Revelation

Ascendancy, Book 1

De: D. Ward Cornell

Narrado por: Garrett Michael Brown

First contact from the alien's perspective. Sixth edition.

Michael Baker is a 35-year-old, natural-born American citizen from Texas, a successful entrepreneur, and amateur astronomer. The scientific community mocks him when he publishes the time and coordinates where a supernova will occur. When it occurs, people start wondering who Michael is. The day after his third supernova prediction stunningly comes true, Michael abruptly takes over every television and radio in the world and announces that he is the Ambassador to Earth from the Intergalactic Confederation of Planets.

Earth is facing multiple grave threats and must take immediate action if there is any hope for humanity's survival. The Confederation has come to help and is willing to intervene if world leaders will accept the help the Confederation offers.

Set initially on the Big Island of Hawaii, the story circles the globe in search of enough allies to allow the Confederation to work on humanity's behalf. It is a riveting epic of alien first contact that features uplifting and sometimes humorous accounts of humanity's first interactions with intelligent extraterrestrial life, and it reveals as much about the people of Earth as it does of those who have come to save it.

If you like Arthur C. Clarkes' Childhood's End, or the movie Avatar, then you will love this book. It tells the story of the aliens walking among us and their purpose here on Earth. It is the first book in the Ascendancy series, which tells the story of humanity's ascent into intergalactic civilization.

©2019, 2020 D. Ward Cornell (P)2023 Podium Audio

It gets better!

I’ve come back to review after finishing the series. Each book gets better than the last, and by the end I was very happy I stuck with it.

I basically agree with the other review here. But somewhere around Book 2 or 3 I had a shift in perspective, thanks to George. Don’t worry, there’s no spoiler in pointing out the unflappable cheerleader in George. For me, he played a very important role in my appreciation of the books.

That role was to point out that this story is meant to be read as a comic book.

If you start off with that perspective, you might enjoy Book 1 a little more.

A note to the narrator: please, please, please never attempt a Hawaiian pidgin accent again.

A note to the author: if I hear the phrase “a couple days” one more time, my entire face will be flattened from all the head-to-desk. If I can’t convince you of the simple beauty of “a few days”, might I ask that you try out the word “of”? For example, “I can have that miracle ready for you in a couple of days.”

Waiting for book 2

There are some excellent ideas which our current world leaders should potentially hear/think about. The unreal side though, Authoritarian regimes will always want to stay in power.

Great Book 1

No one seems to know D. Ward Cornell, but he has become one of my favorite authors. In fact, of the 89 books I was able to complete last year, I chose his Echoes of Extinction series as my favorite. This book is also very good. I expect the Revelation series to continue this way. This story falls under the first contact genre of sci-fi. It is fast paced and well thought out.

Full transparency, I find it both a con and pro, but his stories seem overly or unrealistically optimistic. I might be so bold as to say it is a cosy-sci-fi. Not very demanding of the reader.

If you like first contact stories and sci-fi, I recommend both series mentioned

Did not enjoy the story

Found the story to be tedious, may areas stretched to the point of breaking. Will not be taking the rest in the series.

Immature characterizations and storyline

While overall this was a passable way to waste time on a sci-fi fictionalization, it suffered greatly from glaring faults in the plot and characterizations. The premise of first contact from the alien’s point of view was a great starting point, but from there, the most interesting questions of how we as a species would respond were handled as though this was written by a middle schooler. All evil human agency was (spoiler alert!) removed by the addition of the tired sci-fi trope of an unambiguously evil “body snatcher” enemy that was also present and interesting in the first contact. There were good guys with cardboard characterizations and and bad guys and no real mature believable characters in between to sympathize with. I wanted to like this, but was largely disappointed even though the writing style and quality are perfectly adequate to tell a rousing story.

Not great, but interesting concept

Interesting concept, but not very well written. If you can get past the author’s very explicit political biases, you might enjoy it. I found it trying.

Interesting but Lame

Story was ok , interesting ideas, not trying to be mean but the narration was so bad I couldn’t finish. I thought it was a joke at first.

Child like narration of an uninteresting tale

Very good and advanced aliens come to protect earth against bad aliens. Old hat and wrapping it in a diplomatic mission dealing with earth’s governments does little to peak interest in the narrative.

Ok light sci fi story

This isn’t any sort of hard sci fi, more of a light story with a happier tone than many. Everyone working together and overcoming issues a’la Star Trek

Poorly written - fun story

Exceptionally bad story with terribly developed characters…but still a fun listen. Reader was pretty good.