Rating: 2/5, bad
WARNING: ALL OF THE SPOILERS!!!
I love Lindsay Ellis’s channel and was super hyped for this book but I thought it was extremely boring, if intricately conceived.
Here’s a basic summary:
Axiom’s End is about a 21-year-old woman named Cora who is aimlessly drifting through life working temp jobs. Her dad, Nils, is a Julian Assange-like whistleblower who leaked a memo about the existence of aliens in government custody. She lives with her mom and two younger siblings, who she helps take care of after her father fled the country. Through a series of events, Cora meets an alien named Ampersand and they grew close and defend Earth from Obelus, a group of hostile aliens.
I had a hard time getting a read on Cora because she’s not a very active protagonist. Things generally happen to her and she reacts to them with fear, acceptance, or anger. She definitely takes more action in the second half, but it takes a long time to get there. I did imagine Cora as looking like Lindsay Ellis, which is a danger of publishing a fiction book as an already famous person. It’s written in third person, but I think if Lindsay Ellis had used first person it might have helped readers connect with Cora better.
I’ve been watching Lindsay Ellis since her Nostalgia Chick days. My favorite is her RENT rant, “Look Pretty and Do as Little as Possible”, which discusses Rent and how it relates to the AIDS epidemic. Her videos are sardonic, thoughtful, and funny. She’s great at pointing out things that are silly, repetitive, or ideologically-driven in media that usually fly under viewers’ radar. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much of her personality come through in this book. There were a couple glimmers of her type of humor here and there, but overall Axiom’s End plays things pretty straight, which made it kind of boring. A lot of the jokes that would be funny on video with voice inflection come across flat in print.
The main issue I had with this book is that it’s about 65% info-dumping with the occasional romance or action scene telling the reader about all the different types of aliens and governmental bodies. It can be a little hard to follow and pay attention. I found myself getting bored almost every page and had to really push through it.
The narrative throws a lot of vocabulary at you and not in a natural or logical way. The first time I read it I didn’t take notes and the names for different groups got really confusing. Sometimes multiple names are used for the same entity and sometimes one name is used for multiple entities. For example, Pequod, amygdaline, Fremda, and the Superorganism all broadly describe the main group of aliens and the name Obelus is used both for the group of hostile aliens and for the leader of that group (and Similars is an alternative term Ampersand uses for the group Obelus).
A lot of these terms have slightly different meanings, but I think it would have been more digestible and effective if the author had condensed it down to one word per entity or explained the meanings of the words more clearly in the text or included a glossary at the end so if readers get confused they could look it up (of course, if you’re reading on Kindle you could word-search or use X-ray, but for those of us with hard copies, I think it would have saved a lot of headaches).
Here’s a glossary of terms (in case anyone else was getting lost):
Ampersand – the name of the alien that puts a translator chip into the back of Cora’s neck and who she travels with and gets close to. Cora calls him Ampersand because he was on the first meteor that fell in Altadena, aka the Ampersand Event.
Pequod – the name the CIA appended to the alien species. Named after the whaling ship from Moby Dick.
Amygdaline – “the name utilized by ROSA for individuals of species ‘Pequod’” (Ampersand’s words), named by Dr. Sev for their almond-shaped eyes.
Superorganism – similar to the aliens’ government or culture
Fremda (“foreign” in Esperanto) – the subrace of species Pequod that Ampersand and the other amygdalines in ROSA custody belong to. They are targeted for a genetic purge by the Superorganism.
Obelus – the subrace of species Pequod that came with the second meteor. Obelus is both the individual leader of the group and the name of the group. Ampersand also calls them Similars.
ROSA – Refugee Organizational and Settlement Agency. The people who work directly with the aliens.
Phyle – like a family, but chosen, not biological. Members of the same phyle (symphyles) can communicate in high language and know the locations of other members.
Pequod-phonemic – the aliens’ spoken language
Network language – the aliens’ telepathic language, works like a cellular network
High language – a telepathic language that only members of the same phyle can understand
Transients – alien races other than Pequod who the Superorganism say “consume” planets (meaning they settle the whole of them and use up the resources, similar to the way humans do, not that they literally eat the planet). They do eat people, however, according to their CIA file.
Similars – members of the species Pequod but of a different race (Obelus)
Cefo – (chief in Esperanto) the former leader of the Fremda group. Tried to communicate with the humans. Drew the pictures of the transient planet before and after destruction, trying to warn the humans about the Superorganism. Killed himself when Obelus came so that Obelus wouldn’t be able to find where Fremda was being held (Ampersand, Obelus, and Cefo were all in the same phyle and could sense each other’s locations).
Esperas – (wait in Esperanto) co-Oligarch with Ampersand. Wants to use the Genome to create a new Pequod colony. Does not want to communicate with humans.
Stelo and Krias – (star and shouts in Esperanto, a Transformers reference to Starscream) Propagandists. Also known as Woodward and Bernstein. They want to communicate and leave an impression on humankind.
Genome – Pequod reproductive material.
The basic deal with the aliens is that Ampersand is a being of the species Pequod/amygdaline that belongs to the race Fremda. The Superorganism is trying to kill all the members of the group Fremda because they supported the transients and thought the Superorganism should let them propagate. The Superorganism thought the transients were a threat because they were reproducing too quickly and destroyed the planet the transients lived on. The Superorganism thinks that because the Fremda defended the transients, that means the Fremda have a “genetic defect” that makes them care more about the transients than about members of their own species. That’s why the Superorganism is trying to destroy all the Fremda and is sending Obelus to finish them off.
There’s definitely messages about genocide, racial supremacy, biased science (the Superorganism did a study that confirmed the Fremda’s inferiority), and compassion being seen as a weakness here. You can easily draw a parallels between the Superorganism and white supremacy. It’s interesting that the Fremda aren’t being targeted simply for their race (they actually look the same as the rest of the group), but for being compassionate towards other species. The Fremda seem to be analogous to anti-racists, leftists, or communists. Communists were some of the first victims of the Holocaust, so that seems apt, though I don’t know if Nazis thought communists had bad genes.
There’s also a lot about colonialism. Ampersand is afraid that if he gets close to Cora and the humans he will end up controlling them and molding them in his image because his species is more advanced. I can see that based on history, but I’m not quite convinced that it would happen with such a small population of Fremda and the whole Earth of humans. If the Superorganism got involved, then humans would be screwed, but Ampersand is really insistent that even if it’s just him he would come to rule humanity, even if he didn’t want to. Maybe I’m missing something or being naïve, but I would have liked to see more explanation of why that would happen.
It is interesting that the aliens had different approaches toward humans. Stelo and Krias, the Propagandists, openly wanted human-alien cultural exchange and don’t seem worried about the dangers to humans. Cefo wanted to communicate, but possibly only to warn them about the danger posed by the Superorganism. Esperas wants to create a new Pequod colony separate from the humans and not communicate. Ampersand, despite his fears about communication’s dangers to humanity, implants a chip into Cora that allows him to communicate with her (and tries 14 times on other humans before he gets it right on Cora). He does this because he’s desperate to find Cefo. The implication seems to be that communication is bad for the less advanced civilization, and Stelo and Krias are selfish and shouldn’t be trusted.
This is a little bit of a disappointment if you’re interested in learning about other cultures and civilizations, though. Is cultural exchange wrong if the result is always that the stronger culture wins out? Should we all just keep to ourselves, or is there a way to interact without domination? Maybe this will be explored in the next book, but the possibility isn’t discussed in this one, which is frustrating.
In this book, the aliens stay very foreign. In other science fiction books I’ve read where the aliens can talk to the humans, the aliens are humanized a bit more. This is cool, but at the same time it makes it hard to connect with Ampersand as a character and hard to empathize with Cora’s quick attachment to him. They have some really cute scenes together, like when Ampersand brings Cora food or comforts her when she’s upset, but underneath it all, you know he originally started using her as a tool. I guess as they grew closer his attachment became more than that, but I couldn’t quite get that out of my head. Cora goes from yelling at him for hiding things to begging him to stay without much of an explanation why she changed her mind and it felt extreme and contradictory at times. He does material things for her but doesn’t really express affection and is often callous towards her.
The gender aspect of this book is pretty weird. Cora assumes Ampersand and all the other adult aliens are male, but when the Genome wakes up, she calls it a girl. I guess big hard powerful unemotional beings = male, screaming tiny wet soft egg-having beings = female? I was more annoyed with the assumption of the Genome as female than the aliens as male because it felt derogatory. I thought Lindsay Ellis would know better because a lot of her videos are made with a feminist lens (though maybe this is just Cora’s perspective and Ellis is going to flip it in later books?).
There’s also a scene where Sol says he’s uncomfortable assigning a gender to Ampersand. Luciana suggests neopronouns but Sol brushes it off:
“I can use ‘zhe’ if you want.”
“How about ‘xe’ if you’re going to be a smart-ass about it.”
We don’t have any context for how Luciana said “zhe” so I don’t know if she meant it seriously or as a joke. Sol takes it as a joke, but I don’t know why, because he’s the one who brought it up. This scene is bizarre… I’m not sure why Ellis would bring it up just to dismiss it so quickly, unless maybe the characters will revisit the issue in later books. That the possibility of nonbinary identity is dismissed even in a story about aliens written by someone “woke” is really depressing to me. It might have actually been a subconscious push for me to come out as nonbinary, since I came out around the same time I was reading this.
Anyway, the Genome dies in a big dramatic scene and then is brought back to life somehow before the epilogue. Cora was fighting really hard to keep the Genome alive but then she rips her own skin off and dies and then is alive again at the end in the possession of Obelus? What does the Superorganism need the Genome for, anyway? Don’t they have plenty of other reproductive material, being as they’re an entire society?
Another big theme is transparency: should you share information that might hurt people, or hide that sensitive information? Cora’s father, Nils, is a whistle-blower, someone who breaks the law to force government to be transparent. Cora doesn’t seem interested in his work at all, she wants to be left alone to live her life and doesn’t like the spotlight her father’s career casts on their family. Nils left when she was young, and Cora and her mother consider him a narcissist. However, Nils’ leaking of the fact that their family was in government custody is what puts pressure on the government to let them go at the end, so maybe Cora will change her mind after that experience.
A month before the first chapter, Nils leaked the Fremda Memo, which confirmed that the US government has had aliens in custody for forty years. Later on, Nils publishes a recording that shows Bush knew about Fremda and lied about under oath, after which Bush resigns because he “lost the trust of the American people”. I’m not sure if Ellis is trying to send the message that “truth is a human right” as Nils would say or that truth is chaotic, as the effects of Nils’ leaks remain to be seen. I wish this theme were enunciated a little clearer because it’s provocative but doesn’t really make a statement.
There’s also a lot of play of omission vs truth-telling between people. Ampersand keeps the fact that he’s in a phyle with Obelus secret from Cora, which put her and anyone around them in danger because Obelus knew Ampersand’s location the whole time. On the other hand, Cora sanitizes a lot of things Ampersand says before relaying them to the feds to protect Ampersand and avoid conflict. Should she have told them that Ampersand experimented on and dissected humans to learn language? Cora seems to believe in transparency by the end, but she doesn’t reflect on the lies by omission that she’s told. Is it okay to tell a lie or omit information if the truth would hurt? This book doesn’t really get into it, just grazes the surface.
The theme of lies by omission often makes the narrative difficult to follow. The conversations seem to jump around in subject a lot and not resolve the original question that was asked (and sometimes seem to answer questions that got edited out?). Occasionally, there’s a reason for this because the characters are often trying to keep secrets hidden by redirecting the person asking, but the effect feels really odd and disjointed to the casual reader.
Let’s talk about the title for a minute, Axiom’s End. The way Ampersand describes it, the Superorganism’s axiom is that “planets that support life are so competitive and dangerous that advanced civilizations can never evolve.” (257) The fact that humankind is becoming advanced breaks that axiom, which threatens the Superorganism’s place at the top of the universe’s hierarchy. This ties into the anti-colonialist message and the portrayal of colonialism as inevitable.
Ampersand’s explanation is a little vague though: “competition” and “danger”. Competition with who? Danger of what? I’m assuming other species, since the Superorganism tends to view other species it comes across as a threat, but it could be different groups of the same species or natural factors.
The Axiom is an answer to the Fermi Paradox (conditions exist that are likely to give rise to life, but we haven’t met any intelligent life) and a theory about the Great Filter (Is there something that stops intelligent life from developing or persisting?). I’m not sure why Lindsay Ellis mentions the Great Filter and not the Fermi Paradox… Dr. Sev asks about the Great Filter, but Ampersand won’t answer him directly and doesn’t give an answer until page p.225 when he’s talking to Cora. Ampersand says: “Intelligence is the filter.” This conflicts with what he says 32 pages later about competition being the filter. Is one of them a lie, or are they both correct? I suppose the distinction is kind of mushy anyway.
The whole intellectual kernel of the book is unoriginal, tedious, and depressing. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t written like a Gordian knot. The ideas are very, very simple when you distill it down, but Ms. Ellis’s writing is so jumpy and convoluted that it just sieves through my brain like sand unless I really sit down and try to untangle it, and then it’s not very rewarding. The reason why the Fermi Paradox was named after Enrico Fermi was because he had a simple and memorable way of expressing it: “But where is everybody?” Lindsay Ellis is so good at distilling complex ideas down in her videos that I was surprised to find that this book seems to be doing the opposite, making simple things complex.
I am a little curious to see where she’s going to go in the next book. I wonder if she’ll be able to wrangle the big themes of transparency and colonialism into a comprehensible statement. The way she hints at big ideas throughout the book and in interviews but doesn’t really bring them home frustrates me. I’m not really a series reader, so I like it when authors make a first installment that’s capable of standing alone. I do get the strong impression that it’s anti-colonialist, but I don’t know what she’s trying to say about government or transparency. If I do try the next book, I’ll read it on Kindle so that I can word-search the terms and not have to make my own glossary again, though I’m hoping all the set-up is out of the way and there won’t be too many new terms… *sigh* I guess we’ll see?
It took me a really long time to “get it” but after reading it twice I did have a strong idea of who the characters were and the structure of the alien society, so I’m hoping the next one will be less work and more entertaining.
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