Ascension

"NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023 BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, THE WASHINGTON POST AND GOODREADS"

Um. By whom? Other whites?

Ok but really. This book is generic white cishet scifi.

The love interest is a demure Japanese woman who ditches her career to become homemaker to their adopted son of color. She is the main source of man pain and man angst that impels the main character, a white man. She suffers and he watches and oh his sadness about having to see her like this is just The Worst! Weeping and wailing! Also yes she dies. Also YES, she has to be rescued! Her, a supposedly intelligent doctor, reduced to a pathetic easily confused mentally ill[???] person. Another character who went through the same situation was not at all similarly behaved. In fact he, a white man, was quite coherent and self sufficient to the point of orchestrating his own suicide by cop, so to speak. Funny how the one brown woman is uselss and pathetic and needing of rescue. Hm.

The son, a boy of color who was orphaned due to the Pinochet regime, is another source of man pain. In a predictable plot twist, the son boy is dead. The MC is the reason he died, btw. Which ok, I get, people and character never act rationally and logically and perfectly and etc, etc. But in conjunction with the entire plot, it's just not that cohesive.

The entire plot is rather haphazard, frankly.

Ok you got a super smart autistic extremely well off privledged white man headhunted into a mysterious expedition up a non existent mountain. There's other white smart people headhunted into this place. Mostly stereotypical trope character. Not necessarily a bad thing but the writing cannot support it beyond the bare minimum. Smart military woman. Military man. Misogynist mountain climber man who enjoys slapping around women. Forgetable 'red shirt' military soldiers meant to die for plot angst and to let you know Things Are Getting Serious. You have the token not white character, the Japanese wife-macguffin. Oh and the two dueling philosphy characters: Super Atheist and White American Christian. These two play off the MC who is a lapsed catholic and tries to be scientific yet open minded towards religion. Specifically catholic and christian. Other religions? Speaking of....

Religion. Like I said you got the Super Atheist and White American Christian, and the culturally catholic but lapsed due to generic child death angst MC. The only times other religions are mentions are in passing, as references. For better or for worse, really. I don't want a white british man author trying to deal with the themes of Hinduism, considering how shit the one Japanese character is. I wouldn't say it's bigotry, just the typical blindness that white people have of other cultures. It's not developed. It's not woven into the structure of the plot. It's lipservice at best.

You got semi generic monsters, tentacled and of mild body horror, with a hive mind to boot. They live in caves because of course they are Not-White Savages who cannot build civilized cities like normal white people. At least they are not described as having hook noses or ethnic features. <- said through gritted teeth in a tired tone.

Speaking of generic softcore colonization in white scifi genres.... The monster hivemind hates the MC / mountain climbing team because they don't deserve to be on the mountain. Or something like that. Basically they don't deserve to know the knowledge that the monster hivemind has. Hm ok. Heaven forbid a civilization protects itself against foreign explorers! No literally, the MC describes himself as having a 'hunger' to know more about the mountain and to some extent the people on it and wants to give in to fulfilling this hunger. Even to the detriment of everything else. That is some manifest destiny, buddy.

Anyways, the ending. Most of the characters die in a last stand esque fight when the hivemind attacks. Mind you the hivemind only attacked because the group kept ascending the mountain into the hivemind's land. They continued ascending even though they coulda woulda shoulda left back down the mountain. Anyways. The last characters left is the MC and the Misogynist mountain climber man. Who, btw, steps into the shoes left by the dead atheist philosopher by talking about determinism and destiny, and defying it or whatever. Ok sure.

So it turns out the mountain was a test by higher powers--alien or divine, it's neither except it's definitely technically aliens. There's nothing uspernatural happening here.

The point of the test was to see if humans were ready to 'elevate' to the next step of evolution.

[I don't think that's how evolution works, and frankly this sounds like eugenics.]

The alien god says he1 and the other aliens made a 'seed'2 which if ingested will cause the person who ate it to become. Like. 'Homo Superior'. No literally, the alien god said 'homo alterior' or whatever. So literally you become a eugenic aryan3 super-man. There's a brief discussion where alien god reveals the entire point of the mountain and what the two human men are supposed to do now with the 'seed'.

1 ofc it's a he and a cisgendered man, heaven forbid we try to have fictional aliens without human genders

2 isn't starseeds a hugely racist eugenic thing the nazis made up? Someone correct me or don't.

3 ok he didn't mention eye or hair color but come the fuck on. That eugenic Homo Superior shit goes hand in fucking hand here.

Anyways.

The Misogynist mountain climber says he should be the one to eat the 'seed' and the MC, still having no spine, flip flops until he gives up after a few pages or discussion. The Misogynist mountain climber eats the seed, becomes the super man, and immediately blows his brains out. Because determinism and defying destiny or whatever.

Somehow the alien god did not forsee this.

Lmao.

Alien god is disappointed because appparently cooking this 'seed' took miltiple millenia and there will never be another. He goes poof. Literally, he just fades out of existence. Thus humanity is.... damned?? It's implied that other species, such as the monster hivemind, were similar tests / attempts in creating life. Humans are also as test and this mountain was kind of the Final Exam of the university course.

The MC gets dumped like a christmas present puppy in february near the same lake his son drowned in [that's cold alien god] and he ends up in a psych institute until his brother discovers him, and that's how the book starts.

The thing that irritates and disappoints me is the lack of cohesion. The book really tries to make something of it but only pays minimal attention to the themes of destiny and multiple dimensions and exoterrestrial contact. I think it suffers from First Published Novel syndrome. It's got the skill and editing to have a decent book, but this concept could have been pulled off better by someone with the developed skills.

btw, if you want a scary creepy mountain climbing book, try Sarah Lotz's 'The White Road'. It's horror and some supernatural, not scifi genre. All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes and Thin Air by Michelle Paver, and Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Again, all horror genre but pretty excellent mountain climbing plots.