Exordia, by Seth Dickinson
1.0 Stars
7-1-2024

Against my better judgement, I tried another Seth Dickinson while at the library. I liked the parts with the aliens! I also liked the parts where he tries to lay out new basis elements for reality, I always appreciate it when it a creator does that, even in cases like this where the elements don't really work. Really the only problem is when he writes anything at all about humans. These parts are exhausting and dispiriting, as Dickinson is both very naive and trying hard to be very edgy, and the combination of the two is spiritually painful. There was one particular page where I read a sentence, and said "Oooooof" out of vicarious cringing pain. And then I read the next sentence, and again went "Ooooof". And so on. And I realized that as I was reading this paragraph I was basically doing Lamaze breathing as a way to help manage the psycho-literary pain of what I was reading. DNF at around the 120 page mark.