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This is a mess down here. v
Lindsay Ellis’ debut novel, Axiom’s End is an exploration of First Contact revealed by Nils Ortega, a hacktivist whistle blower, following Nils’ daughter when two meteors strike near Los Angeles. Cora, our protagonist, has underlying resentments for the damage done to her family by her father for his whistle blowing and abandonment to expatriate to Germany to hide from the U.S. Government, though she’s learned to adapt. When we first meet her, she’s a college drop-out driving a broken down car with a difficult relationship with her mother. When her car finally gives in and her mother drives her to work, the first meteor strikes and she leaves for home. Her mother comes home furious that she’s acting recklessly, and the CIA comes to investigate if they know anything about Nils, given his recent message that, for the first time, acknowledges his family.
Though Cora didn’t imagine her life could get worse at that point, she is soon visited by the alien that came in during the first strike. This alien is being chased by another alien, thus the second meteor strike. The alien forms a partnership with Cora so that he can learn how Cefo, a being similar to him, died. Cefo was studied and held by ROSA, the Refugee Organizational and Settlement Agency, where Luciana, Cora’s aunt, used to work. Cora is able to communicate with Ampersand, the alien that she’s named after the codename for his fall to Earth, through a device she cannot see or feel. Ampersand created an algorithm to understand human languages that he implanted in her ear when they first met. This allows her to act as his interpreter, which comes in handy when they come across the Secretary of Defense, winged by officers in uniform.
Ampersand doesn’t want to work with militarists, as he calls them. He doesn’t want to teach humans how to communicate with his species, as it will lead to genocide as they try to dominate each other and make the other conform out of the differences between the species that the other cannot understand. Similar to native genocide in America, or around the world. Cora is intimidated during this coversation, given the implications of the policy the Secretary is pursuing and the threat that Ampersand speaks of to the human race.

“’What has you frightened?’ he asked, his focus narrowing into a point.
A whimper crawled up her throat and she tamped it back down.
‘These are very powerful men,’ she mouthed.
‘They represent your own government,’ he said. ‘Why are you afraid of your own government?’
At first, the question struck her as odd, considering why he and the rest of the Fremda were even on the planet Earth in the first place. Sometimes governments do bad things, including yours.
‘That’s just what it’s like on this planet!’”

“Truth is a human right.” The phrase that Nils signs off on, and is repeated throughout the whole of the narrative. Nils picks and chooses his times carefully for when he wants to reveal the information he’s sitting on. He’s playing a game with the most powerful people in the world and making them look like fools, even playing so expertly as to make the sitting president in this fictional 2007, George W. Bush, resign for lying at about knowledge of ROSA and First Contact. The effects of his revelations are mentioned sporadically, but we never get a sense of how anyone is responding to this outside of Cora and the government outside of a few lines. Cora is often by herself, with someone related to this mess, the government, or with Ampersand. Most of what we hear about the reaction of the American populace comes from the messages from Nils that come at the end of chapters. There is a time where the novel explores the function of conspiracy theories and their veracity. Not always on the mark, but not completely off and without a grain of merit. However, we do get to see how these can be used as disinformation as well.
The novel’s narration gives you all the clues you need to know who the author is. If you’ve ever seen any of Lindsay’s video essays on YouTube, you will recognize the same turns of phrases she uses in those are in her book. You’ll notice the influence of Transformers(The whole plate!) and The Phantom of the Opera. There are bits of her humor all throughout, though mostly in the early stages of the novel. However, the narrative style bleeds into the dialog at times and makes it difficult to take characters seriously. Not that this book does take itself too seriously. Even Nils’ website for The Broken Seal leads to a rickroll. It’s difficult to tell how serious her themes can or should be taken, but there are still a lot of ideas that have their merit and shouldn’t be neglected because you followed a link to “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.
Another issue with the narration is her reliance on the phrase “all but” and the verb “intuit”. The reader can all but intuit that this is a first time author’s work. Still, it’s worth reading.

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