Axiom's End (Noumena #1)
by Lindsay Ellis
(7.21.20 St. Martin's)
“Truth is a human right.”
My Review:
I have been gravitating toward more speculative fiction and science fiction lately and love how it holds my attention so I can really get lost in the stories—a necessity during these crazy COVID days. Axiom’s End kept my attention from the very first page until the last. The story opens with Cora’s car dying, a meteor blast near her office, her losing her job because she leaves the building without permission, government agents coming to her home to take her family into custody, and Cora going on the run—and that’s just in the first 50 pages! What follows is a dual story of Cora’s whistle-blower father leaking information about the government’s knowledge of First Contact with aliens and Cora’s first hand experience as an interpreter for one of the aliens in the Fremda group, Ampersand. Not only is this an “us vs them” story of humans vs aliens but there is discord among the hierarchical (political, societal, scientific) ranks of the Fremdans. I especially loved the detailed discussions and dissections of multiple languages, the abilities of Cora and Ampersand to understand each other and their frustrations at not being able to fully communicate about species unique characteristics, like fusion bonding in Fremdans and the language of music in humans. This novel was so smart and intense—I loved it!
I was unaware before reading this novel that the author is a beloved YouTube pop culture critic. This may have given me pause prior to reading the novel due to the fact I have seen YouTubers produce subpar products to create an income stream from their established followers. My judgement in those cases isn’t that they are monetizing their platform, it’s that they aren’t providing a quality product and followers are buying the product not for the sake of it being a great product but because they love the YouTuber. Not the case here! Lindsay Ellis just wrote a dynamite debut novel!
Also pictured: Sausage Breakfast Casserole. Seriously, my favorite breakfast but no one else in my family likes this...that's ok, more for me!
Publisher’s summary:
It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on 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.
Realizing 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 uncover 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. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.
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