Escaping Exodus

Strap in, Nerds: it's time for LESBIANS IN SPACE WHALES

in Escaping Exodus, we get a take on space opera that feels totally Nicky Drayden, while also being very different from both her previous novels. As you'd expect, its a novel of unexpected twists and sudden escalations, with some ridiculous-in-the-best way worldbuilding and characters who are far from blameless in the disasters unfolding around them. It's probably the only story you'll read this year which squeezes in both a stuffy, politically intricate coming-out ball and a plot-relevant episode of tasteful alien void sex (yes, there are tentacles) without ever making one or the other feel out of place. It is, in short, a trip. Expect no less.

Escaping Exodus follows Seske, a member of the ruling elite who is destined to take over the beast's matriarchal society, and her friend Adalla, a beastworker whose family perform the manual labour required to keep their spaceship running. And when I say spaceship, I mean "gigantic, ineffable space beast with enough room for a human-sized city inside its body", because that's what this society are building their home in. Its supposed to be a new model, after the death of their old beast: an apparently regular occurrence which requires the transportation of their homes and people, and the meticulous recreation of the city layout and structures they've build over centuries. However, things start going wrong more quickly than anticipated after the move, and Seske and Adalla find themselves taking different paths to the same realisation about how unsustainable and damaging their way of life has become - and how few options they have to genuinely change it. For Seske, this means trying to prove once and for all to her Matris that it is she, and not her Matris' very very taboo second daughter, who has what it takes to take over as leader and to find some appropriate spouses to go with it. For Adalla, living up to her Ama's expectations as a heartworker - one of the most prestigious but dangerous of tasks for a beastworker - would be challenge enough, without adding in the complication of a young, mute worker who inexplicably has her father's eyes. Seeking out a friendship with the Grisette leads to secrets about the Beast's maintenance which Adalla finds it impossible to overlook, and takes her into the less privileged side of Beastworker life.

Societally, Escaping Exodus offers a matriarchal and matrilineal system, upheld by the tradition of "motherlines" and a complex system of marriage that gives Ursula K. Le Guin's four-person Sedoretu a serious run for its money, and further divided between a ruling "Contour" class and everyone else. That a system in which marriage is between six women, three men and a single child would create an exponential decline on a cubic scale doesn't really get addressed, but it adds to the overall feeling of a decaying society trying to maintain some semblance of itself while potentially engineering its own downfall. (I should note that trans people exist in Escaping Exodus, but they are in a society that's prejudiced against men and highly fixated on appropriate social roles - so be warned for some blunt prejudice from characters when it comes up). Like a lot of stories that open on a world of alien injustices, one of the most constant niggles in Escaping Exodus' plot is the fact that both Seske and Adalla, despite being dissatisfied in different ways, are fundamentally ignorant of the exploitation that allows their society to function, but are very quick to get upset when it gets conveniently pointed out. To be fair, both have some pretty significant events to act as turning points, which staves off some of the worst of the character whiplash. There's also secondary characters like Doka, a match made during Seske's super fun coming out ball experience, who feel injustice in different ways again to Seske and Adalla and seek to rectify what seems most urgent to their own experiences, making the world of Escaping Exodus feel richer in the process.