“In Drayden’s Escaping Exodus series, humans carve out lives in the bodies of space creatures called the Zenzee, capturing a new home whenever an old one wears out. In the first volume (Escaping Exodus, 2019), the matriarchal, polyamorous society realized their Zenzee had consciousness, and committed to respecting and restoring their world as much as possible, living with minimum negative impact. This second volume starts with now-ruler Doka and his wife, Seske, fighting for this new reality, which has made many unhappy, leading to political stagnation. Meanwhile, they are uncovering new secrets and issues that introduce even more turbulence. Drayden’s novel trades off humor with dark reality, connecting this sf world to our own questions of cooperation, gender inequality, and, most of all, our relationship to our planet….Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis is, at its core, rooted in a fascinating world that presents intriguing questions to its readers, as well as driven, complex, and often queer characters.” — Booklist

“Young roboticist Efi dreams of creating a better life for her community, where omnics and humans live peacefully, in this novel inspired by the video game Overwatch. Efi spends so many hours in her workshop ironing out bugs in her robots that her mother worries she isn’t connecting enough with best friends Naade and Hassana. But her work pays off when Efi wins the Genius Grant given out by her idol, Gabrielle Adawe, who founded both the organization Overwatch and the African city of Numbani. On the way to Rio de Janeiro to celebrate, Doomfist, who should be in prison, attacks the airport. The destruction left in Doomfist’s wake spurs Efi to put her grant money toward developing Orisa, a compassionate robot that can protect the city she loves. The immense pressure of this project strains the three friends’ relationship, forcing Efi to go it alone. While Efi teaches Orisa to integrate into Numbani, Orisa teaches her about responsibility and friendship—and as Dooomfist provokes discord between omnics and humans, Efi, Naade, and Hassana must come together to save Numbani. Drayden (Escaping Exodus, 2019, etc.) gives Efi a clear voice in this engrossing read with smooth pacing and action-packed scenes. The main storyline is tied up enough to keep readers satisfied but interested in the sequel; readers don’t need to be familiar with the video game to understand the book. All characters are black. Readers will root for this STEM-focused girl hero.” — Kirkus

NOVELS – SCIENCE FICTION

Ancestral Night, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz)
Escaping Exodus, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager US)

NOVELS – FANTASY

The Red-Stained Wings, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)

YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney Hyperion)

FIRST NOVELS

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)

COLLECTIONS

Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US & UK)

NOVELLAS

“A Time to Reap“, Elizabeth Bear (Uncanny 12/19)
“Glass Cannon”, Yoon Ha Lee (Hexarchate Stories)

NOVELETTES

“Erase, Erase, Erase”, Elizabeth Bear (F&SF 9-10/19)

SHORT STORIES

“Lest We Forget“, Elizabeth Bear (Uncanny 5-6/19)

“Drayden’s latest (after Temper, 2018) is a sweeping, smart, stunning story that dazzles brighter than a star system. Seske Kaleigh is the young heir to the command of a starship that is comprised of the insides of a whale-like space beast. Adalla is her best friend and lover of a lower caste. The young girls are among the descendants of Africa, who resettled among the stars and rely on whale-like space beasts to keep them alive. They carve out cities within the interior body cavern of the beasts and make a home there until the beast begins to die. Then, they move on, catching and carving up the next beast in order to ensure their continued survival. When their clan’s newest excavated beast is assailed with violent tremors, the girls embark on a journey to unearth the cause and save their people’s new home. The premise of Escaping Exodus is a biology lover’s dream, with an animal’s bones being used for building material and its circulatory system for mass transit. Yet, Drayden excels in writing the tech in a way that will reach out and ensnares every reader—not just biology geeks. She has created a whimsical, complex, rich setting whose world is the literal anatomy of a beast. Interwoven with the body horror, environmentalism, and classism that Drayden artfully explores is a love story between two Black girls from different castes, making Escaping Exodus a true gem to be treasured.” — Booklist, Starred Review

“Nicky Drayden’s novels are weird—and I mean that as the highest of compliments.

Her genre-blending debut The Prey of Gods landed on the scene in 2017 with the self-same subtlety of a Roman candle stuck up your nose. Artificial intelligence and African folklore, mind control and murder, demigods and dik-diks, The Prey of Gods has everything. Her sophomore effort, Temper, an Afrofuturist romp through a world in which your social identity is defined by your balance of vice and virtue, continued in the same audacious vein, plus twice the world-building.

Now comes Escaping Exodus, Drayden’s third novel, as pleasantly and characteristically bonkers as ever. Eschewing her established skill at tossing science fiction and fantasy together in a blender, she leans full into her Octavia Butler fineries and drops us aboard a city-size starship carved in the innards of a drifting space beast.

Seske and Adalla’s relationship is compelling and serves as the framework for all the plot to come (including a few wild tangents that complicate matters significantly), but it is this theme of environmental justice that is the novel’s central concern. As Seske learns to lead, she grapples with the devastating consequences of her people’s way of life to the beast that carries them. Adalla, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with the class inequality that fuels the system. These twin threads feel true enough to our own time, and thoroughly modern, while aligning with science fiction’s long history of climate-focused, socially conscious works.

Both threads are also entwined with one of Drayden’s recurring concerns: the construct of gender and the subversion of its norms. Gender fluidity and explorative sexuality are key components of The Prey of Gods. Here, Drayden likewise flips gender roles on their head by crafting a matriarchal society focused on containing the population: families are composed of multiple mothers and fathers but are limited to one child apiece, in a setup that feels reminiscent of Butler’s Xenogenesis series.

In opposition to contemporary daydreams of smashing the patriarchy, Drayden’s society is far from a utopia. It is cruel and rigid: gender norms haven’t vanished, they’ve reversed, with men treated as second-class citizens, considered disposable and deemed unfit for much more than housework and child-rearing. While the situation may sound cathartic to some readers, its reality is troublesome and counter-productive, an inequity sowing seeds of rebellion every bit as much as Adalla’s realizations galvanize the working class.

Life aboard this spacebeast is chaotic, the mess tolerated so long as it’s hidden beneath a certain set of creature comforts. The question before both Seske and Adalla is what to do when the mess finds it way to the light.

While that’s a pickle for the characters, it’s a playground for Drayden, whose specialty is narrative chaos. In a rather stuffed novel, her outsized sci-fi sensibilities enliven the worldbuilding while allowing her characters emotional room to grieve, to fight, and to love, believably and heart-achingly.

However you slice it, Escaping Exodus doesn’t follow the path you think it will, and neither does its author. And that’s the fun of it all.” — Barnes & Noble SFF

“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. 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.” — Kirkus

“Last year, Nicky Drayden’s debut novel THE PREY OF GODS blew the doors of science fiction and fantasy off their hinges, blending a diverse array of elements into a madcap Afrofuturist romp. If you expected she’d pump the brakes on her sophomore effort, or maybe just that she’d run out of ideas, well, friend, you were mistaken.

With TEMPER, Drayden has solidified herself as not only a fresh and riveting voice in SFF, but as a force to be reckoned with.

Drayden’s worldbuilding boasts depth and nuance, with details that pull taut a sprawling narrative, both figuratively and literally.

Yes, the world is fascinating, but, as was true in THE PREY OF GODS, the true strength of this novel is its cast of characters.

This is a beautiful story, and a dark one. It is raucous and twisted, a story of upheaval told with vibrant glee. TEMPER feels real in the ways of the best speculative fiction, as if we’re looking at ourselves in a funhouse mirror, noting the skewed beauty, and blemishes, and all.” — B&N SFF

“Auben Mutze is an intelligent, extroverted youth with a bit of a wild side. This makes him one of the more popular kids at his impoverished high school, even as he knows that he has few chances to escape the world in which he lives. He is a twin, with vices—six, to be exact—branded on his arm. This also marks him as a lesser twin to his brother Kasim, whose quieter nature and single vice brand means he has a shot of escaping to the other side of the wall and a better life. Already at odds with his brother, Auben begins to hear voices that tell him to follow his vices as far as possible. If he can’t ignore the voices, he will be caught in the hands of a demon. VERDICT With its South African setting and supernatural action, Drayden’s twisty, fast paced sophomore effort (after The Prey of Gods) keeps readers on the edge of their seats.” — Library Journal

“Drayden (The Prey of Gods) crafts a tangled, fantastical African society as the setting for her spellbinding sophomore novel. With immersive worldbuilding, Drayden showcases a culture where science and religion exist at odds, and the balance of virtue and vice in one’s nature controls one’s social identity. Humble Kasim is assured a prosperous future, as he has only a single vice. His charismatic twin brother, Auben, is forever hindered by the six vices branded down his arm. Auben envies Kasim as much as he loves him, and their twin bond threatens to snap under the strain of their swiftly diverging paths. Complicating their fate, Kasim and Auben become enthralled by violent mystical forces. Their entire society’s survival soon hinges on each defeating his demons and discovering his true nature. Drayden takes speculative fiction in an exciting direction with a harrowing and impressive tale of twisted prophecy, identity, and cataclysmic change” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review