Book review: In Ascension

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes: read in Waterstones, initially promising, gets lost about the half way mark. I ended up skipping a lot to get to the end, where I found nothing. I recommend this Goodreads review.

The "backstory" of the central character is unhappy; and she swims, in Rotterdam, or something. But it is all pointless. It reads as though the author knows that sci-fi books often lack "real" characters and so decides to bolt some on. But a whole pile of "character" that is nothing to do with the story is pointless; effectively, it makes two books, unhelpfully shuffled together. But apart from that...

The best bit is the exploratory vessel investigation, and life on ship. This almost reads like the author knows something about it, or has at least talked to people that did. And the weird bits - just how deep is the hole? - kind of work... as long as you don't think: hold on, if the hole really were that deep, that would be like mega-important and the govt would be all over it.

The segue into deep space is odd, in many ways. The mystery space drive... doesn't work. I mean, the way it fits in the story. I think it is implied, or the possibility left implied - its that kind of book - that it might be alien tech; but that doesn't really fit. The decision to grow food on the trip, rather than just bring it, doesn't really make sense either; nor does the "oh it would cheer people up" motivation. And therefore neither does her presence on the ship. It kinda reads like it should have been written by Gwyneth Jones who would have handled it better.

But in the end it is just another exploring the mystery of aliens maybe visiting, and trails off into nothing once it realises it has no idea what to say.