Interesting and well written. Not my genre. Thank you, NetGalley and publisher for providing this advanced copy to me.

An interesting book that I picked up as I thought it was going to be shortlisted for the Booker. We follow a young woman who is fascinated by the sea and ends up working for a space agency. It's a lyrical and at times subdued narration that juxtaposes trauma and nature. I don't think this book was for me, but I finished it to be able to review it.

Really great to listen to this via audiobook, narration was so interesting.
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

I enjoyed reading this book because it was engaging, well-written, and informative. The author did a great job of creating realistic and relatable characters, setting the scene, and building suspense. The book also explored some interesting themes, such as identity, family, and justice. The plot was fast-paced and full of twists and turns,

For me, the true joy of In Ascension is that it can be interpreted in very different ways depending on how you read it. Taken at face value, this is the life story of Leigh, a biologist from Rotterdam who’s scientific discoveries lead her to the depths of the deepest ocean, to the distant Mojave desert, to the far edge of the solar system. Along the way, you get to witness how these new scientific discoveries would shape our current understanding of the field, and witness the characters coming up with disaster protocols and first-contact scenario strategies that wouldn’t be out of place in the best thriller and Sci-Fi novels respectively. The sense of excitement over discoveries the characters make is infectious, and the sense of trepidation over these voyages to the unknown is very much relatable.

I could see a strong argument however for this book actually being about relationships, and what can happen to them if stretched over long distances. Leigh opens the book with an account of her childhood, and relationship with a father who had abusive tendencies, and a mother who meant well but never came to her aid. Leigh finds solace in biology and eventually her work, but the increasing distances she travels to, and the longer gaps she takes away from family, start to strain those relationships, particularly with her sister. Leigh regrets not returning home regularly throughout the book, but the right time to fly back keeps proving elusive for one reason or another. Personally, I found myself agreeing with Leigh less and less as the book progressed, and I found the elements of ‘unreliable narrator’ only added to the intrigue. I found the way this relationship was put on display to be utterly fascinating, and in many ways helped to ground the Sci-Fi elements of the story and keep the whole experience believable. The ending would be all too easy to spoil, so I’ll simply say that MacInnes found a way to make you look back at what you’ve already read, possibly in a different light!

3.5 stars.

This started out strong with an excellent MC and a deepening sense of mystery as we join Leigh on the survey ship Endeavour investigating the sea floor and a previously undiscovered trench of unimaginable depths. Diving into trench Leigh feels a huge pull towards the depths and experiences a mysterious fever and an alien light. When one of her fellow divers disappears the investigation is abandoned with the mystery unresolved.

Next, a mysterious object is detected in space, seemingly on a collision course with earth it suddenly veers into the Oort Cloud. A ship is sent on a one-way mission after it using a new technology that allows it to travel vast distances, crewed by three astronauts, Leigh among them.

The final narrative follows Leigh's younger sister and reflects the family narrative threaded through the rest of the story. Focusing on a dissatisfied father remembered as distant and violent despite their shared love of the sea while her younger sister Helena managed to avoid the worst of his temper. The sisters clash over Leigh's constant travelling, leaving Helena, based in Indonesia, to care for their mother whose health is deteriorating far away in the Netherlands. While Leigh chases answers deep ocean and deep space Helena grapples with the climate crisis, rising pollution, hunting for news of her brilliant sister

MacInnes's writing is gorgeous, conjuring atmospheres of wonder and dread. He balances the strangeness of the massive with the very human concerns of his characters. But I just wanted to understand more about what was happening and while allowing his reader to share the frustrations of characters who never quite reach any answers may have been his intention, I finished with a sense of something missing.

I do genuinely love SF genre books that make me think and keep me engaged. This book definitely did the first, but unfortunately not the second. There were large swarths of chapters I had a difficult time with. Sometimes I was engrossed in what was happening and others I literally had no idea what happened as my interest had been lost. I was also completely unconnected to the MC except when she explained her difficult childhood and family relationships. Besides those, Leigh seemed abstract, unrelatable, and unfortunately unlikeable. This may have been part of the scientific approach, but it did nothing for me as a reader. I applaud the author for taking on this eco SF theme and the importance behind it all. However, I would not recommend this as light reading material for anyone that is not VERY interested in the topic.

A unique eco s.f. novel highlighting the much larger universe surrounding us and the beauty of life. This 500+ page volume is heavy on the minute details of biology, and space, as it delves into a Marine Biology study of a trench that is x3 deeper than the Mariana Trench. Leigh studies the ancient algae lifeforms to discover more about our origins of life. The truth is much more surprising than imagined. The audiobook takes us into the p.o.v of Leigh as we follow her thoughts and experiences. A worthy Booker Prize longlisted book. #inascension #MartinMacinnes #bookerprizelonglist2023 #netgalley

Leigh, who doesn't feel close to family or friends, but instead has a career her life revolves around, has the opportunity to work in the field to gain experience. What is found is so incredible and strange it changes the trajectory of her life forever. As she weighs obligations with scientific discovery, she finds that home ever beckons.

This cerebral and literary science fiction novel is so incredibly dense and feels very sweeping. The writing style was solid in two capacities: it was solidly written, but it was also solid...like a brick wall. It felt like over half of the novel was so compacted with information and world-building with no detail given to the character at all. It's my personal preference to have a lot of dialogue and character building, and this felt sterile. This was such an interesting story, though, and am glad I read it. The narration for this was great and really helped keep me intrigued and honestly probably helped me stick with a book that could have been a DNF for me.

In Ascension, is a story which captured me from the very first chapter and I haven’t stopped thinking about it or pausing to think just how beautiful the world around us really is since finishing it yesterday.

The story centers around a Dutch marine biologist Leigh, the book starts by introducing us to her family and we learn a lot about her troubled childhood growing up with an abusive father, a distant mother and trying to protect her younger sister, This upbringing impacts her life, as a result she's a workaholic and completely devoted to her area of specialty – algae. On a deep-sea mission that she takes part in exploring the North Atlantic, her ship discover microorganisms in a deep-sea vent that determine the direction of her career and life.

We then meet her working in a NASA type organization in the Mojave desert, testing these microorganisms as a viable food source for astronauts in space exploration. Through a turn of events she finally gets more directly involved in the space exploration mission herself. As the story unfolds, we see how she has this constant conflict between her career and continues to make family sacrifices but they are always a constant but despite how far we are from those we love, we will always attempt to return.

I’m not usually a science fiction fan and algae isn’t something that normally interests me but this incredible blend of literary sci-fi with a thriller element really had a mesmerizing effect on me. I absolutely tore through the book and what a journey it brought me on from the deepest recesses of our oceans to the outer limits of our solar system. While I’m sure I missed a lot of the space sci-fi references I did like some of the nautical references that MacInnes infuses into the story – the deep sea mission is on a boat called Endurance and two of her diving members are Eric and Ursula

Like, many others have said as soon as you finish you just want to go back to the start and try piece it all together again. What a spectacular journey and one that I really want to see making it onto the Booker shortlist.

Huge thanks to @netgalley and @wfhowes for this audiobook which is beautifully narrated by Freya Miller

4.5 - An ambitious, intelligent and beautiful science fiction novel by an author who is not afraid to take on big themes. I hope it will be on many prize lists this year (edit: it made the Booker longlist, yes!).

Leigh grows up below sea level, in Rotterdam. As a promising young marine biologist she joins an expedition in the Atlantic Ocean where an extremely deep trench and chemical vent has been discovered that may contain clues about the beginnings of life on Earth. Divers develop mysterious symptoms and strange things are happening on board the ship. The expedition, surrounded by secrecy and seemingly related to a breakthrough discovery in propulsion technology, may really be a test for a deep space mission. But which company or government is behind it and what the real objectives are is kept hidden for all involved. Years later Leigh is bio-engineering microalgae as a sustainable food source and has the opportunity to join the mission, but that means choosing career over taking care of her deteriorating mother.

The novel's strongest point is the balance it strikes between science and psychology. Leigh loves nature and continues to be amazed by the wonder of life on Earth. Thankfully though, she never becomes melodramatic (as Richard Powers tends to do with his characters).

She loves her job, so a lot of the book is about the job (no distracting romances or little lectures about gender). This keeps it credible and intellectually interesting (although admittedly some of the science went over my head, especially since I only had an audio version) and there are eco-thriller and mystery elements to maintain the tension (and which sometimes reminded me of the new Eleanor Catton).

I read part of this on audio: the narrator is excellent, but if you want to make sure you get all of the science I would go for a physical copy or e-book (I didn´t mind though).