In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

“The present, regardless of what it entails, almost always comes with an in-built inertia, a resolute, robust banality” (268)

Leigh is a young marine microbiologist who has always escaped from her difficult family life into the natural world. But the world – and how we understand it – is changing in front of her. She first realizes this when she is involved in an exploratory mission surrounding an impossibly deep sea vent. Later, her work brings her to a California-based space agency, and she begins to understand that the universe is full of linked strange phenomena. Soon Leigh must decide if her thirst for knowledge is worth giving up on her ailing mother and stressed sister in pursuit of a shocking truth.

I thought this would be my personal winner. And I liked it! But I wasn’t completely blown away by it. I think I was expecting it to be, for lack of a better term, more literary, and it reads as commercial literary science fiction. Which is not a bad thing at all – I was just hoping for something more VanderMeer-esque, something a bit odder, something that I could turn over in my brain for longer. It’s not action-packed; it’s a quiet novel that’s as much about relationships as it is about space travel. Perhaps I wanted it to be more conceptual. Perhaps I wanted the interpersonal dynamics to be a little more robust. It felt a bit sterile when I was expecting something deeply emotional. This all sounds quite negative, but I did, for all that, enjoy it. It’s a compelling (if slow) story, an interesting perspective on humanity and the natural world, and an uncanny bit of near-future worldbuilding. Some reviewers feel that Leigh has no personality, which I don’t agree with. She’s a quiet person, internal and withdrawn, but that made the whole thing more interesting to me. Her obsession with establishing contact with alien forms is at odds with her almost pathological avoidance of her family.

The subtlety of the novel is something I appreciated about it. I think this would be a great novel for people who have never read sci-fi and want to ease into the genre with something that feels recognizably human.


Martin MacInnes lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. His debut novel, Infinite Ground (2016), won the Somerset Maugham Award. His second novel, Gathering Evidence (2020), led to his inclusion in The National Centre for Writing/British Council’s list of ten writers shaping the UK’s future. His third novel, In Ascension, was published in February 2023.

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press, Black Cat (Feb. 27 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802163467
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802163462