#Apostles of Mercy

[fe-noumenal]

I believe in every queer woman's right to be spirited away by an alien.

Nikola and Paris from Apostles of Mercy!

[notaplaceofhonour]

gurl istg if you make the one jew in this story die by sacrificing his life to save the world I will riot

[salamanderinspace]

gooooood the new Lindsay Ellis book is like someone dialed directly into my subconscious. Is connection and understanding an illusion, like when you talk to your cat and think it understands you? What degree of authoritarianism is necessary to make you feel like you can save everyone? Is there really an objective truth or just competing stories? What makes a person? Are people worth saving or helping? What is love, really?

I'm only on page 122

[galaxygolfergirl]

Axiom’s End, a science fiction drama written by Lindsay Ellis (directed by Michael Bay and score by Fred Durst).

This is a digital remaster of the poster I did 2 years ago! Seeing as Lindsay’s third book, Apostles of Mercy, is coming out next week on June 6th, I thought I might rework this piece now that I have this new tablet. I think it turned out pretty well! Hope you guys like it. 💙👽

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh I had a book review that I never did - Apostles of Mercy. Third in a series that I like, but while still "good" its the worst one so far! The Noumena series is a First Contact story set in Bush-era USA, telling the tale of Cora, a down-on-her-luck "everygirl" who gets dragged into being an interpreter/uncomfortably-intimate pairbond for an alien refugee named Ampersand whose home species is probably gonna wipe out humanity as a threat prevention/"why not" measure. Lets complain about things on the complaining-blog:

(The cover art continues to slap, no downgrade there)

Book 1 of the Noumena series is, fundamentally, the story of Cora and Ampersand, and how they connect. It is done really well, their differences stack on their shared contexts and a bit of alien magic to make it really believable that they become a found family unit. So in book 2... Ampersand kind of PTSD's into becoming a reclusive asshole, and Core spends most of the book away from him connecting with other people? It is an odd choice but, you know, this can work. You create space in a relationship, they grow and change from the space, then reunite and that distance in fact builds the foundation for new stuff. Its bold for book 2 but fair enough. But then she does it again in Book 3!! Cora goes off to deal with other issues and hang out with someone else, and is primarily annoyed by or made deeply uncomfortable by Ampersand's presence and decision-making for most the book. Its not as severe this time, but still; you can't play that card again, like come on! Are you telling your Transformers meets Beauty & the Beast fanfic or aren't you? Make up your mind! It comes off as too-clever-by-half, someone uncomfortable with doing the "typical" and having to constantly ~subvert, to ill effect.

Speaking of, the distraction du jour for Book 3 is Paris, Cora's new girlfriend. And she is very, very boring. She is just A Person, spends most of the book a prisoner trying to survive alien captors who don't understand her, and pretty much just has to be rescued at the end. There is no connective tissue - skills that she has that are crucial, themes she is the lodestone for, etc. In Book 2 Cora's partner Kaveh was far, far more interesting - he pushed the narrative forward, he was audacious and witty, and he had a deep internal narrative as to his motivations and goals. Paris seems like a checkbox in comparison. And I think there is something to that - in an interview Ellis remarked that she has gotten far less "critique" on her male characters than her female characters from the lens of making them interesting to read. She implies a degree of audience sexism there, but I think its probably the reverse - besides Cora (who is great) her male characters are just way more fun because, surprise surprise, they are allowed to be assholes sometimes in ways that make them complex and interesting. Even Kaveh, who is a very positively coded character, is a thirty-something rich guy sleeping with a college-aged broke trauma ball and is shamefully kind of loving being the fixer to her broken bird. That is good shit to read about - Paris could never because she is simply A Good Person. Because of Woke.

And speaking of politics! So this part of the series was always a little cringe - Ellis as a writer wears her politics on her sleeve and they are definitely a form of unsophisticated leftism with some really heavy-handed moments. But I don't mind reading the works of people I disagree with, I quite love it in fact; in the first book it is generally fine, because she sets up competent and realistic opponents. In Book 1 its the CIA embodied in Sol Kaplan, who believes in the War on Terror and all that jazz and is one of the best side characters, and Cora has to face brutal consequences for her own ideals. In Book 2 the cringe ratchets up a bit but still, here the debate is over civil rights & strategic approaches to the now-public alien refugees, and the "right-wing" factions are portrayed with intelligent arguments around security & deterrence, and also score their own wins. In Book 3, the main plot revolves around a sister alien faction's camp who specialize in biotech. And they have this whole thing where they move from place to place for secrecy, and to be away from people they find themselves in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and then an uncleansed mine field in Cambodia. At which point they start saying things like "we should eliminate the humans, we would steward the earth better" and you in the audience are totally supposed to be sympathetic to that. Its incredibly eyeroll, the large majority of the planet is rural countryside they could escape to with nothing close to that scale of damage, they literally chose the worst possible locations on two coin flips in a row. How are they not in Montana. Or Siberia. Its cringe, guys. She does the same thing with the CIA in this book, who eventually get commandeered by a US general who literally thinks of ethnic minorities as subhuman and says so explicitly. Incredible cringe.

Finally, Mary Sue problems. Cora interacts extensively with three humans in this book, and two of them want to fuck her and the third is her evil dad. Said dad spent the first two books being a distant figure pulling off big moves; in this book he literally does nothing but putz around, with no clear agenda but "butter up Cora", who sees through it immediately and fucks him over at the end. Like you spent two books setting this guy up? That is it? So Cora can look smart? We already knew she was smart. Someone says he loves her an "angelic" platonic way. Its not a good look and tbh a little baffling coming from Ellis, who is not at all someone who typically does that kind of stuff. I have to chalk that up to "ah fuck how do I wrap this arc up" syndrome.

Okay, done! Tbc the core of the book was still solid plotting and there was progress on interesting fronts. Its just sad to read Book 3 in a series where it commits mistakes the first two books explicitly avoided, like she ran out of endurance. Hopefully this is a book where she just got it out of her system.

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Spoilers for the ending of Apostles of Mercy because again, these books are the least subtle thing in existence so stuff like this really jumps out in contrast.

So I guess Cora is effectively dead as the person we've known over these past three books, which I don't mind because jfc, the girl was such an annoying whiny jelly-spine, but I really, really, really like how it's delivered, because you're gearing up for the finish and it's "wow, she's grown quite a lot, hasn't she, I now get what Sol meant about her finally seeming like an actual adult, heh, look, she's even sassing Paris about her silly little journalism, as if that could do anything, and she stopped investing all her emotional well-being into the newest orphan, phew, wonder where the desire to dominate Earth came from, that doesn't have much to do with what the story's been about, does it, and she doesn't even remember why she objected in the first place? eh, whatevs, wonder if the high-language experiments progress in the future books, she did note repeatedly how it was only Ampersand entering her consciousness, never the other way arounOMFG HE ATE HER MIND 🤯"

[comradegoblin]

Is it bad I like Sol? I feel like I'm not supposed to like Sol but I like Sol 👀

[weirdthingsintransit]

At the end of Apostles of Mercy and all I can say is.

GET HIS ASS SIS

[artbyvampiraptor]

Struggling struggling struggling to make a good Ampersand design, my alien cyborg blorbo,help I just wanted to draw something because the Apostles of Mercy cover was recently released and I'm vibrating with excitement

[noumena-ramblings]

Me, reading a Sol chapter: huh, maybe he’s not as much of an asshole as I thought

Me, reading further: OR MAYBE HE'S AN EVEN BIGGER ONE

[fe-noumenal]

My problematic OPT is plotting world domination.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I’m making my way through Lindsay Ellis’s Apostles of Mercy and reserving full judgment until the end (of the book & probably series) but I will say I’m not super crazy about the fact that the one Jewish character in this series is supposedly responsible for multiple American war crimes, including torturing Muslims & bombing children in the Middle East

what I can say that’s positive is that there are a lot of elements to his character that I do like, it was always clear he’s somewhat misunderstood, and he’s finally getting much needed time as one of the main PoV characters in the series, and that has added a lot more humanizing details that complicate other characters’ picture of him. the unreliable narration & themes of prejudice & distrust escalating conflict & causing people to demonize others are central to the story, and there are more than a few moments in the series where the other characters misunderstand & reveal prejudice/ignorance about him through micro-aggressions & the author is very clearly cognizant of & intentional about that, so that at least gives me some hope. there’s absolutely a way to write the story in a way that it eventually becomes evident that a lot of assumptions about him are built on exaggerated, incomplete information warped by ignorance & prejudice, and still have him be that fun rough-around-the-edges, morally-gray, bit-of-an-asshole-but-ultimately-trying-to-do-the-right-thing character, and not like… a very offensive stereotype.

but then I hear Lindsay Ellis talk about the Tanakh or the I/P conflict and I think, “yeah no l don’t trust her to do that” 🙃

[foxpearlwilder]

some rough sketches of amygdalines. i imagine they have slightly different crests and eyes, also that & has a hUge head compared to the rest

[secretsofthewilde]

There's something so gut wrenching about the way Cora constantly views Nikola as a threat and doesn't humanise him the way she does with Ampersand, and yet Nikola is the one that's more outwardly compassionate towards humans.

She also struggles with Ampersand lying or keeping things from her so much during Truth of the Divine, but Nikola freely gives information to those who ask him. When Ampersand is emotionally distraught, he shuts down and self isolates, but Nikola lashes out and self medicates - which is not only incredibly human in general, but it's something that Kaveh admitted to also doing in the past. Cora herself exhibits both traits; she will isolate herself from other humans and fail to look after self, but then will lash out at others when she's unable to be alone.

I can't help but wonder if part of it is due to her self-hatred for the bond she has with Ampersand, when Nikola is not only the seemingly kinder alien but he also shared a connection with Kaveh that was far more healthy than hers.

[innocet]

Started a noumena discord server, if anyone’s interested! It’s all ages at the moment (this might change depending on the demographics of our first members) so come on in!

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Why should humanity survive? For the same reason we try to preserve any other species, regardless of its use, cute, or yuck—because we're here. That's it. I don't understand this need to frame the issue around how humans good actually and the bad apples are few and evil dictators at the very top, uwu, and aren't there disenfranchised minoritites, you meanie, do you want them to die too 😭? Because if you're going to construct this like an argument for why humanity deserves to survive, babe, you so ain't winning this one.