My Skeptical Angel

As a reader, sometimes I'm bored with stories. Many of them are so similar, particularly the characters. I'd like to find different perspectives in them. This is a subject that comes often lately, more and more people are demanding diverse characters from diverse authors. And that great, but here I'm not talking about different races or genders. I'm talking about taking the notion to the extreme and show the perspective of something not human.

Now, I know what you're thinking: There's plenty of that you depressed blowfish. And yes, you have a point. Tons of fantasy books feature magical beings of some sort, and you can find countless alien species in sci-fi. The thing is, in most cases, those still feel too human for my taste. At least, that's been my experience. Maybe you've read several books with what I'm looking for, and I'm happy to say I found one that came the closest ever to scratch my particular itch: Semiosis, the debut from Sue Burke.

In Semiosis, a group of people calling themselves the pacifists colonize another planet which they name Pax. Their goal is to restart civilization and avoid humanity's past mistakes. They value peace above all. Each chapter represents a new generation and so we get to see their progress. Where it gets interesting is that Pax is inhabited by sentient plants. And I don't mean humanoid plants, I've seen that before, but “normal” plants, trees and flowers with sentience. To survive, the pacifists must learn to coexist, communicate and collaborate with these plants, which pose quite a few challenges.

What I find amazing about Semiosis is that Sue Burke attempts to make her sentient plants behave in a believable manner. In my opinion, she pulled this off incredibly well. The plants don't act like humans. They have their own way of viewing the world, and abilities we will never have. There are even parts where the narration is supplied by a tree; beautiful.

Is Semiosis a perfect book? Of course not. The human characters are nothing special though I liked them well enough. The main plot is also fairly simple. Neither of these matters however because it's not where the appeal of the book is. The effort put into creating believable sentient plants is where Semiosis shine. The only other negative is that the ending is a little unsatisfying, but that's because a sequel is on the way and I intend to read it. In short, Semiosis is an impressive debut. If you share my desire for weird new perspectives, I encourage you to give it a shot.

That's all for now, but I'll be back next Sunday with a new article. Thank you for reading and have a great rest of your day!

Want to leave a comment? Please check out the version of this post on medium.