Axiom's End: 1 (Noumena)

Product Information

An alternate history first contact adventure set in the early 2000's, pitched as Arrival meets The Three-Body Problem , by video essayist and New York Times bestselling author Lindsay Ellis.

She considered leaving work altogether before deciding it would reflect poorly on Demi, and she was already on Demi’s shit list. This freaks him out quite a bit when he wakes up, since he thinks Cora, who he finds terrifying, did it on purpose. It is responsible for the genetic purge of the Fremda, sent Obelus after the Genome, and it is extremely likely that it will attempt to destroy the human race sometime in the next hundred years.Ellis handles these exciting questions about humanity, personhood, communication, expression, and our place in the universe, with exceptional wit and empathy.

Like the fan belt on the verge of snapping, The Broken Seal was a time bomb that would inevitably blow up in their faces. The fan belt was just the last in a long line of events that only tightened the spiral of powerlessness that was coming to define her existence, and by this point, she was getting used to it.Suspenseful and inventive, but also funny and full of action, Axiom s End remixes the Hollywood alien-invasion playbook. I felt invested in Cora as a person and look forward to seeing her in future installments, along with all the other objectively cooler characters. Cora gets first-hand evidence that the aliens are real and that pretty much everyone is in the dark about what's really going on, resulting in a satisfying story shift where she gains more power, knowledge and agency because of her own experiences (a nice inversion on the more traditional story where the protagonist is always playing catch-up with the plot but somehow ends out coming on top). Though it does have a lot of hard sci-fi elements and my low attention span had trouble keeping up with some terms, the author does such a good job of driving the plot forward along with the characters that it kept me reading and enthralled. Cora’s feeling of horror that this was even happening quickly hopped to embarrassment before settling onto her old standby: numbness.

I'd love to see how beautiful he is, to see those wonderful eyes he has, to be held by him like he holds Cora, because I've gone and fallen in love with him and what he represents.Axiom's End might be a story about truth, it might have stuff to say on government accountability and censorship, it might have amazing aliens and an intricate story, but to me first and foremost this book is about love.