If I had a nickel for every alien first contact story featuring a young, female protagonist with self-esteem issues written by a mildly famous YouTuber I’d have ten cents, which isn’t much, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.
This is going to be a dual review of
Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis
and
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
If you enjoyed Axiom’s End, you’re going to enjoy Truth of the Divine. The characters have evolved, the problems they face are different, the stakes are raised, but the style is the same.
However, some flaws that I overlooked in the first book were harder to ignore the second time around. I’m not a fan of the pop culture references. Are you really willing to distract your audience with two Arrested Development references?
I had a harder time getting into Truth than I did Axiom. The opening was slow and a bit repetitive. It wasn’t until halfway when Truth grabbed me and refused to let go. Also, I have never read a book that better earned its Trigger Warning. There are some rough descriptions of PTSD and anxiety.
But overall, Lindsay Ellis wrote another brilliant book. There are big, scary, worthy ideas here.
Let me put on my literary hat for a moment and talk theme: Axiom’s End is about fear of the unknown. It is a first contact story, after all. But Truth of the Divine is about fear of the known and even more so, the fear of being known, which is interesting because it is a far more frightening book.
This was where Truth came into its own, when I began to ask the question: How much scarier is the alien race that humanity CAN relate to, that shares the worst of our nature? And on a more personal level, what if someone walks a mile in my shoes, and afterward their judgement of me is worse than before?
As challenging as this book is, I look forward to the next in the series.
But after Truth of the Divine and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I was ready for something a little lighter.
Enter An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. This book was a breath of fresh air, just the amount of tension and heartache that I could handle.
Remarkable is, at its core, a mystery. The mystery and the characters are what kept me turning pages and I turned pages fast. This is the sort of book that had me going back and rereading because I was skipping stuff in my rush to find out what happens next. Mystery plus likable perspective character is a tried and true formula for a great read and this book nails it.
I say “likable character”, but your mileage will vary on that account. Our first person protagonist April May is a disasterpiece of self-loathing, which she hides with outward-appearances of self-confidence. She’s also young and social media addicted and the story feels like it’s written by her, this 23 year old woman in the modern era.
I think some readers are going to immediately dislike her and stop reading, and they probably should.
She also hurts people who care about her because she doesn’t care about herself. That was the hardest part of the book for me. But, at its core, this is an optimistic story and that optimism was a warm blanket, that in my mind, classifies this novel as a cozy mystery, despite the fact that it’s also a modern scifi tale of sudden viral fame and political polarization.
So!
Truth of the Divine, the sequel to Axiom’s End, a sequel that does what every good sequel needs to do: expand upon the original in interesting ways.
Or
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing an engaging mystery that is ultimately a “like & subscribe” for the human race.
or both.
Haste Writing 
OK then. Your usual enjoyable narrative with dog. Always a plus. I never read Axiom’s End, so a summary would have been helpful. But I get the general idea. First contact stories are always wishful thinking, because if there are aliens out there with spaceships that want to visit Earth, almost any scenario is believable because we know nothing about them. As you suggest they tend to be not so much about aliens, incomprehensible or otherwise, but about how we react to them. Are they just here to spread divine love? Blow us up? Hit us with a board with a nail in it? Aliens are like monsters; they’re mirrors we hold up to ourselves in a dark room.
I was intrigued by April May, the disasterpiece, because I’m dealing with writing about a difficult character. I’m working on the scene where my main character Bonnie is transformed into a paranormal, and I realize it’s hard to write about a very traumatized character without making them seem pathetic. It’s been two years since she was nearly beaten to death in a horrifying place, and she’s still a mess physically, mentally, and emotionally. How do you write a character with that kind of past that audiences will like? How does a character overcome trauma, setbacks, or just being an asshole?
Keep it coming and hope to hear from you soon.
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Thanks and good point. I should have at least linked to my Axiom’s End video. Consider reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. There are always ways to make a traumatized character relatable in ways large and small. The character can be strong – coping mechanisms work, at least to some degree, but we can also see the character’s weakness in other areas.
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