Axiom's End
Ratings108
Average rating3.5
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The alternate history first contact adventure Axiom's End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis. Truth is a human right. 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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3 primary booksNoumena
Noumena is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2020 with contributions by Lindsay Ellis.
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It's been ages since I read a GOOD science fiction story. This story starts with a young woman whose father is on the run for releasing leaked government information about first contact with extraterrestrials. There are many boilerplate directions a story like this could go, but this one surprises! It is a page turner, with unique themes - Is truth a human right? Is it ethical to lie by omission? How far should one go to protect family? What is family? The author also poses thought-provoking issues about first contact and how that might go, and if perhaps we humans might get it all wrong? If you would like a new and different science fiction read that is well written and compelling, this should be on your list!
I received this book from Netgalley and St. Martins Press in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own and have not been influenced.
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This one is an alt-history first contact story set in 2007. I kinda liked it, it's action packed, the writing is good. The focus was more on the relationship between the main alien and the protagonist, which was well done. There is lots of focus on the communication aspect: how to develop something that translates totally different language structures and alien sounds. That was cool. I thought that the CIA agency was too nice to be true in terms of letting outsiders in and treating people nicely (for the most part). It is a page turner with cinematic action scenes.
