At the center of this novel is a mysterious gigantic mountain that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We're introduced to the main character, Harold, in the psychiatric hospital, many years after his involvement in the mountain research project. The story is told in retrospect through a series of letters he left for his niece.

What follows is a pastiche of horror, speculative fiction and family drama. It starts off really strongly and then at one point it just goes totally wild. There are so many different elements put together that I can't really decide whether it works or not. Ultimately, it was fun for the most part, but can't help to think it is a huge wasted opportunity.

The end was so poorly written, it felt so campy, like belonging to another novel. The whole alien thing was funny. It was anti-climactic for me. If those Leviathans actually turned out to be superior intelligence would make more sense than what was presented.
I would even go so far as to forgive the weird alien twist if it wasn't for Bettan becoming a god and then killing himself(???). That did not make any sense at all for such an alpha, power-thirsty character.
I tried to reason it as if he represents power-thirsty humanity not yet ready for spiritual ascension, but it was done in such a poor, anti-climactic way. It ruined the whole book for me.

I enjoyed the horror atmosphere and mystery in the first part by far the most. ( )

It says on Nicholas Binge's website that he writes 'literary science-fiction'. Fellow Goodreaders, you can imagine therefore the excitement with which I picked up this book (which I notice in fact by blissful serendipity is a Goodreads 'most anticipated read of 2023). What a refreshing change this will be, I thought, from all that non-literary or worse, contra-literary, SF, here is a chance to use my intellect and enjoy myself. As you might understand, I have been trying to work out what Binge's particular literary SF ingredients might be. Well. for a start there is a quotation from 'Le mythe de Sisyphe' as the epigraph. Pretty literary, no? Disappointingly it's in an English translation but credit to Binge for trying to meet all those readers picking up his book to better themselves by meeting them halfway. There is the form of the novel. Is Binge trying to revive an 18th Century tradition in modern SF by creating the first (asymmetric) epistolary literary SF/horror? Then, not very far in, there is a(n admittedly rather pedestrian) quotation from Cicero pulled out by one of the characters. Quite literary, although I couldn't help reflecting that Philip K Dick, that old literary charlatan, would by this stage have referred to Wagner, Schopenhauer and Teilhard de Chardin at least once. So perhaps the supreme literary device might be the fact that one of the characters is named The Warden'? Very All Souls. Indeed, I was hoping that it would be revealed that the Warden's mysterious companion would turn out to be the Sub-Warden and that somehow the book would become a SF allegory of the struggles between John Sparrow and AL Rowse. Afraid not. So whilst I am still scratching my head trying to identify the particular killer literary skills and tricks deployed which raise this above the quotidian in SF terms, the one thing I can definitively reveal which is not literary is the actual prose itself. Indeed of the dialogue I think it's certainly true to say that Binge demonstrates, as the late, great Martin Amis said of Cyril Connolly, 'what appears to be an anti-knack for catching human speech'. (The late, great Martin Amis: given Binge's indispensable addition to our critical taxonomy I suppose we should describe Amis now as the author of 'literary literary fiction'. I expect it will grow on me).
Anyway, given it's unlikely that Terry Eagleton is an avid Goodreads user I will be vulgar and non-literary enough to mention narrative. 'Ascension' is a about a huge mountain that appears in the middle of an ocean. It turns out to be a better yarn than you might expect given that premise, although incoherence is the dominant characteristic of its last third. ( )

I'm hovering between 3 and 4 stars.

It's the television show Lost, set on a mountain. I was fairly disappointed at the end of Lost, but I loved that show.

The god-bothering is amazingly pretentious. The action scenes contain way too much naval gazing. Also, the author 'pays homage' to a lot of other works, and it frequently pulls the reader out of the story. Stop it. Be your own work.

His choice of recipient is a bit odd, and his vision of the future as an old man is even weirder, but okay.

I also have to comment on the visual similarities of a certain movie and the god-like being at the end. WTF.

This book would have probably been better written in first-person narrative, but the epistolary is fine, given that I forgot that I was not the original recipient while reading. The action on, and effects of, the mountain move at a fast clip. The only thing that drags is the navel-gazing of the various characters. Character building is fine, but surrounded by life-threatening danger generally isn't the time to remember what led you to all of your poor choices in life. OTOH, that seems to be a feature rather than a bug. ( )

Pretty interesting, but not a page-turner. ( )

Going into this novel I had certain expectations, mostly that this was going to be some sort of "weird" story, possibly inching up to the boundary of cosmic horror. In the end though, Binge upset most of those expectations with some dramatic plot twists, which I'm not sure I'm buying, and which veer dangerously close to shaggy dog territory. Still, this is far from a bad first-time novel, and I'll be happy to consider the man's future books. ( )