Axiom's End: 1 (Noumena)

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It might be that Obelus is less concerned with politeness and more just seizing a chance to sow dissension between Ampersand and his interpreter under the guise of civility by giving her a very grim appraisal of Ampersand's nature. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being humanand could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined. Cora awakes in a hospital, attended to by her mother and siblings, who have been released from government custody after Nils publicizes their abduction. The tenderness that this alien creature shows this young woman is so genuine and earnest that that was the moment I realised that these two could fall in love. They can act as stand ins for marginalised people, people who are shunned by society, who are seen as threats.

So when I saw this happening with Ampersand, when he and Cora began to form this friendship, which would go on to blossom into love I couldn't help but project a little onto him.People like myself, and many others, others who are viewed as 'different' and 'strange' get told that we're not normal. It's All About Me: Cora's family sees Nils' devotion to exposing government secrets as a smokescreen for increasing his own fame and importance, at the expense of the well-being of his family members. Cora wonders why Ampersand doesn't seem more upset about autopsying Ĉefo, a Fremda who dies by suicide at the beginning of the book, since they were friends. Alternate History: Cora's 2007 goes quite a bit differently from the real one—after the two meteor strikes, her father releases a slew of classified documents and files, including, crucially, a recording that proves George W. It is revealed that the Superorganism's most recent knowledge of humanity comes from the Middle Ages, shortly after the Black Death, so it's understandable that they view humans as particularly violent and dangerous.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. While the plot and story felt like an elevated, and much more interesting, take on synthetic space alien civilizations coming into contact with humans, I really enjoyed the details in this book. He is particularly disturbed to be surrounded by (to quote the title of Part Two) "billions of flesh-eating aliens", and Cora speculates that his initial apprehension around her is out of fear that she will try to take a bite of him.Furthermore, amygdalines that are neither Oligarchs nor Similars are much, much smaller; the Propagandist fremda are described as roughly one-third of Obelus' size. Stories like Beauty and the Beast, to even further back and myths like Eros and Psyche which dates back to the 2nd century AD, tell stories of people falling in love with inhuman creatures. A good concert was the one place she could genuinely lose herself, have an out-of-body experience and detach from the deteriorating morass that was her life. Cora stiffly brushed past the few other people in their cubicles who had decided to work through lunch. Strongly affected by the revelation that they have pair-bonded, Cora asks Ampersand not to leave her.

I'm definitely looking forward to the follow-up to this introductory book, and I really don't know what to expect story-wise. Speaking of conclusions, I did have to put the book down and absorb a bit of what was being set up in the final chapter. Creative Sterility: The Superorganism has purged itself of any diversity out of xenophobia, leaving its culture and technology largely stagnant.The characters are flexible and human, the dialogue is very realistic and her imagining of our contact with an alien species is very down to earth and sweet and creative at the same time.