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Ascension

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Member Reviews

The second book in the series is even better than the first. A very interesting setting and plot, with a very timely subject. Strongly recommend.

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I enjoyed this more than I expected after a friend's review. Kane's behaviour was less than subtle, but thankfully the action on London was more believable.

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Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books on July 13, 2021

Ascension is the second Elliot Kane spy novel and the better of the two. It combines crime and suspense with themes of espionage. The result is an unusual but fascinating story that unfolds on a desolate island in the South Atlantic.

Oliver Harris informs the narrative with the history of Ascension Island, a place that few have visited and that even fewer want to see again. Ascension is governed by the British and is valued as a strategic jumping off point when the Brits find the need to invade the Falklands. The BBC maintains a relay station on Ascension. The European Space Agency maintains a rocket tracking station there, as did NASA for a period of time. The US has an air base on Ascension and the US Space Force uses it for whatever Space Force does. Thanks to Darwin, the arid volcanic island now has some trees, but Harris makes clear that it isn’t a place where anyone would want to spend a vacation. The novel gets its noir atmosphere from the island’s bleak nature and despondent residents.

The island has been used as a relay station for underwater cables for more than a century. Harris, who obviously engaged in meticulous research to support his novel, uses the cables as a jumping off point. A new transatlantic cable is being installed in Ascension. British intelligence wants to tap into it because there’s no such thing as privacy. Of course, the Brits don’t want the Americans to know what they’re doing.

Kathryn Taylor, who runs the South Atlantic desk for MI6, gives communications specialist Rory Bannatyne a cover story and sends him to Ascension to execute the cable-tapping plan. Taylor worked with Bannatyne when he was tapping a cable on Oman. Taylor bribed Bannatyne’s way out of trouble in Oman after he became uncomfortably close with some minors. Taylor never reported the incident to MI6, which is why Bannatyne is still available for the job. Unfortunately for Taylor, Bannatyne apparently commits suicide shortly after a young girl on Ascension goes missing.

Taylor sends Kane to Ascension to find out what happened to Bannatyne, whether he had anything to do with the missing girl, and whether it is safe to continue the cable intercept operation. Kane is undercover as an historian. Since there is only one flight to Ascension per month, Kane knows he will be there a while. When he arrives, however, he discovers that the hotel where he booked a room has closed, forcing him to take up residence in the home that was just vacated by the parents of the missing girl.

Kane’s investigation brings him into contact with a teenage boy who is suspected of murdering the missing girl. The boy’s mother is a General in a branch of the American military. After Kane befriends the General’s husband, a second girl goes missing. Kane is suspected of kidnapping the girl because he has befriended an unpopular family and, since he’s new on the island, he’s a convenient suspect. What seems to be an interesting crime story later changes gears as Kane discovers that the island is keeping secrets that may imperil the national security of Great Britain and its allies. Kane’s life and Taylor’s career are both threatened as suspense builds in England and on Ascension.

Harris’s intelligent plot is meticulously constructed. Its eventual destination will keep most readers guessing.

Taylor is the kind of character who is a fixture in espionage fiction, a spy who defies orders because she knows something is rotten and doesn’t trust her superiors to resolve the problem. Kane seems to be a more emotionally complex character in Ascension than he was in A Shadow Intelligence. Maybe he’s just growing on me. In any case, while most spy novels follow a well-traveled path, Harris has, for the second time, found a new story to tell. His second effort proves that he’s earning a position as a top shelf spy novelist.

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Good, but not great, spy story that did a nice job of setting up the plot and characters, but never reached the “can’t- put-it-down” level that I prefer in this genre.

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Ascension by Oliver Harris is a spy thriller set on a tiny rock in the South Atlantic called Ascension Island. This island is a communications outpost that has many important implications for several nations. Elliot Kane is living his life as an academic when he is approached by his former boss at MI6 to help figure out why one of the UK operatives has committed suicide while working on Ascension. Around this same time a local girl goes missing and of course, the operative is being blamed. Something seems off and Kane agrees to head down there posing as a researcher to try to see what is going on. Kane arrives and quickly realizes things are very different on Ascension Island and he has to watch his every step because he’s on his own.

I enjoyed the story overall. I liked the Kane character—he approached things well and wasn’t afraid to get involved in things. He wasn’t as much of a fighter as characters like Mitch Rapp and Scot Harvath, if you’re into spy novels, but he still got the work done. Overall, I enjoyed Ascension. I think people that enjoy spy thrillers would enjoy this book but I think people that aren’t into the genre would think it is slow.

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Ascension Island is half way between Brazil and Africa. It is 35 square miles with 800 people stationed at bases for the US and the UK. It is fairly desolate, but important for communications. With a new fiber optic cable project scheduled, Rory Bannatyne had been sent by the English government to discover a way to tap into the communications. The same day that a young girl disappears from the island, Rory is found hanging from a tower, an apparent suicide. Suspicion for the disappearance falls on Rory. Kathryn Taylor, in charge of the Southern Atlantic area for MI6, calls on Elliott Kane to investigate.

Elliott is a former agent who worked with Kathryn and Rory in the past but is now lecturing on literature as he works on his doctorate. A few days after he is approached, he is on his way to Ascension Island as Dr. Edward Pearce to research British Colonial history. He is supposed to keep a low profile but he finds himself in a fight to defend a young boy on his first night there. Back in England Kathryn discovers that Rory’s death was not suicide. In his last postcard to his sister, he asked her to find out about a Dr. Moretti, an employee on a military base in California who had committed suicide by hanging. Could there be a tie between the two deaths? Under pressure from her superiors and ordered to deal with the police investigation into Rory and the girl’s disappearance, she is in danger of losing her own position if she can’t find answers. Then a second girl disappears and someone throws suspicion on Elliott. The young boy who Elliott saved was a friend to both of the girls and may be able to help him discover the truth.

Oliver Harris draws a vivid picture of life on a small island that few people have even heard of. It is a desolate outpost and its’ inhabitants must find what enjoyment they can. He draws on modern technology and the developments in communications and space to provide an intriguing tale of espionage and murder that is highly recommended. I would like to thank NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin for providing this book for my review.

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Ascension: the most remote island in the world. Elliot Kane, former spy, trying to leave the world of espionage behind. Kathryn Taylor: a stalled career in MI6, running the South Atlantic desk. Rory Bannatyne: covert technical specialist. Dead, apparently of suicide. Three friends from a mission many years ago reconnect when one of them dies on Ascension Island. Rory Bannatyne had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn Taylor begs Kane to go over and investigate, he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game.

Ascension is a curious legacy of England's imperial past. Only employees and their families are allowed to live there. It's home to several highly-classified government projects, a British and American military base, and forty dead volcanic cones. Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. Elliot needs to discover what happened to her as well as to Rory. But the island contains more secrets than even the government knows, and it's not going to give them up without a fight.

This is compulsive and engaging spy fiction written with Harris’ trademark elegance and featuring a plot crafted and woven to near perfection. The story twists back and forth with some exciting surprises and misdirection to throw readers off the scent as to where the plot may be heading. Everyone must be viewed with suspicion and it's a great idea to be as cynical as Diogenes if you're involved in the spy game. The description of this remote island simply teeming with ecological delights brings the island vividly to life, and although this is much more of a slow burn thriller, Harris ratchets up the (geopolitical) tension impeccably from the mid-point onwards. Highly recommended.

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Former MI6 officer Elliot Kane finds himself wrapped into a murder mystery that turns into something else when he agrees to look into the alleged suicide of former MI6 tech expert Rory on Ascension Island. Ascension is notable only for the fact that it's a communications hub- but there's also a certain amount of intrigue and bad behavior that reverberates back to London. Rory had been accused of a variety of things but the man he's hearing about is not the man Elliot knew. The first half of this is a little slow and the second a bit out there but it's a good read, especially for the unique setting. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's twisty enough to keep you guessing.

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I enjoyed the setting and history of Ascension Island, but unfortunately the story just never picked up for me.

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Asension started at low tension for a spy thriller. Indeed, I had nearly reached the book's midpoint before I couldn't put it down. By the end, I realized I enjoyed the experience.

However, in order to deliver its ending, author Oliver Harris needed to introduce new characters, which reduced the tension level too fast for my taste as a reader.

All-in-all, I think it might be a worthwhile read.

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Ascension Island is a far outpost of the British Empire, mostly used by GCHQ and NSA as listening posts in the South Atlantic, to cover Africa and parts of Asia. When an engineer there to set up taps on the soon to be run fiber cable is found dead of apparent suicide, a former spy who had worked with him is brought back in to figure out what happened. Kane goes to Ascension and finds that a teenage girl has been missing as well, and the connections to her and her friends leads to a much deeper plot. The clever juxtaposition of his boss in London, who is overstepping her remit, and Kane on Ascension works well. They each manage to solve the case at almost the same time, deterring what could have been an act of war with dire consequences. The final reveals about who is really an enemy and who is not are quite startling and make this a worthwhile addition to the spy fiction world.

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Ascension by Oliver Harris
Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Elliott Kane returns from a forced seclusion teaching and recruiting possible spy’s. He is called to look into a suicide of a man on the desolate South Atlantic spy island of Ascension.

Comments: An incredible researched spy novel in the likes of David Ignatius and Brad Thor. There is a several points in the novel when it becomes difficult to tell fiction from reality based on the research written in. By far the spy novel of the year. Highly recommended.

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Awesome spy thriller. Captivated me from the start. Some great twists and turns and a surprise ending. Kept me reading through the night.
Elliot Kane is sent to Ascension Island, a volcanic island with 800 people there. He is sent undercover to investigate the death of a spy that has apparently killed himself. What he uncovers leads him on a race for his life.
There are a lot of moving pieces, but the story flows easily.
I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Ascension is a spy thriller about Elliot Kane who is currently on probation. He is assigned to a tiny isolated volcanic island. He is there to discover why a fellow spy is dead, is it suicide or murder. In addition there are missing girls on an island where there is a monthly flight off and on the island. It started slow, setting the stage, but the last few chapters flew by as the mystery was resolved. I look forward to more books by Oliver Harris about Elliot Kane.
Thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for my copy of this book.

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Elliot Kane is a mood - a tough cynical guy on the outside, unflappable integrity on the inside. I was a fan of A Shadow Intelligence and am enjoying how the Elliot Kane novels are developing. In Ascension, Kane is working with Kathryn Taylor in London at headquarters - a fascinating character, another dedicated workaholic spy with a lonely depressing personal life, perhaps not too different from most people in their late 30s who define themselves by their careers.

Ascension starts off slow, building the island setting. It seems to start off as a noir-y murder mystery. But the payoff is there in the last quarter of the book, with all the exciting spy geopolitics subplots finally coming together. An intelligent thoughtful spy thriller, much more relevant and modern than what’s come before. Definitely looking forward to more from Oliver Harris

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If The Wicker Man were a spy story and the island was in the middle of the Atlantic you'd get something like Ascension. The landscape of Ascension Island is so exotic that this almost seems like science fiction at times but it's right here on earth, a very remote and bizarre bit of Earth, though. Enjoyable and tense, it's the atmosphere that makes this book stand out.

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Even though the manuscript is rough in it’s unedited state, i found myself engrossed in the plot and characters. The storyline is interesting and believable. There are some errors in simple things such as area of the U. S. Base and the location of Diego Garcia island that gave me pause, but I am pedantic and most other people aren’t.
I love the authors style and will definitely read his works.

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Good action and pace. Lots of color. A mystery that unfolds with numerous plots and underpinnings. Good story.

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I've read Oliver Harris's other Elliot Kane books and have enjoyed them. This one was no exception -- I finished it in two nights! Watching Kane come out of his safe environment to enter the world of espionage once again was thrilling. Kane is trying to work out what happened to one of his fellow spies who appears to have committed suicide and he travels to remote Ascension Island to get answers. The ending of the book was a little too tidy for me but the rest of the book was a great read for a weekend! Well-done Mr. Harris!

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I started reading Oliver Harris with A Shadow Intelligence and am now looking for more of his work. Thanks to Houghton Mifflin and Net Galley for an ARC of this one. It's a winner. in both SI and Ascension, Harris spends a good deal of time on the setting. I knew very little about Ascension Island and found his history and descriptions of the place fascinating. Also love his observations about spies, their relationship with others and well as how they justify their life. Aside from all that, the story is fast-paced and credible. I'm looking forward to his next, Season in Exile, in 2022.

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