Y’all I KNEW Nicky Drayden was gonna be a favorite! Escaping Exodus was SO GOOD. A thrilling story unfolds alongside staggeringly creative world building, in which a sliver of post-Earth humanity makes their home inside an enormous spacefaring creature, terraforming its body to meet their needs for survival and comfort. The novel’s two protagonists are young women whose feelings for each other are complicated by their very different stations within their society’s caste based matriarchy, one the matriarch’s heir, and the other a beastworker from the lower class. Often novels with alternating protagonists fight to keep the reader invested in each storyline and Drayden makes that task look effortless. I was deeply invested in each of their escapades, which are independent and elegantly intertwined as each grapples with learning dark truths about their world, and rises to the challenge of making change. ⁣
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I’m in love with all the tiny world building details that Drayden infused into this novel, from the vivid descriptions of the body of the beast to the fascinating workings of the matriarchal society and its ten person family units and unfamiliar customs. At times I even craved a massive info dump to flesh out all the details, but Drayden weaves in the world building much more delicately yet effectively. The matriarchal culture rings uncomfortably familiar, replicating a sexist hierarchy in a way no less insidious than modern patriarchy. And with the whole world wrapped inside a literal living creature, Drayden explores a vital conflict over environmental stewardship alongside the coming of age stories of these two dynamic young women. Highly recommended!⁣