I am really behind on my reading log and as such I am not going to be able to do a very good job with these two books. I’m classifying these books as “hard SF” because it seems very realistic. No FTL, no “magic” science, and an interesting extrapolation of observed plant biology in outer space. I listened to these two mostly on my walks to and from work during the month of October and November last Fall. Each chapter was read by one of two readers, a male or a female reader, and they did a good job with different voices and accents for all the various characters.
Semiosis is about a human expedition to a nearby planet after an ecological collapse on Earth. The book starts with them having been on the ground for a few months, and they are learning that the dominant life forms on this planet are not the animals. I found the world building and characters to be really well done and diverse. I read some critiques online about how the book felt like a series of short stories tacked on to each other with large jumps of approximately one generation between stories. I didn’t mind that at all. I thought it was an interesting way to show a long term story that went for generations.
The most interesting character in the book (the trilogy, actually) is Stevland, a sentient tree. She describes the tree as putting down roots with new memories, which is an interesting way to consider how that might work. Apparently she got the idea for the book when she saw plants fighting over resources (an actual thing plants do). She took that idea and imagined a world where plants evolved faster than animals did.
The other alien race is the Glassmakers, so named because they left behind glass in their abandoned city. Much of the first book is about the young and new ideas overthrowing the older ideas from Earth, and the second book is about learning to coexist peacefully with the Glassmakers (who are divided into multiple clans, some warlike and some peaceful). The second book also shows visitors from Earth, and how some things never change. They want things done their way, and march in expecting it to all work for them, without understanding the society they are meeting.
I did find some of the characters to be shallow and one-dimensional, but the richness of the world and the diversity of the characters more than made up for it in my mind. I got the third book, Interference, for Christmas and I am looking forward to reading that in the new year.
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