A review by dreamingofspaceships
Ascension by Nicholas Binge

2.0

This is a hard one to review and rate. It has a pretty good setup and starts off in an appropriately creepy manner. I was all prepared for a Lovecraftian tale of the incomprehensible and it seemed to be going in that direction - quite quickly too. But then it drops off a cliff (no pun intended) and is just mind-numbingly boring for large sections. I don't understand why people keep thinking that really long drawn out descriptions of walking or hiking is fun to read? And the "answers"/resolutions also seemed a bit... simplistic?

Spoiler

Harold's realisation that the mountain is a "tesseract", Neil being weird and plot relevant, the finding of "folds" by looking at time dilation

all seem too telegraphed or too obvious that it's hard to take them seriously as revelations. The format of INCREDIBLY detailed letters (with entire conversations being recalled verbatim while surviving various threats to life) was starting to get on my nerves too. The ending felt a little cool but this is really nothing that you haven't seen. Two stars does feel a little low, but three seems unconscionably high.