This exceeded my expectations for most of the book, but the start and the ending were a bit underwhelming. It's a story about the foundation of a small human colony on a planet with peculiar plant and animal life, including different symbiotic relationships and intelligent plants. It is divided in several chapters, each with different POV characters, and sometimes with a jump of many years between them. Even though that doesn't allow much room to connect with the characters, it worked for me here, because this is not really a character-focused story. It's more oriented to ideas, with a generous helping of pulp-adventure.

I enjoyed how each chapter, at least before the ending chapters, was a different kind of story (generational conflict, first contact, murder investigation...). I found that kept it interesting. The whole ending was a bit weaker, since the Glassmakers are not as interesting as other parts of the book, and the mystery of why they changed so much in the past is never fully explored. Still, I found the novel entertaining and it can work as a standalone even though it's part of a series. ( )

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. ( )