Exordia
Seth Dickinson
Tor
It takes skill to blend action-packed alien doomsday science fiction featuring eight-headed snake-people intent on galactic subjugation and inexplicable universe-changing technology, with the realm of aretaic philosophy and the power of narrative as an expression of will and a force running deeper than the cosmos. It takes skill because while any may attempt to throw some disparate materials into the literary blender, only a few can make it as entertaining and educational as Seth Dickinson does on Exordia.
As Dickinson takes us on a search for world-saving knowledge in the mountains of Kurdistan, embedded with a hodge-podge of special military forces, baffled civilian scientists, and local peshmerga, we learn that along with the basic quanta for the physical forces that were established at the birth of the universe, there is also a corresponding plane allowing for the existence of free will and its attendant souls. Virtue and damnation are topics that are discussed as part of the nature of things without much regard to any particular religious canon.
Exordia is tailor-made for fans of action-packed near-present potboilers like those Neal Stephenson and Paolo Bacigalupi produce, page-turning experiences that are hefty enough to let you enjoy that feeling of being in the middle of a really good story and having a large number of pages remaining. On the downside, this novel ends abruptly on the type of scene that makes it known our story is not over and that we can expect a conclusion, for better or worse, in another book or two.
