Title: Axiom’s End
Series: Noumena, #1
Author: Lindsay Ellis
Publication date: 2020
Date started: 28/12/2020
Date finished: 07/01/2021
First sentence: “On the morning of the second meteor, Cora’s 1989 Toyota Camry gave up the ghost for good.”
Last sentence: “’We humans somehow manage with only the limits of human language.’ ‘Yes, you do,’ he said. ‘But I am not human.’”
Favorite sentence: “’I do not know why they chose to seek asylum on a war-torn planet populated by seven billion flesh-eaters.’”
Summary (spoilers): Cora’s life has been turned upside down since her estranged, whistle blower of a father decided to leak documents indicating that the US government has made first contact for years and has been hiding it. Government agencies, journalists and her father’s fanboys are stalking her and her family, and generally making her life difficult. One evening, she hears an intruder inside her home, and she’s pretty sure it’s an alien! After barricading her mother and siblings safely, she goes to rescue her dog, but gets attacked by the alien instead, and then shortly receives a call from her mother who just tells her to run away as the FBI came to arrest them… Cora escapes and meets with her aunt and some of her friends – that’s when she learns that the aliens are real and that her aunt has been working on studying them to try and understand them for the last 7 years. The alien who attacked her previously reappears and mind controls her to try and break into Google’s headquarters, but then an EMP hits her area and she’s free – she finds one of her aunt’s friend van, and the alien passed out inside it, and she decides to just leave the area with the alien in tow, not knowing what to do with it. When she’s stopped by policemen, the alien rescues her by knocking them out, and later she wakes up in the desert with a few random groceries next to her – the alien wants her to eat, wants to keep her alive. Despite the aliens not communicating with any human since they reached Earth in the 70s, this one alien talks to Cora through a translation device in her ear. He is scared of her, just as she’s scared of him. The alien, nicknamed Ampersand as that’s what the FBI named the ‘meteor’ crash that signalled his arrival a month prior, is taller than Cora, iridescent white with huge amber eyes, and a big shell. After adventuring together for a while, they end up with the FBI and the peers of Ampersand. Cora understands that others of their race are coming to Earth to wipe Ampersand and his friends away because of a genetic difference.
Opinion: I watch Lindsay Ellis’ videos regularly, so when I heard about her book coming out, I requested it from my local library. Of course I wasn’t the only one, so I had to queue a little 🙂 I have to say, for the first 3/4 of the book I was completely hooked and couldn’t put it down, but then the ending part got quite boring to me and then actual end of the book felt extremely… unfinished? So I was a bit disappointed, despite liking many things about this book.
Loke Reads 