Truth of the Divine (Noumena, #2)
Lindsay Ellis
USA TODAY BESTSELLER Truth of the Divine is the latest alternate-history first-contact novel in the Noumena series from the instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestselling author Lindsay Ellis. The human race is at a crossroads; we know that we are not alone, but details about the alien presence on Earth are still being withheld from the public. As the political climate grows more unstable, the world is forced to consider the ramifications of granting human rights to nonhuman persons. How do you define “person” in the first place? Cora Sabino not only serves as the full-time communication intermediary between the alien entity Ampersand and his government chaperones but also shares a mysterious bond with him that is both painful and intimate in ways neither of them could have anticipated. Despite this, Ampersand is still keen on keeping secrets, even from Cora, which backfires on them both when investigative journalist Kaveh Mazandarani, a close colleague of Cora’s unscrupulous estranged father, witnesses far more of Ampersand’s machinations than anyone was meant to see. Since Cora has no choice but to trust Kaveh, the two must work together to prove to a fearful world that intelligent, conscious beings should be considered persons, no matter how horrifying, powerful, or malicious they may seem. Making this case is hard enough when the public doesn’t know what it’s dealing with―and it will only become harder when a mysterious flash illuminates the sky, marking the arrival of an agent of chaos that will light an already-unstable world on fire. With a voice completely her own, Lindsay Ellis deepens her realistic exploration of the reality of a planet faced with the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, probing the essential questions of humanity and decency, and the boundaries of the human mind. While asking the question of what constitutes a “person,” Ellis also examines what makes a monster.
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
0The characters very much grew on me, but it took a while. The book as a whole took a while to grow on me actually - I was a bit nervous of how 'this alien is my boyfriend' it felt at the start.
Kaveh, for example: I liked how flawed he was, and how I still liked him enough to feel very sad that he died despite those flaws (I think his article at the end helped that feeling grow a LOT). Cora and his relationship didn't feel quite right at times, but neither did Cora and Ampersand's. It's not because they're too perfect or too unrealistic, it's because they're OVERLY realistic in a way fiction of this kind doesn't show to this degree very often. People do lie, betray and mistreat each other - deliberately and accidentally - whether they love each other or not, whether they care about each other or not. Relationships can be painful.
And yes, this is all happening on a very high stakes and dramatic background but the drama didn't feel artificially inflated to me. Cora's trauma bleeding into every element of her life and every emotional reaction felt so real - the desperation to avoid further pain and loss was palpable, the uneasiness and fear was jarring. Her decision to let humanity go mirrors that unfortunately familiar feeling of everything just being too much - the world being the way that it is, people letting their worst instincts rule them, the conflict borne of willful misunderstanding. I get her overwhelm.
I'm excited to find out what happens in Apostles of Mercy. I feel like the scale of the story could ramp up and I kind of hope it does (I want some Pequod Superorganism action!).
0That was a lot. I need to process.
0
© 2024 Pagebound