Exo: A Novel by Colin Brush
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a lot of ways, this is exactly the novel I get most excited to read when I'm hunting for SF. Big ideas intersecting with normal life, even if in unique settings such as across the solar system after an exodus from Earth.

I love this kind of thing. When the truly awe-some needs to be understood by normal people under a lot of hardship. And when the Caul is introduced... a hyperdimensional topography that tends to make people go mad or run into it or eventually commit suicide... it certainly seems to be something wicked.

I kept thinking to myself that this could easily have been a book by Reynolds. High class hard SF that isn't all space opera, but edging the boundaries of all that we actually know.

Later on, however, it kinda went away from that. Becoming a murder mystery was fun, of course, as was the whole weird religious angle that totally scans for humanity in truly odd situations like this, but I think there was a little too much emphasis on it and less on the story and the awe, which is what I was geared to enjoy from the start.



Not bad, mind you. And the conclusion was very Arthur C. Clarke. Either way, I'm going to keep a close eye on this author. I want more.

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