Becoming The Muse

Symbiosis Escaping Exodus Book Review

Symbiosis is Book 2 of the Escaping Exodus  Series by Nicky Drayden, published on 28 January 2021 a sequel to Escaping Exodus published in 26 September 2019.

The story follows events of the first book, set 1000 years after humans have left the planet and they live a symbiotic relationship inside giant, space faring creatures known as the Zenzee. After a turbulent era where the Zenzee were exploited to near extinction, humanity is on the verge of achieving sustainable balance with the creatures, when a cataclysmic episode on another Zenzee turn calculated plans into desperate measures for survival amidst power struggles and space politics.

The Good

The most riveting part of this book continues to be the world building, each page has something weirdly different, if you can imagine people living inside a giant space creature, walking about the heart, hunting nightmarish creatures swimming in the bile ducts. I don’t remember if the creature is described properly but I imagined it as a sort of giant space worm similar to the sand worms from Dune the Shai-Hulud.

Book 2 expands on the world-building including different people living in other creatures, the cultural clashes and inevitable hatred fuelled by these differences. It also delves into the matriarchal society’s cultural practises and family units which in turn exposes some shocking revelations which you may have suspected but could have never imagined.

At its core Symbiosis is a social commentary on humanity and its prejudices based on race, sex, class, marital status and other discriminatory behaviour under the guise of tradition, culture, greater good when in essence, everyone just looking out for themselves despite everyone being in the same boat or creature..

The Bad

Its been about 5 years since I read the first book and felt a bit lost getting into this story that I had stop and find my bearings in the first book… so if you are considering reading this one before the other…. I do not recommend that.

While it’s a decent read the first book did it better, this one though more polished, the storytelling lacked a certain quality that was in the first, as if in trying to outdo its predecessor it lost some of its soul, beyond curiosity in knowing what happened next I wasn’t invested in the characters.

The book passes through timelines of several years in a space of a couple of pages that you hardly have time to care and meanwhile there is so much going on different fronts, that you cant keep up and all you can do is turn the next page and find out what twist comes up next.

The Ugly

A lot of really bad things can be packed in a couple of pages it feels like a trauma dump which can result in some emotional fatigue…

As a reflection on humanity, the world could be ending and still we would be backstabbing each other instead of trying to get along and survive the storm… whats up with us?

Final Thoughts

Symboisis is an ambitious continuation of the bio-punk horror, cyber space opera Escaping Exodus that offer genre blending storytelling with scifi and a twist of Afrofuturustic fantasy that explores the symbiosis between the host and parasite, prey and predator and if there can be balance…