One Sentence Summary: Grace Park is one of thirteen humans sent to a new planet called Eos alongside an android crew, but, when they arrive, humans and androids alike begin to change, and it might have to do with odd metallic structures that may or may not actually exist on the surface

Overall

We Have Always Been Here combines science fiction with psychological thriller to get a wholly eerie and horrifying story of humanity and the lengths people and synthetics alike with go to in order to be free. There are shifting alliances and androids becoming almost human, secrets at every turn and in every heart, and a desperate psychologist who is out of the loop, but may be the only one who can save them. Frankly, this is a strange story, but was so impeccably done that it feels plausible, that it could be our future. There's a a dystopian feel to it with the Interstellar Frontier (ISF) regulating most of the population on Earth and across the interplanetary colonies, but it's mostly about a confined group of humans and androids who experience some very disturbing things.

Extended Thoughts

Psychologist Grace Park has always been more than a little different. In a time where most of space has been colonized and all of it run by the ISF, she is Earth-born and not conscripted to serve the ISF. But she also has a strong affinity with the androids, preferring their company to that of humans.

When a new planet is discovered, a crew of thirteen humans as well as an android crew are sent to Eos to survey it for suitability for colonization. That's all Park knows, making her an outsider. But even before they each the space around Eos, strange things start happening on board and it turns out quite a lot is on a need-to-know basis, and Park is not one of the ones who needs to know, creating friction between her and the rest of the crew, almost all of whom are conscripted.

The humans begin to experience strange waking nightmares. The androids seem to be taking on human characteristics. There's fear and paranoia and shifting ship hallways. And the only one who has a chance of piecing it together is Park, someone the androids trust, but the humans don't.

We Have Always Been Here is a seriously creepy read. It certainly freaked me out several times, but didn't scare me to the point of needing to turn on all the lights (I scare far too easily). It's the kind of story that takes hold of you and refuses to let go. There are some slow parts, but the story relentlessly drives forward, the story altering alongside the crew and the ship. There are twists and turns and literally no idea of who to trust.

The world is far flung, encompassing all known space. It's rare to come across a completely unknown and new planet. There are colonies seemingly just about everywhere, and they are the future for humanity to survive. The history behind it and how Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable is incredible, giving We Have Always Been Here a dystopian edge without actually really seeming dystopian with the ISF ruling the universe with an iron fist. Since moving off Earth is extraordinarily expensive, one can become conscripted to the ISF so they basically own you and keep your family hostage. This created an amazing tension between Park and the rest of the crew, who are almost all conscripted. They don't understand her and she doesn't understand them.

While the world is incredible, I really enjoyed the smaller world created on the ship. There's distrust for the androids and Park's affinity to them is noted as suspicious, so, by extension, the crew doesn't trust her. She's an outsider from whom everything about why they're on Eos is kept. It made for something of a mind bending experience as she seems to be chasing smoke and mirrors, but there's also really something there. The characters all really came to life, even the androids. All of them had distinct personalities and feelings and beliefs. I loved that they all kept something close to their chests, that some knew more than others, that they were so divided from the very beginning. I loved that I could understand them all, feel sympathetic towards them all, and feel indignant on Park's behalf. Even the androids were incredible. As the story went on, they each developed distinct personalities and beliefs. They created a society of their own, which was really incredible, though also kind of freaky.

Told as something of a three-pronged story, it focuses on the main story of what's happening to the crew as well as Park's upbringing to showcase where she comes from and the division between Earth-born and conscripted, and transcripts of the two men who originally discovered Eos. They're loosely wound together, but it becomes tighter by the last third, so the first two-thirds sometimes felt a little slow and not quite as interesting. There were long interludes about Park's childhood that felt necessary, but maybe a little too long at the same time as I often lost the thread of the main story. But I did really enjoy seeing how it all came together to be perfectly braided.

We Have Always Been Here is an incredible story of what it means to be human, of how humans can be divided against each other. It's creepy and atmospheric and so full of twists and turns it sometimes made my brain spin. But it's also an incredible read, one that continually moves, continually offers tidbits while also holding all the cards close. I loved never being a step in front of Park, of having to explore and learn things with her. In many ways, I feel like Nguyen drops the reader into Park's mind and body in order to lead us through this crazy, creepy, incredible story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

A psychological thriller in a sci-fi Alien-like setting. This book had several things going for it and some that weren't. Here are my thoughts on both:

What I liked
The dreary, dark atmosphere of the ship and the unknown planet it had landed on were both described very well. As the story progressed and several characters fell prey to a nightmare-inducing sickness that had them behaving irrationally, it only added to the suspense.

The treatment of androids and the fear of an uprising revealed an ugly aspect of humanity. Neither do we like something that's too unlike us, nor do we forgive things for being too similar to ourselves! While this trope is nothing new, it made for interesting reading.

What I Didn't like
Three timelines run simultaneously throughout the telling of this story. While they do lead to good reveals, two of them also detracted from the one that was describing the present.

I struggled to care about the protagonist. She's not described as an introvert but as a misanthrope. How such a person could go on to become a psychologist is beyond me. Not only should she be unable to get a degree in the subject, but her personality would also be a hindrance when she starts practicing. As it was, the whole concept of this book was based on this quirk of hers. So, I dunno how to take that.

Captain Sagara, with his secretive bossy ways, and Fullbreech, made for far more likable characters than the lead. However, the author's insistent way of describing Fullbreech's boy-next-door charm and how weird Sagara was did clue me in about their secret motivations.

Some repetitive parts could have been cut out during editing. Park's explanation of what was happening to Sagara comes to mind as an example.

If you like thrillers heavy on psychology with a smattering of sci-fi, then this is the book for you.

I am always here for space horror, especially ones that question the definition of human consciousness. And this book is creepily atmospheric, starring a fascinating main character who has her work cut out for her trying to be the therapist for the thirteen other human crew members on a mission to evaluate a planet for possible human colonization. It wasn’t supposed to be that way – Park’s mentor was supposed to be the primary therapist while Park was just supposed to be in the background – but things have been off-balance ever since they landed on Eos. Park, forbidden from actually stepping foot on the planet, is left with the sinking feeling that she’s been lied to about the purpose of the mission. Why are there so many military-trained members on an exploration crew? Why are there so many androids? With crew members falling mysteriously ill and the ship androids slowly malfunctioning, Park is left to unravel the mystery – while there’s still time to leave Eos.

“You’re the monitor,” Keller would often say. “The one who’s behind the scenes, watching. Figuring out what’s going on below the surface. I’m just here as the bait, coaxing everything out for you to examine.”


Park is a fascinating character. At times I wondered if she was neuroatypical, as some of her struggles reflect those of people I know on the spectrum. Despite admitting to struggling to understand many aspects of human socialization, Park is a psychologist specialized in analyzing the micro-expressions of people. She’s not supposed to be the one actually doing the counseling, but the one looking beneath the surface for the things the person isn’t saying. But her position is also basically a spy for ISF, the company who runs the known universe with an iron first. Most of the crew are conscripted, which means either they or their families signed their lives away to ISF in return for getting off Earth, which is now almost entirely covered in plantlife run rampant except for a few biodomes. Disappointing ISF means that a crew member and their entire family could be sent back to live in the wilds of Earth. Unlike most of the (conscripted) crew, Park grew up in an Earth biodome, orphaned at a young age and then raised by an uncle – or rather, raised by the androids her uncle bought to take care of her. She gets along much better with androids than people, leading her to be the scapegoat and victim of crew pranks.

“She just hates the robots because most people hate them.”
“Why do people hate them, though?” Park asked, feeling stubborn. “What have they ever done to anybody?”
“They’re different,” he said. “That’s enough.”
“Not so different, though,” she insisted. “They’re just like us, in many ways.”
Now Sagara laughed softly. “Just another reason to be afraid,” he remarked.”


The story picks up with Park awaking in medbay after being pranked with an emetic, to the shocking news that the ship’s engineer has also fallen ill and has been put in cryo stasis. From there, it follows Park as the other crew members get to work exploring the new world – and as things start to fall apart. It’s also interspersed with transcripts from the miners who originally found the planet, as well as flashbacks to Park’s earlier life, especially her interactions with the android, Glenn, who basically raised her. It’s a strange situation to have a character who’s constantly baffled by human interactions be the one who’s supposed to understand the possible motivations of the crew. Poirot, Park is not! She’s isolated from the crew, an outsider even after months spent among them, and her closest relationship is with Jimex, a custodial android who’s attached himself to her. While a lot of time is spent getting to know the other human crew members – military Boone, antagonistic Natalya, and, most confusing to Park, the seemingly romantic Fulbreech – an almost equal amount of time is also spent with the android component, especially Jimex and Ellenex, a nursing android. While the rest of the crew view the androids with at best detachment and at worst severe dislike, Park feels safest with them.

“It was like following the root system of a giant tree, shuffling blindly along in the half-dark. Or climbing through the arteries of a mechanical heart. What would be found, deep down in the core of things? You could never be quite sure.”


The book is set almost entirely on the Deucalion. The ship itself is creepy, a confusing maze of passageways built according to scientific principles that Park doesn’t know nor care about. That lends itself to several creepy excursions down to the lower levels, searching for lost crew members or clues to what’s happening. Since Park is so isolated, she has very little information to go on initially, and the slow reveal of what’s happening on the ship – complete with some red herrings – built the tension well. Park knows something is wrong, even if no one else will admit it, and by the time everyone else realizes that, she’s already knee-deep in the mystery. It did take a while for the story to hook me, but once it did, the book was impossible to put down.

Overall, this is a fantastic debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what the author writes next. Recommended if you’re looking for something creepy with a fascinating narrator.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Grace Park awakes from a night of food poisoning to discover her shipmates losing their minds. One of two psychologists attached to a mission to Eos, Grace is quickly left to her own devices as more and more of the crew succumbs to waking nightmares. Part haunting, part anti-capitalist explosion, and part philosophical debate about the nature of humanity, We Have Always Been here aims for the stars, but fails to become cohesive. Unreliable narratives crash into trippy frozen fractals of perspective that sadly is less than the sum of its parts.

We Have Always Been Here is a pretty cool story. The premise itself is awesome, because can you imagine being stuck in space with all kinds of weirdness going on around you? Eerie! So I am going to break down what I enjoyed, and then what didn't quite work for me!

What I Liked:

►Park! I honestly didn't understand why everyone was so anti about her, she was great! I mean, just because someone wants to hang out with AIs doesn't make them bad. Especially when humans won't give her the time of day. But alas. I also like that she was relatable, too. She had no intentions of being a hero, she was just there to be a psychologist, who happened to end up in some pretty unthinkable situations.

►The mystery! I love a mystery, and a space mystery is great! I had wondered from the start what exactly was up with this place- it seemed so "off" from the beginning, and obviously, we know based on the synopsis that it is indeed not copacetic.

►And not only are we unsure about what is happening to the ship and/or the planet, but we have no idea who Park can trust. Park finds herself having to second guess every person on board- and sometimes, she wasn't sure if she could trust her own instincts. So that adds a second, even more precarious mystery on top of an already thrilling situation.

►The atmosphere was very on point. Like I said, you just could feel that things were janky on this ship (and the planet it was hovering above). Everyone started acting squirrely, and even the AIs were not quite acting "themselves". I think extra especially on such a large ship with such a small crew, the eerie vibe was quite well done.

►I enjoyed the world building at large. Not only the world on the ship and Eos, but the world(s) they left behind. Seeing what had become of Earth via flashbacks, and hearing stories of other entities from Park's crewmates was quite satisfying!

What I Didn't:

►So, it got a little draggy at points, and I think that was because Park's inner dialogue was a little excessive at times. Don't misunderstand, I definitely was glad for her point of view and explanations of world stuff, feelings, etc.! But, I think that at times it became a little monotonous, hence the feeling of dragging a bit. And again, this is not to negate the awesome parts of the story, but in the spirit of honesty, I think a bit could have been cut out for the story to flow smoother.

Bottom Line: Great premise and a very interesting world, I was quite invested in finding out the secrets behind the ship, the planet, and even the crew themselves.

This was a great and engaging debut from a new author. It had all the right creepy and deteriorating beats of something strange happening to the crew and I was really intrigued from the get-go. I really enjoyed the timelines and the video transcripts that added a really cool layer as well as the stream-of-consciousness writing style when in Park's head. I like the different discoveries made that kept the book going and really tough to disengage from. It was a thriller through and through with a wonderfully executed scif feel. .

Lena Nguyen’s debut novel, We Have Always Been Here, has some beautiful language in it and the robots/androids/synthetics are easy to root for. Unfortunately, in terms of nice things I have to say about the novel, that’s about it. I was frustrated to the point I considered DNFing it within the first ten percent, but I hung in there because I thought I was judging too hastily. I wanted to give the author time to pull everything together. To see if that mental switch would flip and suddenly I would enjoy what I was reading. It never happened.

Warning: This review contains minor spoilers past this point.

First, let’s acknowledge (yet again) that I am extremely picky and little details that most people wouldn’t be bothered by will annoy me to no end. So, when the author tries to get me to believe that a spaceship to an unknown planet will have only a SINGLE person on board capable of fixing any engineering/mechanical problems and the androids, I’m going to give the stink-eye. If your ship breaks down, you dead. Why would you risk being dead on a single person getting injured/taken out of action/dead? It makes absolutely no sense and is not believable.

Unfortunately, that ‘this makes no sense’ was something that I found myself thinking at more than one point throughout We Have Always Been Here, in terms of just the basic set-up. The actual action itself was decent, and the writing is not bad, but the logic behind the set up gave me a headache. Like, for example, the author goes out of their way to make sure that the main character is very isolated from what’s going on. I mean, it’s legit a big deal. No one wants her to know anything, until at around the sixty percent mark, someone decides ‘Screw it, let’s tell her everything.’ Why spend all that time emphasizing how isolated the character is only to do that?

Side note: I’m honestly not sure if the ‘twist’ involving the main character is supposed to be a surprise at the end or not. I felt like it was telegraphed so plainly that it would be impossible not to have figured out what was going on well before the end, but I also read a lot so your mileage may vary there.

Ultimately, We Have Always Been Here failed to thrill or surprise me. The dual timeline really didn’t help anything in the story (though I will note that I did like the flashbacks to when Park was a child more than I liked the current timeline stuff.) I felt like bandaids were slapped over problems with the story rather than actually fixing them, and I never was able to get past that “this doesn’t make sense” to be able to connect to the story in any fashion.

Still, if you like your sci-fi so soft it’s squishy and you haven’t consumed a lot of media dealing with robot development, this may be a perfectly enjoyable read.

This sci-fi psychological thriller takes place on the uncharted planet Eos. The crew of the Deucalion is trying to uncover Eos's mysteries along with psychologist Dr. Grace Park. Dr. Park knows something strange is going on from the fact that she isn't allowed to see the planet to the unusual makeup of the crew. And when a strange psychological condition begins to spread among the crew, she knows she has to figure out what's going on. The story itself is fascinating, told from Dr. Park's present experience on the Deucalion, her past on Earth, and transcripts from the mission that first discovered Eos. It's an incredible debut, and I can't wait to see what Nguyen writes next.

This book is a wild ride! Nguyen did a fantastic job of balancing Sci-fi, Suspense and world building in this novel. Its unique and interesting.

So, this is more or less a locked room thriller. People are trapped on an uninhabited planet, in a space ship and bad things start to happen. It is fast moving and the tension is kept taught throughout. I had no idea whodunnit until the end and I didn't trust anyone!

I really enjoyed our MC, Park. She is the kind of protagonist I like, she has doubts and she works her way into her confidence all while dealing with crazy circumstances.

Overall, I think this book was a very enjoyable read!

The Deucalion is a large ship staffed by thirteen humans and thirteen androids, meant to explore a new planet for potential colonization. Psychologist Grace Park is meant to assess and treat the mental state of the humans, but she’s a bit misanthropic. She likes time with the androids better than the humans, and secrets abound. The tensions between the humans worsen when a radiation storm cuts off communication and isolates the ship. The androids act strangely, the people have nightmares, and perhaps nothing is as it seems.

We start with Park waking up after being dosed with emesis tablets. From this ignominious start, we see the tensions and secrets upfront. Park is a standoffish and not very personable character, for all that she’s a psychologist. It makes me wonder if she’s on the autism spectrum, as she categorizes and predicts behavior based on microexpressions, except that she doesn’t have odd ways of communicating and fully uses and understands figures of speech. I read her more as aromantic or asexual, as she has little interest in romantic relationships and categorizes that in others as physiological changes, and doesn’t readily consider others’ romantic lives. Park also tends to be standoffish to begin with, and the separation from the rest of the crew due to differences in her position and hire make it even more difficult to connect with others. We see this in language as well: she felt this, she thought that, she assumed something else. The distance in language, usually no-no in storytelling, works very well here. It puts us at a distance from Park’s innermost thoughts at times, much as the other characters are for her as well.

This oppressive kind of atmosphere builds over the next few chapters until the storm hits. Because we see things primarily from Park’s POV, and she was deliberately left in the dark regarding the mission, we learn fragments of truth as she does. We have to draw the same conclusions that she does until senior officers loop her in; even then, it’s not the whole story, and not until the final third of the novel that we truly get a sense of the planet, the people, the androids and what the company is looking for.

The novel poses the question what is humanity? There is also the question of consciousness, belonging, and the way that fear can other and isolate. This is science fiction, in that it’s an exploration ship and there are multiple colonies on multiple worlds outside of Earth, but these questions are the same regardless of time period and location. Despite the length that Park holds people, I still like her and wish her the best.

When psychologist Grace Park is sent aboard the survey ship Deucalion to observe her crew members' mental wellbeing as they explore an icy new planet, she gets more than she bargained for. One by one, crew members start having the same paralyzing nightmare, the ship’s layout appears to be rearranging itself, and the androids aboard the ship begin to act all-too-human.

In a race against time, Park must find the source of the madness before she succumbs to it too.

Mind-bending and awe-inspiring, We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen is a haunting psychological space thriller that perfectly encapsulates the horror and desolation of space and the unknown.

Think of it as almost like a blend of Prometheus and Annihilation. It’s exactly my cup of tea—veering into cosmic horror territory and lingering with me even after I finished its final pages.

"The EOS team viewed her as an ISF snitch, a ladder-climber, a betrayal to her peer group—and also just plain strange. She was also troublingly unavailable as a sexual partner—none of the expedition members were married—and this isolated her even further. There was no comfortable niche for her in the social structure. No connections to anchor her to the community.
Once, during a patient session, Valentina Hanover asked to be called “Hunter.”
“Hunter,” Park repeated, thinking of her file. “That isn’t your middle name.”
Valentina gave her a look of loathing. “It’s called a nickname, you absolute imbecile.”
That about summed up everyone else’s apparent impressions of Park. She barely spoke to them, and when she did, it always seemed like she came off as baffling, primitive: some kind of specimen that one examined with half-disgust, like protozoic ooze. No, they acted like she was an alien sightseer, ogling the most basic human interactions, and in turn, they ogled her, too—squinted at her from behind the glass, whispered and smirked to each other. "

--------------------------------------

“I don’t think,” he said, “that humans can live here, Park.”
“So why are we still here?”

Grace Park was not the sort of psychologist who sits with patients using talk therapy to unearth and resolve their deep-seated issues. No couch or cushy-chair sessions for her. Removed-from-people analysis was much more her forte. Frankly, she was a lot more comfortable with androids than she’d ever been with people. People lie. But when her boss, more of a traditional, people-skills psychologist, is pulled away onto a very hush-hush special assignment during their mission, Park is stuck as the remaining shrink. As noted above, the crew see her as a spy for the mega-company that is in charge of this expedition to a new planet, Eos. They are not entirely wrong. She had been given this assignment to monitor the mental well-being of the crew and report back, interceding where needed to head off potential morale problems.

It was weird having two shrinks aboard. And it was weird that there was something going on that only some of the crew were in on. And weirder still that something is making the crew of the Deucalion sick, not just unwell, but out of their minds, and a danger to everyone ar0und them, leaving Park to cope with the uninfected crew and the spreading madness.

The security people are no help at all. The very suspicious Sagara sees threats everywhere, and his #2, Hunter Hanover, seems eager to get back into the combat she clearly misses, even if it is with an unarmed psychologist. Instead of carbon dioxide, she exhales hostility.

So, there are core mysteries--what is going on? what is making every one nuts? what is the secret project some of the crew are working on?--with Park trying to sleuth her way through those, while crew-members around her are either succumbing to madness or being picked off like the characters in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Grace suspects one or more of the unaffected might be part of the problem. She does have at least some crew members she can talk to. A cartographer named Fulbreech seems interested in her (which she cannot understand, seeing herself as not at all attractive) and a custodial android named Jimex, that (who?) assists her in a variety of tasks.

There is a horror element as well. Park must fear for her own safety, of course, as an infected person might try to kill her. And then there is the decidedly strange. Passages in the ship seem to shift like Hogwarts staircases. And bizarre dreams add to the mix.

"'I was sleeping, and then when I woke up—I couldn’t move. There were all these lights flashing in my face. I tried to open my mouth to yell for someone, but—I had no tongue.'
'In your dream,' Park couldn’t stop herself from saying.
Holt shook his head again, but Park couldn’t tell what it meant. He continued, 'My lungs were frozen; I couldn’t breathe. I was cold—so fucking cold. Like I was dead. Like my skin was peeling off. None of my organs were working. And I—I wasn’t in control of myself. I wanted to go outside. Leave the ship. But I was trapped inside my body and couldn’t move. I thought to myself that I’d rather be dead than keep feeling that way. I wanted to be dead.' "

And there is some visceral fear inducement, reminiscent of classic sci-fi/horror like Alien.

"It didn’t help that the air was so muggy and damp, as if she were walking into the gullet of something alive."

Any good horror tale deals in feelings of isolation, and there is plenty of that here. The insiders on the ship have all the needed intel, and are not eager to share, even those who are not overtly hostile toward her. Grace is certainly outside the inner circle, not privy to operational info, not allowed to go onto the planet after they land. It does not help that there are no windows on the ship, outside the bridge, so she cannot even see outside. Communication with the home base planet is cut off due to a radiation storm (or is it?) And why are there so many military sorts on this mission? What does it say about your situation when your most trusted allies are not human? But isolation was something with which Grace had had plenty of experience.

"Solitude for her was like a religious blessing to others: it was her church of one. Always she closed the doors behind her with the awareness that she was giving herself sanctuary, an opportunity to cleanse and be purified. Fulbreech was like the neighbor who kept her from shutting the door, asking if she was interested in participating in the annual bake sale."

The story takes place in three time-lines. First is Grace and her ongoing, present-day experiences. This is augmented by flashbacks to her childhood on Earth. Not an idyllic upbringing. The third piece consists of field reports from another ship, the Wyvern, in which we follow the exploits of its two crewmen, who had landed on a very strange planet, and were seeking to basically claim it. We can expect that the Deucalion and Wyvern stories will eventually connect. The strangeness of the Wyvern crew’s exploration of the planet adds to the general feeling of menace.

Overall, I was reminded of The Thing and The Terror, in addition to the Agatha Christie and Alien refs noted above. There is a persistent, mounting feeling of dread, that grows as we become more familiar with Grace, better understand why she is the way she is, why she feels more sympathy for machines than for people, and are able to root for her more and more.

The explanation for it all is quite interesting. Nguyen’s constructed universe is believable, given the usual sci-fi shortcut of FTL speed. Mention is made of Privacy Wars impacting what is allowed re surveillance, and anti-robot riots on Earth, the latter seeming a lot more believable than the former. People seem quite ok with sacrificing privacy for convenience, but I could easily see the unemployed and those feeling threatened rising up to oust the mechanized other.

I liked the parallelism of Park connecting with Jimex today, and a different caretaker android on Earth, while a Wyvern crew-member forms a bond with a very different sort of droid on that mission. There is intelligent consideration of what makes a person a person, and an interesting look at a less individualistic form of intelligent connection. (This hits home as I see my wife becoming one with her new iWatch) I quite enjoyed the Campbellian hero imagery, as Grace must descend into the bowels of whatever (the inmost cave) to engage in a Supreme Ordeal. Will she prevail?

So, there is plenty to like about this book. There is a lot of intelligence, thoughtfulness, and craft on display. Nguyen is a young writer with enormous promise. And yet, even with occasionally feeling pulled in, feeling invested, particularly when reading about Park’s past, the feeling was only occasional. I worked my way through the book, reading regular chunks every day until I was done, but I never really needed to get back to it. It was not a read that pulled at my consciousness all that hard. I am giving this one four stars, but that is only because three and a half is not an option.

"Did anyone really have the capacity to care—truly care—beyond the instinct to ally, fuck, and raise their young to breeding age? Were there any decisions guided by pure selflessness? Not in humans, she supposed—in androids, yes. It was too bad no one else could see the beauty in that."


Review posted – July 2, 2021

Publication date – July 6, 2021


I received an e-ARE of We Have Always Been Here in return for an honest review. Thanks to DAW Books in general and Elisha K in particular, and NetGalley for facilitating. While it may sometimes seem that way, this review was not written by a machine. I make no such avowals about any other reviews.

For the full review, with links and all, please head over to Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4068672443

This one wasn’t quite for me. It definitely leans towards the psychological horror/thriller end of the genre spectrum and that just isn’t my thing. If you like that type of book and would enjoy it in a sci-fi setting this will probably be a four star book for you. It was written and the pacing of the story is good.

This book was so weird. I was totally sucked in and couldn't put it down, but there were several plot threads that I feel were left hanging, and plot points that weren't fully explored/resolved. At first I was confused about all of Park's flashbacks, but then it was really cool how it was eventually tied in.

I also thought I knew where the Lena Nguyen was leading with the mysterious illness, and I was so thrilled to be completely wrong! I read a bit of a review that mentioned a spoiler (so I won't mention it here!) but I think that tiny bit of a spoiler let me down a certain direction - though the way my brain took it would have ALSO been very cool and creepy too. ;)

The world-building is really cool and I was fully immersed in this adventure Lena Nguyen takes us on in this debut novel. I can't wait to read more from her!

Why would a woman who prefers the company of robots to human become a psychologist? That is one of many questions you might ask yourself as you read We Have Always Been Here.

I kept reading to the end because I was really hoping it would all make sense in the end. It didn’t. Not really. There were many mysteries encountered on the shipped, which held my interested. But a lack of cohesiveness about the mysteries resulted in a dissatisfactory ending. Is the book supposed to be about AI evolution, about planetary exploration or about we don’t really know very much about what is out there?

Not to mention the scifi environment. A futuristic mission to explore a planet seemed horrible planned, inadequately staffed, and barely managed. First. the crew assembled was full of animosity and mistrust before they even left Earth. Who would send out such a crew? Second, the crew psychologist knows nothing of the planet or the mission. Wouldn’t that make it difficult to be a psychologist. Lack of communication on a possibly dangerous mission seems is a great way to shoot everybody in the foot. Basically, these things make it had for even me to suspend my disbelief.

The clues were sporadic and obtuse. Is there a mystery to be solved or is it just a weird-things-happen story?

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen

Pros: interesting protagonist, tense action, compelling mystery

Cons: somewhat frustrating opening

Grace Park is the Orbiter on the spaceship Deucalion, a psychologist sent to monitor the crew on their mission to scout out a newly discovered planet and prepare it for colonization. Her role, her standoffishness and the fact that she not a conscripted member of ISF makes her something of an outsider among the crew, fitting in more with the androids on board. Things immediately start going wrong when they arrive at the planet. Facing mistrust and paranoia, Park has to figure out what’s going on before it’s too late.

The opening’s a bit slow as you’re introduced to a lot of characters, settings, and history. It’s also frustrating as you’ve only got the information that Park is privy to (with the exception of some emails at the start of some chapters), so it takes quite a while before you both begin to understand what’s going on. That slow opening pays off at the half way point when the tension ramps up and it becomes very hard to put the book down.

The book begins with a mystery but parts in the middle felt very much like a horror novel. The action is fast and explanations limited (though eventually you do learn enough to understand what’s really going on).

Park is a challenging protagonist as she has a limited range of emotions. It’s easy to understand why she’s ostracized by her peers, but seeing her actions from the inside helps the reader empathize with her. I did find it a little strange that a 13 member human crew could make a 3 floor ship feel crowded and full of ‘cliques’, but those early complaints faded as the action ramped up. I enjoyed seeing Park’s friendship with various androids as the book progressed.

It’s an interesting book. Definitely worth pushing past the opening to see where the book goes. The ending felt right, though it left unanswered questions.

We Have Always Been Here is the debut novel from author Lena Nguyen and it's a type of book that I swear has been getting more and more common these days. In the vein of say, Emma Newman's Planetfall series or a number of other books, it's a noir-esque novel of a neurodivergant protagonist (described by book blurbs as a misanthropic psychologist) out in space/on an alien planet, as strange things begin to happen among a limited number of characters in what seems to be a locked room-esque mystery. This combination is surprisingly common at least among books I've found myself reading (Kali Wallace's book from this past March, Dead Space, shares some similarities) and it's one I haven't always found myself loving that much.

But We Have All Been Here does this in a fairly interesting manner, with a really strong world, an interesting reveal, and a solid main character to guide us through it all - again misanthropic psychologist Grace Park. It's a story filled with humans - in this case either soldiers or genius scientists - and androids, exploring a newly discovered world on behalf of an organization that essentially controls all of human space, whose power is too substantial for anyone not well off to resist after Earth has fallen to pieces. And the protagonist, who doesn't really empathize with humans but does with the androids, has to discover what's going on as people start coming down sick, androids start acting weird, and everything turns out not to be what it seems, leading to an ending that actually works fairly well and is done in an interesting manner. If you like this type of book, you'll like this, and if you are merely ambivalent, you'll probably find this interesting as well.



----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Dr. Grace Park is an outlier on the Deucalion, a survey ship heading to a newly discovered ice planet Eos with a crew of soldiers and scientists to explore it for colonization purposes. She's the ship's second psychologist, on a ship where nearly everyone else has their own unique specialty, is perhaps the only one who has never gone into space before, and is one of the few not conscripted by the ISF, the organization that took over human civilization and exploration as the Earth finally rejected humanity. Add in the fact that she is uncomfortable around other humans and feels more comfortable around androids, and Park very much feels out of place on this mission...especially because she's not even allowed to explore the planet like the rest of the crew.

But when people around the ship start getting sick with strange mutual nightmares, and the ship's medical doctor insists upon freezing more and more people, including Park's superior psychologist, Park's discomfort only grows. Soon Park begins to realize that some of the basic things about the mission don't make sense - especially as strange things keep piling up on top of each other.....passages on the ship begin to go on and on, the androids start acting weird and vaguely human like, and Park keeps having flashbacks to her own childhood, when she was raised by her own advanced android in a time of anti-android sentiment.

But as things start falling apart on the Deucalion, Park will find that she may be the only one who can figure out what is happening, before the mystery of Eos and the ship consumes them all, humans and androids alike......
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We Have Always Been Here is told near-entirely from the perspective of Park, our protagonist, except for occasional interludes to read the logged stories of the two travelers and their AI exploration device who discovered Eos, which slowly sheds light on the mystery. Park's storyline flashes back occasionally to Park's childhood, where she grew up inside one of the domes making up well-off Earth years after environmental disaster - "The Comeback", where growings from Earth accelerated and destroyed human settlements all over - under the care of a highly advanced android Glenn. It's a past timeline that heavily shapes who Park is, as she finds comfort and caring and appreciation only in Glenn's care, and can never really relate to other humans, at a time when humans are rioting over androids beginning to take over their jobs and positions. And as a result of that fear, that situation, and Park's own inability to relate to anyone else, she finds herself thinking of androids like Glenn and others as people and empathizing with them, even as she can't empathize generally with other flesh and blood people.

And this works really well in making Park a central guiding protagonist as we explore the mysteries on board the Deucalion and Eos. After all, Park doesn't get along well with people and is on the outside due to her wealthy background putting her outside ISF control, so is it really impossible that her thoughts that things are going wrong are just in her own head? That the freezing of personnel isn't something nefarious but is just her mistrusting other humans and not knowing what to think about them? Nguyen never really tries to fully suggest that Park may actually be crazy and nothing strange is happening, but it's always in the back of Park's own mind as she tries to investigate and colors everything, especially as Park's own mind makes the Androids into more sympathetic people than the humans who hate them. And yet, even as Park isn't someone who empathizes with other humans, it is easy to empathize with Park herself, who is so misunderstood by everyone else due to them not understanding that she sees the world and people differently, rather than being a spy or not caring as she might seem.

And Park leads us on a noir-ish mystery that works for the most part in some interesting ways with some interesting themes. Nguyen pictures a world in which the earth fought back against humanity and essentially expelled all but those rich enough to live in isolation or poor enough to fall into the hands of an overwhelming corporate force that controls colonies away from Earth, except for a few people who attempt to live radically with nature. She pictures androids replacing human laborers as machines supposedly will for humans today, only the protesting and rioting people are protesting beings that do have their own minds and wills to a certain extent, even if that will never be fully recognized or acknowledged by the humans. And she pictures how that overwhelming corporate force will conscript others for its own security, and how those others may react negatively to such things, and fight for their own freedom at incredible potential costs.

It doesn't all work, even as its themes of freedom for humans or artificial life in a warping world do resonate. Once there's a partial reveal of what's going on, a few mysterious occurrences that happen to the main protagonist become something that should not be that hard to figure out for Park, and yet Park still is left in the dark on that for way too long afterwards. And to be honest the non-Park humans are for the most part significantly less interesting than Park herself, with the main antagonistic ones to Park never really being developed at all (Security Chief Sagara is perhaps the only exception), which makes it hard to care whether or not they might be behind it all or not.

But overall it does work, making this one of the better version of books with such a setup, and well worth your time. I will be looking forward to more from Nguyen, whether in this universe or in another, for sure.

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen 

This psychological sci-fi thriller features psychologist Dr. Grace Park, who is a crew member on a survey ship, the Deucalion. Thirteen humans and thirteen androids are on this trip to assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. Park's job on this expedition is to observe the human crew members although most of the crew members see Park as a company spy. Interstellar Frontier controls the lives of every conscripted person, including the lives of their families. One wrong step from a conscripted person and they and their families can end up dumped into the wilds of Earth, a feral, dangerous place. Park is from a safe, secure biodome part of Earth and has never needed to conscript herself to ISF in order to survive. 

But Park is different from the others in another way, too. She has always felt a bond to her android companions, first her nanny android and later her bodyguard android, Glenn. She's stood out for not meshing with humans, for being happy alone or with Glenn, who, along with the nanny, raised her from a young age while her guardian spent months/years doing research elsewhere. 

Now, on this ship with thirteen humans and thirteen androids, once again Park forms bonds with the androids, especially Jimex, the custodian model, who spends all his down time beside Park. It's in this backdrop of suspicion towards Park, because of her non conscripted status and her friendliness with the androids, that disaster befalls the ship upon landing on Eos. The engineer falls ill and is out of commission. Soon others are taken out of commission, also, with nightmares, sleep walking, self harm and other things occurring among the crew members. Someone is trying to sabotage the mission and everyone is in danger. 

An already claustaphobic situation feels more so as bodies fall and the systems on the ship and the ability to communicate with the company fails. The present day story is intertwined with flashbacks to Park's early days with Glenn and with a broken down two man ship to this very planet, one year earlier. I was intrigued by Park's thoughts as she tried to analysis the motives and hidden feelings of the crew members when she barely seemed to know how to relate to her fellow humans at all. 

Thank you to DAW and NetGalley for this ARC.

Unfortunately for you, the book I am about to review doesn't come out for a little while. But, I am so excited to talk about it that I had to make sure it didn't fly under the radar. It's one of our Dark Horse debuts of the second half of the year and you should definitely check it out. It’s a little treat from me to you! Luckily for both of us, this is not a trick, as I absolutely adored this book. Now it’s not often that science fiction and horror get thrown together, and it’s even rarer that it’s done in such an exciting fashion. We Have Always Been Here, by Lena Nguyen, is a science fiction horror that leans into its well established tropes, delivering a creepy and unsettling story that questions the nature of consciousness and agency.

We Have Always Been Here follows Grace Park, a ship psychologist who would rather deal with androids than humans. She is a temporary member of the Deucalion’s crew, a ship controlled by the ISF meant to explore and set up colonization efforts on designated planets. Her job is to make sure that the other specialists on board maintain their sanity, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and ease tensions between other crew members. However, something outside her training begins to happen to the crew. After several crew members start to exhibit odd behavior, such as sleepwalking and murmuring the terror of their dreams, the chief medical officer begins to place those with the madness into cryosleep as a form of quarantine. Since those who have been quarantined all suffered similar symptoms, there is concern it could be an alien virus, and the crew starts to worry. After Park’s supervisor is placed in cryo sleep too, Park desperately tries to get to the bottom of the mystery plague. With limited resources and no one to trust, will Park figure out what is happening before she too succumbs to the madness?

I’m just going to say this upfront, Nguyen absolutely knocks the horror aspects of this book out of the park. She does an incredible job of developing a thick atmosphere that permeates the book and ebbs and flows to suit the tension of the story. This feeling is suffused into almost every aspect, from the plot, to worldbuilding and even character development. Each revelation within the story only begs more questions, obscuring whatever bits of light the end of the tunnel may provide. Nguyen shows a real talent for introducing the characters and world in a piecemeal fashion that progressively feels more natural. It’s a little jarring at first because Nguyen does not hold your hand, choosing to jump right into the story without any background. Since the story is told through Park’s perspective, and she tells it as if she is talking to herself instead of the reader, it takes time for some of the language and lingo to build.

Now, I could dissect all of the usual individual pieces that make up the larger novel, but I think that would be doing Nguyen a disservice. While she shows incredible ability to write characters, build her world, provide misdirection, and spin an ever tightening plot, her power lies in interlinking all of these elements. The entire book is a delicate and intricate web of cause and effect, misdirection, and drip fed information. Her prose, while lush and heavy with description, makes the environment feel cramped and claustrophobic. This feeling is exacerbated by Park herself, as she is a calculating, insular and solitary person who tends to view interactions between people as an analytical puzzle to be solved. She shows no real attachment to the crew beyond her job. Her dwindling sanity adds to the already narrow perspective by rapidly shifting focus and viewing everything with an interrogating and defensive posture. Every piece feels fine tuned to fit exactly where it needs to be, leading to questionable answers, and unanswerable questions. We Have Always Been Here is a haunting puzzle where the pieces themselves start to shift in shape and color as you complete it.

Much like Park, the reader rarely gets a chance to rest. Nguyen dances between three different timelines and stories, holding the cards close to her chest. They perpetually feel ready to crash into each other only to swerve away at the last moment, leading to further questions about their meaning. Grace is the perfect vehicle for two of these timelines. Her misanthropic nature leads her to work out the complexities in her own mind, eschewing conversation for mental tunnel vision. The ISF itself isolates her from the rest of the crew for its own ends, a standard procedure one finds out, but questionable nonetheless. There are other ways Nguyen cleverly creates divisions, including class and point of origin, amongst the various crew members that feels natural to the world and brings out the individual personalities of the characters. And the ship itself, well, it feels perfectly endless, yet small enough to make an agoraphobe bang on the door to be let out.

Nguyen’s debut is impressive. The usual metaphors that litter the science fiction horror genre are flipped upside down and inside out, causing confusion for the reader and allowing the story to play out naturally. I can’t emphasize how astounded I was that each reveal only seemed to make things murkier while maintaining a sense of believability. If you’re looking for a psychological horror with a science fiction setting that never lets you go, We Have Always Been Here is a sure fire bet.

Rating: We Have Always Been Here - 9.0/10
-Alex

DNF at 12%

Oh look, another sci-fi book where the science makes ZERO sense. I swear authors could at least try to research basic science before jumping into sci-fi. It's honestly just insulting.