Plot: 4/9. If we compare reading science fiction to a voyage of exploration, then the protagonist in a first-person perspective story must be readers’ sole companion on this expedition. This is why a humourless, nerdy, introverted, melancholic, and depressive narrator lingering on her childhood trauma from time to time is one of the worst travelling mates one can ever imagine! In addition to the awful selection of the protagonist, Martin MacInnes seemed also inept at constructing intriguing dialogue. He even omitted them intentionally by letting the protagonist summarise her interactions with other characters dryly! As a result, the plot containing many thrilling elements was far less impressive than it should have been. The storyline might have been less similar to a lackluster blotter, if Martin MacInnes had written it in a different style: Show rather than tell; Act rather than talk.

Endeavour

The protagonist had suffered from her father’s violence and mother’s negligence or connivance since her childhood. After her father’s death, she studied marine biology, boarded a scientific research ship called Endeavour to explore the deepest vent humanity had ever discovered.

The protagonist volunteered to dive first, but soon she fell ill like all the divers—possibly due to the exposure to the archaea in the brine, which was supposed to be at the seabed. Their submersible encountered a bizarre glitch but still managed to report that the vent was deeper than the preliminary readings, before it lost contact with the ship completely. They found the wreckage of the submersible glistening and floating on the sea surface. Their engineer Amy speculated that the submersible had reached the bottom before being melted by the geothermal furnaces there. Stefan, one of the scientists in the team, disappeared unexpectedly before their homebound voyage.

Datura

The protagonist had stayed with her mother for a while before finally receiving an offer at a base called China Lake. There she cultivated algae and devised a regenerative container to better the cultivation. Her superior, Uria, saw the potential in her project, provided her with a laboratory, and asked her to reproduce her work under microgravity conditions.

Not long afterward, when Uria instructed her to experiment on archaea recovered from Endeavour, she was informed that her employer was in fact partially funding her previous mission. She speculated that archaea from Endeavour might once have played a vital role in the origin of life eons ago by fostering the symbiosis between archaea and bacteria.

As her research advanced, Uria revealed to her a space artifact known as Datura—an alien object carved with ovals that might have represented some form of writing. When Datura vanished without explanation, Uria confided in her that, at that very moment Datura had appeared, they had intercepted the distinctive signal of the supposedly defunct Voyager probe near the edge of the Oort Cloud.

The protagonist’s algae proved central to the planned mission of intercepting Voyager, valued both as a nutritional food crop and as an emotional balm for the crew. As recognition of her work, she was granted full clearance and further details about the operation. Meanwhile, her elderly mother was slipping into cognitive decline, yet the sheer exhilaration of preparing for first contact left the protagonist with no time to visit her.

Kourou

The protagonist accepted Uria’s recommendation to serve as a backup astronaut in Crew 3, and henceforth she threw herself into the rigorous training alongside her teammates, Karius and Tyler.

Meanwhile, technicians constructed a microscopic model of the solar system and discovered that slime molds could chart more efficient routes than even the most advanced software simulations. The revelation of the incredible intelligence embodied in their food crop unsettled Tyler.

In Xichang, China, the station and its crew were suddenly besieged by disoriented birds, of which magnetic biological sensors inside their brain were disturbed massively. In response to the incident, Russia withheld its group, Crew 2, at Baikonur, leaving the mission to rest entirely on the shoulders of the protagonist’s crew.

Before boarding the spacecraft, the protagonist visited her mother one last time and bade farewell to her sister on the phone, careful not to reveal any details of her dangerous mission for the requirement of secrecy.

Nereus

On their way to the destination, the protagonist as well as her crew once again felt ill, which was diagnosed by psychologists a new disease caused by the absence of Earth in the sight. (What kind of incompetent doctors would jump to this kind of absurd conclusion?)

Tyler’s mental conditions degenerated in space: He couldn’t stand the noise of the air filter while sleeping and even argued with Karius over this triviality. At last, he inadvertently cut his left arm and lost a large amount of blood. Only with the assistance of other members could he stopped bleeding. (Where was your training that had claimed to prepare you for all kinds of emergencies, captain?) But the protagonist’s garden seemed to somewhat appease him and contributed to his recuperation. One day Tyler even began to talk about his belief in God and the group eventually ended up discussing their family and origins including the protagonist.

After getting to the heliopause and exiting the heliosphere, they was struck by strange storm of particles and lost consciousness. After waking up, their secondary systems went down and all the data was corrupted in the storm.

They found they actually travelled back in time to the universe more than 2 billion years ago and couldn’t turn back to Earth. Luckily, food crop in the arboretum yielded so abundantly that they didn’t need to worry about food.

Ascension

The protagonist’s sister, a lawyer, sued the company for more information about the task of her sister. But her attempt proved futile after the company was merged and the public totally lost their interest. She found a lot of people disappeared strangely after entering the space like her sisters, but the company covered up again. Her consistent efforts attracted the attention of Julia’s daughter who invited her to Ascension Island—the team’s supposed destination—to reveal more secret details to the sister.

The team actually somehow managed to return to Earth, but only the protagonist survived the landing, before she was crushed by that meteorite which was scientifically supposed to bring life onto Earth. The algae containing the genes of archaea in the spaceship might survive and become the ancestry of all life on Earth.

Character: 4/9. I don’t understand why the protagonist didn’t accuse her mother of negligence or complicity in child abuse at least once in her thought. Unlike victims or survivors I have witnessed in reality, she and her sister were so strangely kind to their inscrutable and irresponsible mother.

World and Others: 5/9. The only reason encouraging me to bear with the tedious plot and the annoying protagonist was my curiosity about the enigmatic world-building, especially the scientific manners wherewith humanity investigate the abnormality. However, after reading through the book, from now on, I will blacklist Martin MacInnes, for he didn’t conclude the foreshadowed events decently, such as the disappearance of Stefan, the strange signal of Voyager, the protagonist’s illness at sea and in space, and the unexplained way the protagonist’s crew managed to return to Earth, and the scientific reason why people constantly disappeared in space like the protagonist.

I don’t understand why the governments hid the possible existence of aliens and their mission to approach aliens from the public. The governments were making a macabre decision that might affect all humans on Earth clandestinely. Is it justifiable or even possible to do that in real life? Moreover, if this action indeed involved the cooperation of three countries, then it was unimaginable that no rumor spread or leaked during the task—especially during the launch, when the whole world could observe the spacecraft. Furthermore, what did actually happen on other crews?

I don’t understand why the crew contained two people with the same functionality as both engineers and pilots, despite the fact that the ship was actually autonomous and couldn’t be controlled manually by them at large. Judging from their voyage, it would have been less redundant and far more helpful, if one of them could be replaced by a doctor-cum-psychologist to cope with medical or psychological emergencies in space.

Core: 5/9. I felt like Martin MacInnes wanted to create an ambient feeling of religious holiness involving the origin of all species through bizarre events and bleak environments, which was a bore and even an anathema to me, because I didn’t feel awe at all by his lousy chicanery.

Moreover, there weren’t any meaningful conflicts reflecting deep thoughts or novel insights—only unnecessary details, repetitive thoughts and excessive emotions.

Still, the ending indeed impressed me, a reminiscence of this dialogue in an earlier chapter:

“Space travel and dying is the only two ways of leaving the earth.” “I’d dispute that.” “What?” “That death means leaving the earth.”