Reviews and Comments

A multigenerational story of mankind having to become symbiotic with life forms beyond its understanding to survive, this is marred by pedestrian prose, a narrative structure that leaves no room for characters to feel for, and a take on an alien, vegetable life form that has all the charm of a chemistry lesson. Read Children of Time if you like the idea done well.

Chambers’ Wayfarers cycle, of which this ostensibly is the last instalment, is the rare kind of SF that works its magic though the heart more than through the brain. The story of five aliens marooned, for a little while, on what is, essentially, an intergalactic road stop, will make you cry over a smile, rekindle your belief in humanity (even if nary a human plays a part) and, at times, laugh out loud (apparently, the matter of cheese is the most befuddling issue aliens would have with humankind). Or at least it made me do so.

In her closing notes, Drayden speaks of what an uphill battle finishing this novel was; sadly, that shows. While her universe of human colonies living parasitically inside vast spacefaring beasts is as wildly and immersingly imaginative as ever, this reprise of Escaping Exodus suffers from halting character arcs, choppy pacing and a deus ex machina resolution that lets whole plot threads dangling.