Exordia

By: Seth Dickinson

Narrated by: Sulin Hasso

Michael Crichton meets Marvel’s Venom in award-winning author Seth Dickinson’s science fiction debut

"Viciously funny, vivid to the point of horror, and entirely profound."—Arkady Martine

"Magnificent. . . . A science fiction action juggernaut."—Tamsyn Muir

"Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. It’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete."

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, and their contact reveals universe-threatening stakes.

While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

©2024 Seth Dickinson (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Dickinson brings the same richness of characterization that made his Baru Cormorant series (The Traitor Baru Cormorant, 2015) so compelling, but this one reads like a Michael Crichton thriller on psychedelics—in a good way."—Booklist, starred review

"Seth! Jesus f***ing christ, Seth, you can't f--king keep doing this to me, I have a kid who's going to get up at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning no matter how late I stayed up reading, again, it's been days, I can see time."—Max Gladstone, co-author of the New York Times Bestselling This is How You Lose the Time War

"Exordia is an avalanche: an inevitable, overwhelming, pell-mell landscape-scale transformation of a book. Dickinson uses science fiction as an ethical scalpel, and the results are breathtaking: viciously funny, vivid to the point of horror, and entirely profound."—Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire

A book written for me

Amazing. This book combines Military, Horror, Science Fiction, and Philosophical elements into a first contact story.

A mess

The story gets wild is all I’ll say. Not sure it is what I’d call good. It feels like kingdom hearts but instead it’s aliens and politics and I don’t know what’s really going but kinda do. It feels very dramatic like a soap. Very dramatic. The dialogue is not great but sometimes you get wonderful descriptions. Other times you get strange pop culture references like a Jodie foster stare. The reading performance is good! Anyways, a mess. Do with that you will.

The heavy handled moralizing is so tiresome after 100 pages.

This story bogged down so often with preachiness and repetitive moralizing. Sadly, it began so strong then kind of petered out.

Incredibly slow buildup, but boy howdy, that ending was disappointing too. Whoowee.

The book spent so much on character develoment that it could have been 1/3 shorter. Thor plot line was unnecessarily violent. The buildup was easily guessable. The character chemistry was non-existent. The ending was a “surprise” that you could see coming a mile away. Ultimately it is a failed combination of hard and military science fiction. I would not recommend it.

Too much going on

The premise is nice. First contact causing an existential crisis. The problem is the endless philosophozing and pointless discussions of science and mathematics. I just feel the author was either trying to reach a word count or mistakenly picked this novel to espouse her moral ideals.
The reader had zero change between characters and it made the story incredibly difficult to follow.

Mind bending

Amazing story pulled me in and didn’t let go. Aliens that fight using narrative technomancy

Extremely challenging but satisfying; odd reader

I loved this book, though it broke my brain. Also it is clearly the first part of a series, despite being marketed as a standalone. Don’t expect closure!

I was bemused by the choice of posh, British reader. Anna’s casual American dialogue sounded weird in her mouth and she seemed to struggle with spanish words and names. I also thought her voices for Erik and Clayton sounded confusingly similar. But she kind of grew on me as we went along. I liked her aixui, her Chaya, and especially her erovage! (Excuse my phonetic spelling of character names here!)

Fun XD

Weird yet quirky is all I got to say about a novel so dense as this one here. haha

Sprawling, Action-Packed Leftist Hard Sci-Fi

Dickinson is justly lauded for his anticolonialist Renaissance-Fantasy epic, the Baru Cormorant trilogy. If you liked that series then you’ll love Exordia, because it’s the same basic type of story and characters and tropes, transposed to the genre of Alien Invasion Sci-Fi. And to shut up the haters, he’s filled it with nonstop military hoo-rah and pedantic multi-page lectures on quantum physics which explain how all the super-weapons and Black-Hole Drives work. With lots of numbers just to show that he did the math. Also there’s some wonky postmodern speculation about how mathematics are the foundation for Derridean narratives which facilitate both Free Will and the afterlife (and FTL? lol). Also, body horror. Also, nuclear war. Also, a ragtag band of heroes resisting an evil empire (yawn). Also, an astonishing number of geek-culture Easter Eggs. This guy REALLY wants to establish his SciFi bona fides while also lecturing us on critical theory by stealth. He needs an editor in the worst way, but it’s an enjoyable ride. Buckle up.

PS - the narrator for this audiobook could not have been a worse choice. She’s got a posh English accent that sounds ridiculous on every line of dialogue except the Aliens’.

Holy hell! Amazing on so many levels.

The writing is excellent. I felt like I was back in Gideon the Ninth in the first chapter. Then. Most EXCELLENT sci fi. The history, morality, and politics in the book make it singular. Lastly. The narrator is my all time fav.
10/10.