventures. Their society has recently moved to a new beast, and Seske wants to see the preparation work she’d normally sleep through. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s something wrong with this beast, but class concerns keep her away from Adalla, despite their feelings for each other, and politics keeps things in their society the same, despite the realization that they’re killing the beast, and through that act, themselves.The worldbuilding is unique. The descendants of those who fled Earth centuries ago have learned to live on space faring beasts, twisting the insides into homes and stores, feeding on the creatures living inside it. There’s a lot of blood and ichor, so if body horror isn’t your thing you may want to pass on this. The closest comparison I can make is with Kameron Hurley’s The Stars are Legion, though beyond the setting there’s no other horror elements here.There’s a lot of vocabulary and cultural information to learn in the first few chapters but the author does an excellent job of introducing things naturally and at a good pace so you can really begin to understand what’s going on in this strange beast-ship. This world was so different and unique that I’d have been ok with an info dump or two (though I am honestly impressed at how well integrated the information was on the whole).The family relationship organization is fascinating. Because the protagonists are younger, we only see this from their perspective, so there are 3 fathers and 6 mothers who make up a unit, and they are allowed 1 child between them. There are lines of who’s allowed to sleep with whom, but the book doesn’t go too deep into that. It’s such an interesting dynamic and I didn’t feel like I fully understood how it worked. There was one scene in particular where I felt like I was missing a crucial piece of information. It was clear that the character just learned something that changed how they viewed their parents, but I was left confused by what was meant by the conversation. A later scene seemed to clarify it a bit, but I feel that a bit more explanation would have been helpful at times.The story is told through the points of view of two characters. Seske, next in line to rule their people, and Adalla, Seske’s best friend from a lower social class. Their friendship and attraction, and Seske’s desire to break the rules, gets them both in trouble and they never seem to get out of trouble. I really liked both of them at the start. I started to really dislike Seske as the book went on, as she’s fairly self-centered, and I wasn’t a fan of how she treated Doka. It quickly becomes clear that she’s not the best successor though she fights hard to maintain her position. I liked her again towards the end when she started making better decisions. Adalla’s journey was challenging but she remained a hard worker who cared deeply for others. Seeing her pain was unpleasant and I desperately wanted things to turn out good for her in the end.There were a few times when it seemed like important plot developments were passed over too quickly or left without a full resolution. I was left with questions regarding Sisterkin at the end of the book. Similarly one of Adalla’s projects got a major plot beat and then was never mentioned again.The author touches on class divisions and how people from one class don’t really see people from the others as human - like themselves. This goes for the ruling women of the upper class towards men and lower classes, but we see the men, despite recognizing their own discrimination, do this with the lower classes. Even among the working classes, the people section themselves off based on what organs they work with, scorning the others.The book wraps up the main threads, but a sequel is coming soon that will hopefully deal with the fallout of the major decisions made in this book.On the whole the book dealt with some heavy ethical issues and took place in a fascinating and unique world. I hope the sequel fleshes the family relationships out more.

So Nicky Drayden is definitely not going to be for everyone, but she certainly works for me. This third of her novels is just as bonkers as the first two, with its entire society living inside a giant, floating space beast, and its 8-way polyamorous family units. Drayden tackles some serious stuff - class issues, conservation, sexism - and they mostly receive adequate treatment, though to be fully developed I think a second novel would be in order, as the ending did feel quite rushed.The novel's two main female characters are interesting and complex, though one is infinitely easier to root for. I do not understand how Nicky Drayden's brain continues to invent these wild and fantastic worlds, but I hope she keeps giving them to us for many years to come.

I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.Escaping Exodus 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!