Anna Sinjari – refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker – has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. Enter Ssrin, a many-headed serpent alien who is on the run from her own past. Ssrin and Anna are inexorably, dangerously drawn to each other. While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror.
Agonizing and mesmerizing, a devastating and extraordinary achievement, as well as dizzyingly unsatisfying, given where it ends ... Exordia is structured and paced like Book 1 of a series.
A major accomplishment that seems to me to belong in a recent stream of titles where metaphysics and physics converge ... A deft treatment of realpolitik shenanigans, apocalyptic scenarios and the aforementioned quasi-mystical speculative elements ... My only quibble, a small one, is the length of the book. At 500+ pages, it’s just a bit overwhelming.
Dickinson brings the same richness of characterization that made his Baru Cormorant series... so compelling, but this one reads like a Michael Crichton thriller on psychedelics—in a good way.
