Truth of the Divine, by Lindsay Ellis

When I read Lindsay Ellis’s book Axiom’s End, I described it as “an engaging and unusual first contact story, and it’s set up for a sequel, so I’ll be interested to see where Ellis takes this story.” This is the sequel, and even after reading it I’m still not entirely sure how I feel.

The main character, as in the first book, is Cora Sabino, a 21 year old American girl who is the daughter of shadow alien-truther/whistleblower Nils Ortega. Cora is the only human able to communicate with the being she calls Ampersand, one of a group of aliens known as “amygdalenes” who have appeared on earth. Cora, who is joined in this novel by a second narrator Kaveh, a journalist who also becomes a love interest for her, becomes caught up in the web of government, FBI, CIA, anti-alien protestors — and, of course, the aliens themselves, who have their own priorities which may not align with those of humans.

I found the first 2/3 of this book very slow and then got kind of hooked as the pace picked up in the last third. However, I can’t say I ever really loved it — a lot of the alien stuff confused me and neither the human nor the alien characters deeply engaged me (except for one and I was not happy with how things worked out for that character). I was under the impression this was going to be a two book series, and if it is, it ended in the bleakest way imaginable, which would make me like it even less. But I’ve heard suggestions that Ellis is writing a third, and if it’s a trilogy, she may yet manage to say something more hopeful and meaningful about human/alien relations. Right now, though, it’s giving me that feeling of despair I get from a lot of futuristic sci fi (although this is set in an alternate-timeline 2007/2008), so I’m not sure I want to continue. It is still a really intriguing take on the idea of first contact; I’m just not sure it’s fully working for me.