Axiom's End - Plaerdemavida

Kindle, 385 pages

English language

Published July 20, 2020 by Titan Books.

ASIN:: B084QGMZQB
Goodreads:: 51171377-axiom-s-end

(1 review)

An alternate history first contact adventure set in the early 2000's, pitched as Arrival meets The Three-Body Problem, by video essayist Lindsay Ellis. By the fall of 2007, one well-timed leak revealing that the U.S. government might have engaged in first contact has sent the country into turmoil, and it is all Cora Sabino can do to avoid the whole mess. The force driving this controversy is Cora's whistleblower father, and even though she hasn t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and redirected it to her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father's leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him - until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. To save her …

An alternate history first contact adventure set in the early 2000's, pitched as Arrival meets The Three-Body Problem, by video essayist Lindsay Ellis. By the fall of 2007, one well-timed leak revealing that the U.S. government might have engaged in first contact has sent the country into turmoil, and it is all Cora Sabino can do to avoid the whole mess. The force driving this controversy is Cora's whistleblower father, and even though she hasn t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and redirected it to her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father's leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him - until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. To save her own life, she offers her services as an interpreter to a monster, and the monster accepts. Learning the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to find the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. But in becoming an interpreter, she begins to realize that she has become the voice for a being she cannot ever truly know or understand, and starts to question who she's speaking for - and what future she's setting up for all of humanity.

6 editions

makyo@furry.bookwyrms.ink reviewed Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis (Noumena, #1)

None

4 stars

Axiom's End is a delightful race from a first contact to the beginning of understanding on a very individual, even intimate level.

I have been, as I assume many of the early readers have, a long-time follower of Ellis' works. Of course, going from video essays on film theory to a novel is quite a leap, so I still went into this not quite knowing what I expected. I knew that there were aliens, I think? And it took place in the Bush years? Not much beyond that.

Well, there were indeed aliens, and as promised, there was indeed W in the world. Beyond that, however, was some pretty dang good action, some emotional heaviness that I very much was not expecting, and a question of how well one can truly empathize with someone different from you on a so fundamental a level as planet-of-origin (as well at trying to …

Axiom's End is a delightful race from a first contact to the beginning of understanding on a very individual, even intimate level.

I have been, as I assume many of the early readers have, a long-time follower of Ellis' works. Of course, going from video essays on film theory to a novel is quite a leap, so I still went into this not quite knowing what I expected. I knew that there were aliens, I think? And it took place in the Bush years? Not much beyond that.

Well, there were indeed aliens, and as promised, there was indeed W in the world. Beyond that, however, was some pretty dang good action, some emotional heaviness that I very much was not expecting, and a question of how well one can truly empathize with someone different from you on a so fundamental a level as planet-of-origin (as well at trying to empathize with other humans, too, which we have a hard enough time doing as it is.)

The prose was a bit coarse at the beginning, but quickly smoothed out. I suspect if I were to reread the book, I may even revise this assessment, too. Ellis' writing is well suited to both action- and emotion-filled scenes; though the prose itself never really wowed me it still very much worked. I got notes of Orson Scott Card (without the zealous homophobia), Cixin Liu (without the what-if-women-were-bad-actually), and Dan Simmons (with less John Keats) from the page, all authors whose writing I enjoy for their ability to get me wrapped up in a book. I may have stopped reading Card and Liu, but I'm definitely looking forward to more Ellis!

Subjects

American literature
Science Fiction