Neodymium Exodus Review

Meeting a mind that’s far beyond your own is always an experience worth having. The writer of Neodymium Exodus is one such person; Jen Finelli MD makes me, as a novice writer, want to sit at her feet and ask “How on earth did you come up with this?”

Which isn’t to say that Neodymium Exodus doesn’t clearly draw from places. If you’d like a synopsis of the novel, I recommend the Amazon site, which sums it up better than I ever could (and I don’t want to spoil anything). Safe to say there’s two teenagers up against a corporate-military conglomerate trying to eliminate them because of what’s inside them. It’s set in space, and has spaceships, powered armor, weapons of neodymium, psychic powers and all of that sort of thing. But it’s grounded in what I’ve increasingly come to call “Hard Sci-Fi” because a great deal of it sounds, to my mind, pretty plausible. Certainly it shows a good working understanding of four-dimensional theory, spatial relations and, especially, military theory and tactics, the last of which I have only ever really experienced secondhand. So the story operates within a boundary of science, realism and very human emotion.

And Neodymium Exodus isn’t an easy book to read because of that. Prosaically it’s astonishing, and should be recognized as a real achievement in that regard. The author has clearly experienced some of what she writes about, in whole or in part, and they’ve managed to pull me, a jaded old fool whose own experiences are not insignificant, into a world that I found at once compelling and horrifying in equal measure. Neodymium Exodus doesn’t pull any punches; this is a real world with real people and a real catastrophe boiling up like storm clouds on a fiery horizon. It’s one of the few books that’s driven me to dream, and I won’t lie, those dreams were difficult. This is a novel whose characters make you fear for their success as much as for their failure. It describes a war zone in which young people are actively being exterminated by one side and taught how to wage war by the resistance.

At the risk of slight revelation, I had real Titan A.E. vibes from an imprisonment sequence. Our protagonists are trapped in a room that seems to extend or retract as necessary, doesn’t offer reflection in its dark glass. And sure it’s explained via technology, gone over in detail from the eyes of our antagonist (and Neodymium Exodus does a great job of making said antagonist understandable and even sympathetic to a degree) but the whole scene, and so many like it work so well because as intelligent folk suffering in a world designed in many ways to make us suffer, we all have mental constructs that mesh up all too well with scenes like this. We’ve all been trapped in these spaces, faced with choices that seem impossible, up against things we know we can’t defeat, only delay, no matter how smart and strong we are.

There’s so many other things about this book that I love. It’s magnificently multicultural in a way I never really found Star Wars to be (I’ve only seen the films admittedly, so go easy in the comments) where the aliens are clearly very different not just in how their features differ from humans but how they perceive and interact with the world around them. There’s a space lemur I found especially inspiring. I love the amphibian commander and the community of space-walrus; and as a man with a certain condition I found the extra-dimensional entity more than a little fascinating. Jen understands how the math works, folks.

Loving can hurt and this book identifies that. But love is what keeps us rolling this stone uphill, especially on the bad days. There’s love here, grown between two young people, and I won’t lie, it made me uncomfortable. At first I thought it was because they’re relatively young, but I fell in love when I was a teen with a beautiful person with long hair that tickled my face. It wasn’t that; it’s because the protagonists are trapped in a terrifying world and yet, in spite of all that, and in spite of their professional intentions they find something more. I wanted to wrap them up in my arms and help them fight — not just sit on my couch and sigh with worry. When’s the last time a book made you want to pick up the good fight again? Neodymium Exodus did that for me.

I could go on and on. The main bad guy is terrifying, the weapons and psychic powers are super neat, the “magic” system makes good sense. I will say that Neodymium Exodus requires that you pay attention. This is not a book to read while walking, as I still do despite an old friend from college’s best attempts to rid me of the need. It’s also not a book to read in the bath. Pick a good spot in a large chair, someplace in the evening when the birds have gone quiet or the commuters have gone home, and ready yourself. It’s not a book for the faint of heart, I admit, but your heart will be stronger for the read I think.

Brilliant work, Jen!

Happy Reading, Everyone!
Adam Brink