Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Book Review: Axiom's End, by Lindsay Ellis

So here's why I was pretty excited about Axiom's End, the first novel by Lindsay Ellis.  Like a lot of science fiction set in alternate histories (and this one in an alternate 2007), newspapers clippings and stories are found before and between chapters to help expand the world and give the reader a sense of what is the same and what is different from our own world.

The specific document that starts this story, a government document describing a potential alien language which had been leaked to a website (the creator of the site is the main characters father), and being the researcher I am, I went online to check it out.

Without spoiling it for anyone else, the result let me know I was in excellent hands, so I dove straight in.

The novel follows Cora Sabino, a university grad who is working in a dead end job (for her mother) and is about to be swept up into a first contact story with one of the most interesting aliens I've read about in some time (and over the years I've read a lot of science fiction).  I don't really want to get into any specifics (as the book came out two weeks ago, and if you'd like spoilers there are plenty of places online to find those.

What I loved best about the book was it's focus on communication and truth, and just how important those things are for any type of relationship, and the book does a great job of showing just how right (and wrong) things can go in any relationship when these aspects are respected or ignored.

Also I loved the alien, just a really great character.

Definitely worth the read.

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