777666 - 1 1
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Ages: 12-15, 16-18, 18+
The moon is in the wrong place. The rain has stopped behaving. And on The Graham Norton Show, two impossible guests have just told eight billion people, very courteously, that Earth is being audited.
Not invaded. Audited.
The auditors do not want our planet. They have a thousand of their own. What they want to know is simpler and much worse: now that every war can be ended, every disease cured, every hardship deleted, what, exactly, is a species for?
Naomi Pascoe: Prime Minister, Cornishwoman, keeper of a chipped porcelain lion. The answer will take the rest of her life, one unworkable day at a time. The auditors are patient. They are kind, mostly. And they have seen a great many worlds fail this test before.
Because the audit isn’t testing whether humanity can survive.
It’s testing whether we’re worth the journey back.
We thought we were making first contact.
They knew exactly which number we were.
For readers of Ted Chiang, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Kim Stanley Robinson, and anyone who loved Arrival.
Reviews
I really enjoyed it. It's not hard SCI-FI, it's more about us as a species rather than just the Aliens which I loved. I also really invested in the main characters, especially Laura and weirdly, Clarisse. It was unusual to feel being really pulled along, it's a real pager turner. When is the next one Mike?!
Wow! Mike has taken a subject that is dear to everyone's heart, added some fabulous sci-fi to it, and made this novel an unput-downable read. There are some serious issues in there, and lots of humour (not laugh out loud, but chuckles and giggles). Once I understood the main characters, I found that I was rooting for them all the way, and to introduce them to us via a very popular TV show was a clever trick- they didn't come across as weird, just a little erm, odd... Highly recommended *****
I really enjoyed this book. It was very thought provoking - the 'aliens' are not the focus of the story - it is all about how humans choose to adapt and adjust to a new scenario. It makes you question what is valuable in society, what may be difficult to change or easy. I have thought about that a lot since I finished the book. I would love to chat to Mike about the ending - It didn't end how I thought! (I don't want to say too much here.)
