Escaping Exodus

July 1, 2019
The first SF novel from fantasy author Drayden (Temper) has high ambitions but is cramped and confusing. Centuries after humans abandoned the ravaged Earth to create colonies inside enormous starfaring beasts, teenage matriarch-in-training Seske emerges from stasis to discover the beast her people have chosen to inhabit may not be the safe harbor they’d hoped for. As her increasingly frail mother, Matris, pressures Seske to become the leader their imperiled people need, Seske buckles beneath the burdens of expectation and the price of being Matris’s sole legitimate heir. Her cunning sister, left illegitimate and nameless by their society’s draconian kinship rules, challenges Seske’s claim to the throne at every turn, while Adalla, Seske’s forbidden love, faces a cruel, demanding destiny as a beastworker who will toil all her life to keep the beast alive for those living in it. When Matris falls deathly ill, Seske is thrust into the role of matriarch and protector, ready or not. Complicated subplots (monsters, revolution, love triangles) compete with the main characters and their primary relationships; in the end, all are underdeveloped. Inconsistent characterization and confounding worldbuilding significantly limit the appeal of this disappointing novel. Agent: Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maass Literary.

August 15, 2019
An Afrofuturist love story, set inside a giant space-creature, about two women of different castes. In a far distant future, humans left Earth behind generations ago in a mass exodus. The survivors now travel inside enormous beasts that trek across the vacuum of space; human societies carve out spaces inside the living leviathans that carry them. Seske, the daughter of the clan matriarch, is being groomed for her eventual position of power, but she'd much rather spend her time with Adalla, her best friend since childhood; however, Adalla's a beastworker who toils in the space beast's organs and arteries. The chapters alternate between the first-person perspectives of the two young women, and it quickly becomes clear that Seske and Adalla are very much in love--but a beastworker isn't considered a suitable mate for the heir apparent. When Seske suddenly becomes the clan matriarch, her title is threatened by another claimant--her own sister. Meanwhile, Adalla, heartbroken over losing Seske, is demoted until she's a lowly boneworker. Soon the two women each uncover shocking truths about their society and how it operates--and, more importantly, about the beast that keeps them all alive. The plot twists that follow are surprising but mostly plausible, and it culminates in a gratifying finish. Drayden's prose is neither clunky nor lyrical--it just gets the job done. But it's substance, rather than style, that sets this book apart. Everything about the Afrofuturistic worldbuilding is exquisitely imaginative, and the characters are three-dimensional, occasionally offering flashes of dark humor. The spacefaring beast is a marvel, containing a whole ecosystem with microclimates and other organisms living within it alongside humans. Although the relationship between the two young women is perpetually hampered by circumstance, as most good love stories are, it's palpable and vibrant. One hopes to read more about Seske and Adalla's further adventures. A straightforwardly written sci-fi tale with top-notch worldbuilding and sharp characterization.

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November 23, 2020
Revisiting the future world of Escaping Exodus, in which humans live inside huge, spacefaring creatures, Drayden’s jarringly fast-paced sequel explores fraying relationships and political intrigue. In a matriarchal society whose population encumbers the beast they have colonized, Doka Kaleigh is a rare male leader with many enemies and a civilization to save. Family structures now feature several spouses with relationships that vary from romantic to platonic, and Doka endangers his political career and the sanctity of his family when he develops feelings for his purely platonic will-wife, Seske. Together, Seske and Doka unearth dark secrets of their society, but their political opponents will do anything to maintain the status quo. The worldbuilding is as strange, inventive, and occasionally perplexing as ever, and Drayden delivers large helpings of grotesque body horror as the human characters explore the organs of their living vessel. The convoluted, breakneck plot never quite comes together, however, with several aborted subplots and a climax that relies heavily on deus ex machina. Die-hard fans of the first installment will enjoy revisiting this world, but casual readers will find the plot too garbled. Agent: Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maass Agency. (Feb.).