Exordia Audiobook By Seth Dickinson cover art

Exordia

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Exordia

By: Seth Dickinson
Narrated by: Sulin Hasso
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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 Adventure First Contact Science Fiction Space Opera Funny

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
Philosophical Complexity • Interwoven Characters • Alien Uniqueness • Scientific Explanations • Political Depth
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Maximalist sci-fi. A book you have to concentrate on because if you zone out for even a second you’ll miss three of the most beautiful sentences you’ve ever heard in your life, a dick joke, and two major plot points. The first section is honestly a little hit or miss for me, necessary for backstory, but sometimes a little incoherent. Then the real plot start and it gets really really really good.

Full to bursting

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

A book written for me

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This is a story of contradictions. It is well written, but has a rambling plot with many themes, a myriad of languages and cultural references.

The writer has either first hand experience with the many cultures involved and/or done deep research. I did like that part of the story. There are many very interesting ideas and themes that if followed deeper and limited in number would be much easier on the reader/listener. I made it through to the end, my curiosity driving me on. Nope, doesn’t wrap up or even end on a cliffhanger. After 26 hours of unfamiliar cultural references, foreign languages and invented alien words, it just stops, like it was chapter one. Psych!

Clearly, there is a sequel somewhere in the future. Curiosity or not, I don’t think I could manage it twice.

Some reviewers complained about the narrator. I think she was fine, mostly staying out of the way, not overly thinking the many, many accents and ethnicities.

I can’t pan a book with novel ideas, well developed characters and even many very funny parts, but I can’t recommend it either. It was too often confusing and it just felt like work much of the listen.

Listen to a sample and see if it’s your taste.

Many interesting ideas, but ultimately unsatisfying

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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.

A mess

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

Mind bending

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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!)

Extremely challenging but satisfying; odd reader

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

Fun XD

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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.

Too much going on

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

The heavy handled moralizing is so tiresome after 100 pages.

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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.

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

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