I read this immediately after reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's [b:Children of Time|35228265|Children of Time|Adrian Tchaikovsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1495808767l/35228265._SX50_.jpg|45276208]. The two share a major theme in delving into the nature and behavior of a non-human intelligence. I'll avoid dropping spoilers in this review, but will say that Burke's primary alien was one I hated to part company with when the book ended. She created a great cast of characters. And even though the first generation of colonists from Earth seemed a little over-earnest, it was entirely believable that the first people to leave the planet in disgust would be a little over-the-top in their convictions. So don't be put off by their idealism when you read Symbiosis (as you should).
On re-reading a coupld of years later, I appreciated the underlying botany even more. And there were nuances to the characters and their story arcs that I appreciated more, as well. I am happy to bump it up to 5 stars. ( )

Space colony gone wrong, meets alien, but done with well defined characters across a few generations. Read through it faster than I expected, so looking forward to book 2. ( )

I wanted to like this book but I just couldn’t. There were several Serbs that I found completely off putting and while I like it in theory I just found myself not caring about anyone.

What a great book! It's hard to really write about it without any spoilers though...
Let's just say it wasn't quite what I thought it would be and turned out to be much better than expected. There were times that really gripped me and I could hardly put it down.

I'm looking forward to the sequel and can only hope that it's at least as good as this one. ( )

What an incredible book! A truly engaging, unpredictable plot, great character development, but most importantly a deep exploration of the notion of civilization, the nature of communication (both its limits and how it is less limited than we might think), individual ethical choices when balancing short vs. long-term goods in a crisis, sentience (what does it mean to be sentient, to be aware, to be intelligent), family structures, the conditions in which humans/human-like beings can and can't live peacefully with each other.

In a fun coincidence, I just came across this book exploring vegetal life and pushing on our framing and understanding of it.Covert Plants: Vegetal Consciousness and Agency in an Anthropocentric World. You can buy it and/or download a free PDF, which is what I'm going to do. ( )