Modern Monday - Axiom's End: A Review

Much has been said recently about Lindsey Ellis and the strange attempts made to cancel her as of late. But she is a candidate for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and her novel, Axiom's End, is the reason why. It's a pretty damned good first novel, dealing with extraterrestrial first contact in a way which is fresh and new.

Primarily, the book is less about first contact with an E.T., and more about the secrecy and cover-ups that result from it. Niles Ortega, an analog character to Julian Assange, and the father of Our Heroine, works to expose the cover-up and blow the story wide open. Cora Sabino, a.k.a. Our Heroine, decides to come home after an explosion from a meteor strike throws the entire office into chaos, and for that one, oh-so-heinous crime, finds she's in a shitload of trouble from her boss-mother, who got her the job. She is in no position to be targeted as the spokesperson for a runaway alien - which she somehow is.

The alien breaks into their house at night, stalks Cora, attacks her in broad daylight and implants a tracking device inside her. Later, after attacking her again, he implants a device inside her ear. When Cora is brought in for questioning by CIA operatives, a sudden blackout occurs, and aliens attack. Cora flees and tries to escape using a nearby abandoned van, only to find the alien who attacked her inside the van, apparently dead. She decides she can't simply dump the alien body and escapes in the van with the body still inside. Only much later does she learn the alien wasn't dead after all. Through the device he implanted in her ear, he can communicate with her. She calls the alien Ampersand - named after an incident the secret service calls "The Ampersand Incident," and becomes the reluctant translator for the alien to the governments of Earth.

Strangely, the story does not take place in the near future. It takes place in the near past - the late aughts. People are still using blackberry phones, renting videos, and some homes still have landlines. George W. Bush is still president.

The story really worked for me because I could imagine Lindsey herself as the protagonist. It was her voice and face I pictured interacting with the alien, and with the government agents, and her snarky, "I-want-nothing-to-do-with-this" attitude came across as genuine.

All in all, it isn't easy dealing with a story about alien first contact. One has to deal with the thorny issues of what an alien would look like, what their culture would be, and what their language would entail. Lindsay Ellis handled all those problems with grace and spectacularly acute world-building. She clearly put a lot of effort into her storyline. I give her a solid 4.75 stars - very worthy of a first novel, and doubly so for a first sci fi novel.

Eric

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