In Ascension
Ratings23
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings23
Average rating3.5
'Monumental' Telegraph 'Magnificent' Guardian 'Transcendent' New Scientist Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos. Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how - no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope - we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.
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3.5/4 - still processing it. Def. big ideas and too many themes covered. Elements felt familiar from so many ‘first contact' stories, but at the same time I feel like the story was never about that - it's more intricate it explores humanity, family relationships and perhaps in an odd enough way to me felt like an examination of the impact of work and obsession. I will need to come back to this book eventually, I feel like the first chapter invites me for one more dive - I just need time away from this story.
Story is set in a near future that is not all that different to our current world but there have been a number of big steps forward. These future science advances aren't necessarily new ideas and even though they are kept vague in terms of details, they are still interestingly presented. The main appeal of this are the characters reacting to how the new science advances impact their lives, work, opportunities, and the whole world to a certain extent. This book is more about the people than anything else. The characters are approachable and i was able to inhabit them, hope for them. Also this story had some very strong ecological threads and at times reminded me of Vandermeer's Area X, just not as weird as Vandermeer but still an odd vibe is there at times.
I am in love with this book. Such talented writing. Such big ideas yet grounded in granite-hard science fiction. I regretted watching the hours and minutes dwindling on my audiobook app. as the story unfolded. I could've stayed inside this novel for weeks and months.
For Fans Of: The Three Body Problem, Project Hail Mary, Ad Astra (film), 2001: A Space Odyssey
