Book Review: Ascension by Nicholas Binge

 

Ascension by Nicholas Binge

344 pages, Hardcover

Published April, 2023 by Riverhead Books

I have discovered more than one book or author thanks to the tweets of Stephen King, in the case of Adrian Walker's End of the World Running Club I was totally hooked and thankful that I followed Uncle Steve's advice.  This book was not on my radar until Mother Horror Sadie Hartman thanked King for putting this book on her radar. As soon as the Sci-fi/horror hybrid was mentioned I put a hold on the book and went into it totally cold.

Like every book, I went into Ascension rooting for it to knock my socks off. I don't know Nicholas Binge, and since I understand how much work a book like this requires, it is very hard for me to come across as trashing a book. That said I have published more than a thousand reviews at this point and I have been told they trust me because I am a straight shooter.  I am going to try to be constructive and maybe we can learn from this experience.

Personally, I believe Binge was let down by his editor, as this book is written in a prose style that tore me out of the narrative constantly and made suspension of disbelief impossible. Clearly, this worked for other readers so it may not bother you. There is a five-star old-school SF concept that mirrors At the Mountains of Madness while updating with some Interstellar-like time whimey stuff.

Ascension is a novel about a scientific exhibition. Harold is our point-of-view character who is drafted into a mission to explain this massive skyscraping impossible mountain that has suddenly appeared in the Pacific Ocean. The last research team (that included his ex-wife) mostly disappeared or went crazy from the experience. What is up on that mountain? How did it get here the mystery of it all is an amazing set-up. I am here for it.

The execution is the problem. I ended up rounding in my rating to three stars because I did like the story but the execution is two stars at best.  I have been clear in the past that I am not a fan of first-person narratives. The reason is the novelist often cheats by writing the prose like a novel, there are examples that don't cheat King's Delores Claiborne is my go-to example. Recently his hard case crime novel Later was in first person and the prose grew-up with the character.

Ascension takes it a step further by being both first-person and epistolary. This to me is where the editor failed Binge. Great concept, but this book needed another draft. That said plenty of people are reading and enjoying this book so if you don't want t spoilers here is your chance to jump out of this review and come back and see where you land on this one.

You see for me I was constantly seeing the author making choices, and this constantly took me out of the book and made it hard for me to lose myself in the story. Why? In the prologue, Harold is found in a mental institution with a bunch of unsent letters. The first mistake is throughout the book we know Hardold escaped and was able to write these letters. First mistake of the narrative device. As such each letter opens "Dearest Harriet" which gave me Civil War letter vibes.

This letter set-up could've worked as framing, but honestly, it did nothing for the story at all. Besides divorcing the reader from the events, making the events secondary threw the letters had me nitpicking the language. You see the prose constantly cheats. If you are going to write a novel in letters they have to sound like letters.

Harold survives this harrowing otherworldly experience and writes a letter to his family is he going to write chapter breaks, and end letters with a twist that perfectly sets up the letter, carefully building the tension. No, he wouldn't.  Would he write dialogue scenes like "There's a man," He said, glancing at his colleague. "Well, there's a..." He pressed his eyebrows together." A novelist writing a novel does details and description not someone writing a letter. On page 27 Harold speaks in the "letter" to Harriet but mostly the letter format is forgotten. Using that framing however, meant I was constantly looking for moments that didn't make sense.

There is an easy fix that an editor could suggest, by starting the chapters with letters and fading into third person later.  This Is How You Lose the Time War is a 2019 science fiction epistolary novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone uses this method, and that novella is one of the best reads of the last decade for me. The difference is they didn't cheat. The letter format in Ascension comes and goes willy-nilly.

Once we get on the mission in the second act of the book I was able to get lost in the narrative a bit. Still the nagging problem of none of this should be a letter hung around the neck of this story like an albatross. The science elements of the mountain, and the mystery of what it was had a bit of a Solaris/ Lem vibe and I really enjoyed that element. of course, how we got there was a problem.

There is subtle but important cosmic horror commentary "I'm not sure," Thomas said, Leaning in. "That seems like human arrogance. We only think that because humanity imagines itself as the defining model against every other example is copied. Just because we define intelligence by how closely it apes the human psyche, it doesn't mean that it can't be wildly different."

There are some really great reveals and moments deeper into the book.  "I gazed across rises and gorges, across vast plains of ice and mountains of rock, and I saw something odd. Off in the distance, I saw things. A whole group of flickering, moving black shapes they must have been hundreds of meters away. My breath caught in my throat; at first, I was certain that they were more of the octopus creatures but as i squinted I could see they were people."

Who was up on this unnatural mountain with them? I won't spoil but it was a great reveal.  

OK serious spoilers here!!!!

The most important reveal of course comes on page 203 and makes use of Arthur C Clarke's famous saying that any significant technology would be indistinguishable from magic. I really enjoy the reveal here which I consider to be the mission statement of the concept. blending a science fiction horror set-up and using what feels like science and cosmic horror to set up this crazy reveal...

"What are you saying?" I asked as a gust of freezing wind blew past my face. "not just Mount Olympus, but the mountain of all gods, throughout time. Harold if my theory is right, we're standing on the holiest site in the history of the entire human race."

That is the thing. Great concept, the execution of the reveal was good but for me, it was like having a great painting in a hideous frame that distracted from the intended art itself.

Ascension is a cool idea, and I am going to blame his editor whom I assume was paid to oversee this book and apparently didn't see these problems. That said the top-selling author in the history of the universe didn't appear to have a problem with this. There are plenty of five-star reviews from readers who didn't have this problem. It may be a result of my writer's brain over-ruling my reader brain.

There were enough positive elements for me to say I was glad I read it, and I will give Nicholas Binge another chance. I liked the story, and the concept a lot.