Book Review: Semiosis

In this character driven novel of first contact by debut author Sue Burke, human survival hinges on a bizarre alliance.

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools.

Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape—trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.

The book is broken up into seven sections, each with a different narrator from a different generation. Roughly thirty to forty years pass between the first four. The remaining story is told over the span of a couple years. The initial gaps between sections affords the colony a chance to develop and set the stage for the major plot development hinted at early on in the story. For that reason, I didn't mind the gaps, though I regretted seeing a couple of these characters go.

The first section details the arrival of the colonists and the early days of their settlement. Octavo was the narrator, and I rooted for him to solve the colony's initial problems. They were off to a bad start: A navigation error sent them to the wrong planet, and a botched landing destroyed a good chunk of their equipment and supplies. After several deaths, he figures out that the colonists are pawns in a war between two plants. The irony is dispiriting after fleeing an Earth overwhelmed by war and environmental collapse.

But things didn't get any better in section two. Sylvia narrates how the colony leadership, now made up of the few remaining colonists from the first generation, has resorted to rape, murder, and intimidation to maintain control. Burke's colonists named their world Pax. It's another sledgehammer's worth of irony.

These two sections of the book were so bleak that, after finishing them, I had to take a break from the book. While I liked the two narrators, I wasn't too sure about the rest of the colony. When I returned to it, things looked less bleak, but I still didn't care about the colonists and the narrators varied in likeability.

By the time I finished section five I was convinced that Burke didn't like these people either. She beat the crap out of the idealistic first generation only to have them turn bitter, embracing the despotic tactics of the very people that they fled from Earth to keep dissenters and their children in line. A couple of generations later and the colonists are mostly annoying, dirty hippies. In a major encounter, Burke sets them up to fail, crushing the idealism out of the narrator and his like-minded compatriots.

The idea of sentient plants made for an intriguing premise, but I found myself with more questions than answers. The major plant character rattles off its very detailed knowledge of organic chemistry, but no explanation is offered as to how it came to acquire said knowledge. There are no plant schools, nor any surviving members of its kind to pass on this knowledge. I inhale air into my lungs, extract the oxygen molecules, push them through my alveoli into my bloodstream, extract carbon dioxide from blood vessels, and exhale that gas. Not only do I not have to consciously think about doing this, but without the education I've received, a lifetime of breathing would not impart that knowledge to me. Does the plant somehow see or taste—or whatever the botanical equivalent is here—the molecules? I could accept that if offered as an explanation. If I could see molecules, after several millenia of existence, I'm sure that even I could've performed much better in my organic chemistry class.

After finishing this, I'm left to wonder what Burke is trying to say here. Is this a friendly warning that while solving Earth's problems is hard, running away to colonize other worlds is no easier? Is she cynically saying that no matter where people go, whatever their idealistic intentions, they're going to screw things up?

To summarize, great world building but a bleak narrative with cynical messaging and very few characters worth rooting for.

2.5 stars

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