A Review of Lena Nguyen’s We Have Always Been Here (DAW, 2021)
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trihal
What.A.Read. Seriously. I had trouble focusing on work because I started Lena Nguyen’s We Have Always Been Here (DAW, 2021), and then I didn’t want to put it down. Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us, shall we: “Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility. Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.” This book is absolutely the one to get you in the mood for Halloween. Strange things are going on the ship, and Grace Park can’t quite figure out the issues going on. She’s truly in the dark for more reasons than you might think. First off, she’s one of the few crew members that are not conscripted. That is, she’s not working for the super organization known as the ISF, which basically controls the entire galaxy and star systems. Grace is earthborn, which means she has escaped some of the domination by the ISF, but others on the ship are not so lucky, as they must work within the confines of the ISF and their demands. Grace, while being hired by the ISF to observe the crew members and make reports on them, nevertheless never knows what is actually going on with this mission that takes them to a remote planet, which is on the edges of known civilization. Tensions soon emerge, as strange things start to go on. A crew member must be put into cryogenic sleep because the ship’s doctor, Chanur, believes that the crew member may be sick. But then more crew members begin to exhibit erratic behavior, and they must all figure out how to deal with a threat that has emerged, even if they do not know exactly where the threat is coming from. Nguyen has got a huge cast, something you might see in a bona fide Hollywhood film. There’s the military folx, including Wick, Sagara, Boone. There’s the surveyor, Natalya, and the cartographer, Fulbreech. There’s one other psychology, Keller. There’s also a number of important android workers that Park finds some comfort in, but they too begin to exhibit altered behaviors. The novel has a number of twists and turns, as it moves toward the conclusion, but if I had to give you any possible kernels of information through intertextual references that provide a little bit of spoilage: I’d say that the novel is best described as a cross between Annihilation and Event Horizon. There’s a little bit of space horror and a little bit of alien landscape issues at hand here. This debut was truly astonishing, and I will be certain to recommend this immersive work to fans of speculative fiction.
Buy the Book Here
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-have-always-been-here-lena-nguyen/1138089009
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trihal
What.A.Read. Seriously. I had trouble focusing on work because I started Lena Nguyen’s We Have Always Been Here (DAW, 2021), and then I didn’t want to put it down. Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us, shall we: “Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility. Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.” This book is absolutely the one to get you in the mood for Halloween. Strange things are going on the ship, and Grace Park can’t quite figure out the issues going on. She’s truly in the dark for more reasons than you might think. First off, she’s one of the few crew members that are not conscripted. That is, she’s not working for the super organization known as the ISF, which basically controls the entire galaxy and star systems. Grace is earthborn, which means she has escaped some of the domination by the ISF, but others on the ship are not so lucky, as they must work within the confines of the ISF and their demands. Grace, while being hired by the ISF to observe the crew members and make reports on them, nevertheless never knows what is actually going on with this mission that takes them to a remote planet, which is on the edges of known civilization. Tensions soon emerge, as strange things start to go on. A crew member must be put into cryogenic sleep because the ship’s doctor, Chanur, believes that the crew member may be sick. But then more crew members begin to exhibit erratic behavior, and they must all figure out how to deal with a threat that has emerged, even if they do not know exactly where the threat is coming from. Nguyen has got a huge cast, something you might see in a bona fide Hollywhood film. There’s the military folx, including Wick, Sagara, Boone. There’s the surveyor, Natalya, and the cartographer, Fulbreech. There’s one other psychology, Keller. There’s also a number of important android workers that Park finds some comfort in, but they too begin to exhibit altered behaviors. The novel has a number of twists and turns, as it moves toward the conclusion, but if I had to give you any possible kernels of information through intertextual references that provide a little bit of spoilage: I’d say that the novel is best described as a cross between Annihilation and Event Horizon. There’s a little bit of space horror and a little bit of alien landscape issues at hand here. This debut was truly astonishing, and I will be certain to recommend this immersive work to fans of speculative fiction.
Buy the Book Here
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-have-always-been-here-lena-nguyen/1138089009
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