Axiom's End: 1 (Noumena)

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While healing Cora, Ampersand tells her that he is bonded too closely with Obelus to allow Cora to kill him. asked Demi just after they passed Rosecrans, her anger now cooled enough that she was capable of speech. Ellis doesn't make up a language, or at least words, so it's not like a fantasy Tolkien language the aliens speak, everything is English and understandable. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being humanand could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

On the one hand, she felt like it might be a good idea to know why “ The Broken Seal and its founder, Nils Ortega,” were in the news, but on the other hand, there was no subject she wanted to hear about less. She turned to face forward, watching the tall buildings of downtown LA sprouting up like distant spires in the haze, and tried to put thoughts of The Broken Seal and stalkers from her mind.But I am so glad this was not only decent, but it quickly has become one of my favorite novels I've read this year. Cora wonders why Ampersand doesn't seem more upset about autopsying Ĉefo, a Fremda who dies by suicide at the beginning of the book, since they were friends. This is probably best explored in her video essay 'My Monster Boyfriend', but is by no means the only time that she talks about it.

Lindsay Ellis's experience as one of our sharpest cultural observers gives Axiom's End an edge of realism that makes it both cutting and compelling. Living under The Broken Seal’s shadow was a source of chronic fear that had only worsened since the Ampersand Event and subsequent leak of the Fremda Memo. Interspecies Friendship: Cora, a human, and Ampersand, an alien, develop a strong bond, the first of its kind between their species. 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).I spent much of the rest of that night and the day after thinking about this, considering why this story connected with me so much, about why I came to care about Ampersand to the point of desperately wanting to read more about him. Big Bad: Obelus, the amygdaline "Similar" sent to hunt down the Fremda Group, is the primary villain whose actions drive the plot, though he is merely a servant of the Autocrat. Made of Iron: Cora is disemboweled by Obelus and loses a lot of blood; this following having her arm torn open in a multi-vehicle crash the day before. I feel like if I knew I was being spied on or phone tapped or followed, I wouldn’t even know how to function.

I have seen the first few movies, and this is a lot better at exploring a similar concept and plot points, but going off in an original direction. Cora and the alien strike a wary alliance, as Cora wants to reunite with her abducted family members while the alien needs a human interpreter. Nils's daughter, Cora Sabino, is a young college dropout living with her mother and her two younger siblings in Southern California, where her paternal aunt Luciana, a former federal agent, also resides.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. Cora hits it hard when she discovers that Ampersand was the one who destroyed the minds of all those humans previously thought to have been experimented on by the government and allowed Cora to go along with this misunderstanding because it was beneficial to him. 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.

Suddenly a second meteor falls on apparently the exact same sport as the first, a coincidence so remote as to be effectively impossible, and suddenly the implausible feels very real indeed. No Historical Figures Were Harmed: According to Ellis, Nils Ortega is functionally based on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, although his personality is not. I'm definitely looking forward to the follow-up to this introductory book, and I really don't know what to expect story-wise. The transients, a sister species to the amygdalines that can quickly deplete a planet's resources, are implied to be on Earth. Ampersand reveals to Cora that the majority of amygdaline "Oligarchs" voted to commit planetary genocide against an alien race, against the wishes of Ampersand and a sole few other Oligarchs.But it had been through PMT, the temp agency Demi worked for, that Cora had her temp job, and it had been Demi who had vouched for her. Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Obelus has his final confrontation with Ampersand in English, claiming it would be rude to speak before Cora in indecipherable Pequod-phonemic; Ampersand, who would rather insulate Cora from the bloodier history and politics of his species, stubbornly sticks to the latter. The book ends with the two characters closer than ever, with an undeniable connection that's so akin to love that I couldn't see it any other way. The climax and final acts simply let you on the edge of your chair, and the plot twists not only make sense but also make you feel everything.