Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - In Ascension

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In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

25 reviews

virgilsinferno's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

I think someone may have watched Interstellar too many times lol. But I did enjoy the journey it took me on, I didn't care for the ending though.

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aprovince55's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Beautifully constructed and written scifi. Loved it.

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tamarant4's review against another edition

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adventurous informative inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

‘I mean I want to explore this strangeness as rigorously as I can, and to see myself in it too.’ [loc. 676]

In Ascension won the Arthur C Clarke Award this year, and deservedly so. There are echoes of Rendezvous with Rama, and protagonist Leigh quotes Clarke's maxim that 'Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear indistinguishable from magic'. But Leigh is a (possibly neurodivergent) woman, and her experiences are much stranger than anything I recall from Golden Age SF.

The novel takes place in the near future. Leigh has grown up in the Netherlands with an abusive father, an emotionally distant mother, and her younger sister Helena, who she's tried to protect. Leigh trains as a marine biologist, and is thrilled to be part of an expedition on board the Endeavour, exploring an undersea vent in the western Atlantic. The depth readings are anomalous: one survey shows the trench as 12 kilometres deep, another triples that. And something odd happens to those who dive there: but Leigh can't remember quite what it was.

That section of the novel ends abruptly, and the story picks up a couple of years later. Leigh is working with samples from the Endeavour, trying to design a robust form of algae that will provide a sustainable food supply in space: she's been recruited to a project which plans to use astonishing new technology to send a spacecraft -- and three humans -- outwards, a million times further than any previous crewed vessel. She's bound by confidentiality agreements, so can't tell her sister -- or her mother, who is declining mentally and physically -- much about what she's doing. But the work is more important than anything else.

Leigh is a 'difficult' woman: pushing people away, unwilling to recognise her own emotions, determined not to be defined by her past. (Late in the novel there's a section from Helena's point of view, which casts some of Leigh's statements and behaviours into doubt: but I think Leigh's version of her childhood is valid and honest.) She's also the ideal person for her role, unfazed by the long hours, the repetition, the isolation, the lack of information about the mission. And above all she is a scientist, endlessly fascinated by the living world of which she is a part, endlessly surprised by and curious about her work. I learnt a great deal about many things, including archaea, cell structure, symbiosis and slime moulds (which can navigate to the nearest star).

I wasn't wholly convinced by the ending, which seems to imply a circularity of plot as well as a call-back to an argument earlier in the novel. McInnes' writing is gorgeous, the characters flawed and human and sometimes refreshingly kind, and the story itself is cosmically vast, mysterious and yet utterly rooted in the phenomenon of life on Earth. Proper wide-screen SF, without the fallbacks of monsters or warfare or colonisation, In Ascension is humane and transcendent. I'm looking forward to a reread in the next few years.

In my mind, the world is not reasonable, and can never be made reasonable. It is much more interesting than that. [loc. 280]

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sunflowr's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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funktious's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A tough one to review, this, as while I can see what it was going for, it didn't quite always get there for me.

I saw a review where someone said this would be too SF for the litfic crowd and too litfic for the SF crowd and there might be something in that. I don't read a lot of 'hard SF' so I really struggled with the midsection of this; the labwork and the training. And while the prose was undeniably beautiful in places, and the themes of symbiosis, connection and the cycle of life were perfect for me, I ended up feeling more cold and kept at arms length from it all than I was expecting. It's left me thinking though, and that ending is sublime.

It's an interesting one to compare with 'A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding' - I'd like to put some of the slowness and beauty of this book into that one, and some of the warmth and hyperactivity from that one into this.

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deedireads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

All my reviews live at https://deedireads.com/.

In Ascension probably wouldn’t have made it to the top of my TBR had it not been longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, but I’m really glad it was — this ended up being one of my favorites from the list. I’m also glad I read this with a book club, because holy moly is there a LOT to process after that ending.

Beautifully, compellingly written, In Ascension simultaneously contemplates both our place in the universe and our relationships to one another. It’s about a woman named Leigh whose search for escape from physical abuse as a child leads her to a career as a microbiologist studying the deep sea and the cells that became the origin of life. A mind-boggling research voyage early in her career eventually sends her her to (literal) heights she never could have imagined, but she always feels pulled back home as well.

This is one of those books that toes the line between litfic and sci-fi in a way that’s perfect for someone who loves both (like me), but may go a bit too far for those who typically read one or the other. Too much science for the litfic crowd; too much ambiguity and scientific wiggliness for the sci-fi crowd. But as someone who has a high tolerance for both, I liked it very much.

The prose here is the biggest shining star, but I also just sank into the story and felt compelled through it. In fact, it was going to be a five-star book for me until I hit the last ~125 pages. Unfortunately, the penultimate section broke the momentum and felt like an unnecessary 100-page epilogue. But the very, very end — that was awesome.

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