Horrifying, atmospheric, convincing, icy, eerie, epic

Wow! We Have Always Been Here was wonderful. This was the scariest book that I’ve ever survived through, and I’m proud to say that I came out loving it! This space horror has scared me more than any other book I’ve ever read (note: I have not read a lot of scary books). I initially picked this up because the author is Vietnamese and I’m desirous to read more Vietnamese authors (for personal reasons), and I am so glad that I requested it! Even though I was scared silly to even start it.

Quick Summary: Psychologist Dr. Grace Park has been placed on the Deucalion on her way to an icy planet to assess the colonization potential of a planet. Divided by varying feelings toward androids, Dr. Park is often ostracized from the rest of the crew. To make matters worse, soon after they land on Eos, the androids begin to behave strangely, and the crew seem to be falling victim to waking nightmares of insanity, one by one.

I absolutely loved the battle between conscripted and non conscripted people. I loved how it implied how deep and horribly capitalism had progressed. The way that the conscripted people were essentially owned by the ISF and how the non conscripted got very little information, because they had less leverage on them. When a single company owns every aspect of your life, how do you ever speak out against them? Which was especially chilling, considering we are working on sending private companies into space right now.

The other thing I loved was the idea of the Come Back on earth. This book had so many incredible things that were happening on the ship, but I just couldn’t get over how excited I was with the way the world was portrayed. I loved seeing what we did to earth and how the earth retaliated. The way that most of the things that happened on earth and humans were just implied because we can already make assumptions how it the earth and capitalism got to be how they are in the book. I know these both are a bit more minor things but they really blew it away for me.

The last thing that really caught my eye in this one was the science. I’m such a space nerd that reading about journeying into space, and the technicalities of everything that was happening on this strange planet brought me back to my days where I very nearly majored in Astrophysics for college. I absolutely loved the explanations and the scientific theorizing that happened in this book. I’m sure that took so much work to manage, and Lena Nguyen really managed to nail it right on the head. I’m super impressed how she was able to convince me of all of the theories. I can’t tell you about them, you’ll just have to read the book! But they are impressive!

Summing it all up
We Have Always Been Here was a fantastic atmospheric space horror that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I absolutely loved the way Lena Nguyen built such a believable world, and threw in so much well explained science that it convinced me everything that happened is possible.

First and foremost, I would like to thank NetGalley and DAW Books for providing me with a copy for review. Please note that this in no way affects my opinions.

Any sci-fi that focuses on an isolated crew stuck on a ship in space is a recipe for success. Whether or not the product of that recipe is great or not is another question entirely. I think that despite the fact that the plotlines could have been tied together more effectively and it got a bit lost in all the scientific strangeness, this was an overall decent sci-fi horror. Here are all the reasons why I thought so.


Writing:

This book is divided I would say into three different formats: the current storyline, video logs, and flashbacks. Out of all of those I enjoyed the video logs the best as the format worked well for a sci-fi horror novel. I think that that kind of format would have worked really well for an audiobook as well.

As for the writing itself, I thought that it was easy enough to get into even though the writing gets a lot more complex as you go on due to a large amount of scientific jargon.


Plot:

As said above, the book is divided into three storylines. The current one follows Grace Park and the crew of the Deucalion on an expedition to an unknown planet. I thought that the story was more interesting initially as everything started to play out, but it lost its momentum as you reached the end. Once it concluded, I felt like the story came to a grinding halt and I was not satisfied with it. There were also elements that were included at the beginning but were only mentioned offhand in the end.

The second storyline was flashbacks of Park's past that helped establish why her character is the way that it is. While it does tie into the main storyline to an extent, I felt like the flashbacks could have been left out as I thought they didn't add too much to the story.

The final storyline came in the form of video logs of two men named Taban and Daley and an android designated as HARE. Out of the three, this storyline intrigued me the most and I wish that more of the book was dedicated towards it. The only downside to this was, as with both of the other storylines, I felt like it stopped before it was complete. Everything ramped up and then fizzled out into nothing.

With a plot like this, it is going to be farfetched considering the direction it went in, but you have to make the science believable in order to make the story not seem over the top. At first, it was successful but the more you went on the more it got a bit out of line. I felt a bit over my head with what was happening. It also didn't help that you get bombarded with explanations at the end.


Characters:

I had a bit of a hard time with Parks (our main protagonist) character. She is a psychologist whose job is to get people to open up to her, but she herself has a hard time opening up herself. There were also some other personality traits that were kind of contradictory. There is also a huge aspect of her story that I was a bit wishy-washy about.

As for the other characters, I didn't mind them and thought that they were fleshed out enough for the story.


Concluding Thoughts:

It was an intriguing plot that got a bit lost on the way with its ambitious story. The story also suffered due to plot points that didn't have a definite conclusion. Despite this though, I still think it was an okay book and it did deliver a suspenseful sci-fi. If you are looking for a book that blends together Interstellar and Alien: Isolation, try this out.

There was much to like about this book, but it wasn’t a complete winner with me. While the plot was intriguing, I felt the characters were lacking in their development. Just as the main character of Park had trouble connecting with her human crew mates, I had trouble connecting with her. I never really cared about her, there was nothing to her. Even as I learned her backstory, which was enlightening, she never seemed fully developed.

I think the author did much better conveying the feeling of the atmosphere on the ship. Both the book and the ship seemed dark, joyless and cold. There was a sense of mounting tension, people didn’t know whom they could trust, while others were succumbing to waking nightmares. They were at the furthest edge of the known universe. Things were getting dicey.

Unfortunately, the author used a dual timeline to explain Park’s past. I’m usually a fan of dual timelines, but here I think it really interrupted the flow of the book. The story on the ship was so much more interesting than Park’s past. Maybe we just didn’t need so much of her past?

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

While making my way through the selection of ARCs on Netgalley, this book in particular caught me eye. The title alone grabbed my attention, playing on the idea that alternative life has been in amongst us throughout our time, us being none the wiser. This story follows more of the robotics concept within this idea, but the title in some ways did indeed hold true.

This is a story which follows an interesting and popular concept, exploring our similarities with robotic life and our acceptance over synthetic beings. I do enjoy this idea, it links very much with our modern lives at the moment, with machinery becoming more intelligent and further integrated within our lives. Nguyen does have a different scientific spin, creating her own phenomenon to further explore our ever growing connections.

Nguyen focuses her story on a singular main character, Park, who is a psychologist taking part in a mission to explore a new world. Throughout the story, she is painted as a outclass, reflecting on how her connection with the androids both abroad the ship and through her life has made her an introvert. There is a supporting cast, both through the other crew members which are gradually explored as the novel plays out and also the androids that she meets. The dialogue between Park and the supporting cast was great to read, Nguyen doing a brilliant job playing on each of the characters personalities through the speech within the book, highlighting the main characters differences from the other humans around herself. The androids within the book are also written well, and I felt were believable even within a real world context. The book does explore Park's past, which at first was a little slow and it took a few of these chapters before their purpose to become clear, so these chapters weren't always my favourite parts, except one moment within the android riots. The other POV is through a character called Taban, who explores the planet of Eos before Park, and their chapters are told through a robot known are HARE. Again these chapters didn't become clear until the later of the novel, and even though I did enjoy the interactions between the characters in these chapters, they were a little slow because I was lost on their purpose.
I enjoyed the science fiction elements within the books, and some of the aspects within Nguyen's world are largely explained well and I was never left feeling stupid or lost. However, I did feel that some aspects were a little dominated by science related explanations, taking away from the pace of the story. Similar to my comments on the other character chapters, this was focused more within the second half of story. Nguyen does unload more during the second half of the story, with the first half being more relaxed; I myself preferred the first half of the story. There is an element of the thriller genre within the story, where strange things begin to happen on the ship and the crew members are being taken over by nightmares. I enjoyed the mystery, wondering throughout the first half what was happening to the crew but I was left a little bit lacklustre in the resolution behind the mystery. Some elements I enjoyed and didn't expect, but others were predictable and felt more spontaneous.

Overall, I did enjoy this novel and I am trying to continue my dive into science fiction reading, exploring interesting the genre provides. The story explores the concept of synthetic life, which is enjoyable, adding in the thriller genre, but it let down by the second half of the novel. I would give this novel a 3/5.

I was excited for this sci-fi thriller, but ultimately it fell flat for me. While parts of it were tense and suspenseful, others dragged on and made it really hard to want to pick up the book and keep reading. I found it had a slow start - the characters, the setting, the world didn't grab me from the get go. If I wasn't reading this to review, I likely would have DNF'ed the book, which I don't do super often.

The premise of the book was interesting and there were definitely parts where I wanted to know more of what might happen, but it seemed a bit disjointed in how things were laid out. It moved from present day on the ship to flashbacks at various parts in Park's life, but it wasn't always clear where in the past we were, which made the story harder to follow. I did like the use of transcripts as a plot promoter. However, I found the book too long overall. I think there could have been potential for the book if it had been condensed into 300 pages or less.

I know this a debut novel for this author, so maybe all the kinks haven't been worked out. I would be curious to read a future novel by this author to see if some of the things I didn't like were ironed out. Overall, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing.

Thanks to NetGalley and DAW Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had high hopes for this – I loved the sound of the setting, and by 'sci-fi thriller' I was hoping for something like Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes crossed with the film Event Horizon. Unfortunately, this just wasn't my cup of tea. Much of it was flashbacks, which didn't hold my interest, and right from the start the character interactions seemed off – not in an enticing, 'ooh I wonder what's happening here' way, but just in a strange way. For example, right from the first scene the protagonist is completely paranoid and on edge for no apparent reason, and the other psychologist is weirdly confrontational and aggressive. I'd have preferred a slow build of tension and horror – though I did enjoy the gothic descriptions of the spaceship.

There is a lot going on in We Have Always Been Here: conspiracies, flashbacks, a (sort of) haunted space ship, metaphysics, robot-human relations...there's a lot. Lena Nguyen, however, does a pretty good job at blending these things together and making them work. The conspiracy elements were well-done, with a great reveal as to what "the data" really is. I liked the progression of the unity rain's effects, easy to dismiss until they aren't, all the way through to that ending. Park was a good main character, an outsider who is closer to androids than humans, and (mostly) unbothered by the distrust and isolation that result from that. She's not inhuman or emotionless, but she's <i>different</i>, and while there are definite drawbacks, the positives that result from that are fascinating to see.

The consequence of Park's outsider status, though, is that I also felt distant from a lot of the other characters. It would be one thing if the androids felt more fleshed out than the human characters, but both sides were given enough to stand on their own and not much more. Similarly, while Nguyen weaves the different elements of the plot together, it feels like it's not <i>quite</i> enough of a conspiracy thriller, or a claustrophobic horror story, or a more literary kind of sci-fi ruminating on human consciousness, etc. There's the bones of a great book here, and this is a good book.

Again, though, it <i>is</i> a good book. The flashback scenes on Earth are excellent, with a fascinating and awful version of the future. I really did like Park, and I am going to be thinking about robots having religion for a while. The ending was both bleak and lovely, and did an excellent title drop that I now realized was foreshadowed earlier in the story. It's a solid sci-fi story, and I now want to check out the "speculative wasteland adventure" she mentions on her webpage whenever it's completed.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

First off, I am so happy to be able to support an #ownvoices author of Asian descent. As an Asian-American reader myself, I think it's so important to support Asian-American authors, especially during this time. In addition, I don't see enough books featuring protagonists of Asian descent, especially in sci-fi and fantasy. Seeing this book and reading its description was like a breath of fresh air. Thank you again to the publisher for this opportunity!

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen is self-described as a sci-fi psychological thriller, and it definitely lives up to that description. The protagonist, Dr. Grace Park, has been sent to a spaceship to observe the 13 human crew members onboard. Soon, however, things start going wrong, and like a typical thriller, Grace isn't sure who the culprit is and who she can trust. It's up to her to investigate why they are trapped onboard the spaceship and figure out who or what is causing everyone to go stir-crazy.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 from Grace's point of view that introduces us to the futuristic setting of the novel:

"The day after they landed on the new planet, Park woke to a pair of strong metal arms pinning her down.
Against all instinct, she ignored her initial sense of terror and automatically relaxed her body; she recognized an android’s grip when she felt it, and her rational mind—the one that overrode the panicky animal one—knew that it was impossible for an android to hurt her.
Still. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to look around and realize she had no idea where she was."

Overall, We Have Always Been Here is an amazing blend of science fiction and psychological thriller that I have never read before. I will definitely keep an eye out for any of the author's next books. I really enjoyed this book. It was unputdownable, and I ended up finishing it in a day. If you are intrigued by the excerpts above or if you're a fan of the sci-fi or thriller genres, you won't regret checking this book out when it comes out in July!

We Have Always Been Here is a claustrophobic locked-spaceship mystery, one that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time you’re reading it. It’s a slowburner, but in a way that hooks you from the start. Park doesn’t know how things tie together, neither do you, and with everything growing eerier and eerier you won’t want to wait to find out what’s going on.

The book takes place almost entirely on a spaceship, come to explore a newly discovered planet, for reasons unknown (for Park and the reader, at least). But then odd things start to happen, androids learning swear words, human crew reporting concurrent nightmares, and being placed in stasis, with no real reason why, and Park is the only one in the dark about it all.

What this book does so well is involve you in the mystery through Park. It’s not that Park is an unreliable narrator, but she doesn’t have most of the information the rest of the crew do, and the POV never expands beyond what she knows (albeit with hints as to more, with intervening transcripts of videos). And that’s where it works so well for me. I’m someone who doesn’t like having more POVs or omniscient POVs when it comes to mysteries. I need to know as much as the protagonist does and nothing else. So this book was great in that.

It’s also very good at building that tension, as Park starts to realise that maybe no one on the ship is safe, and as strange things happen, like the ship expanding into space there shouldn’t be. It’s very atmospheric in that sense, and you, like Park, are taken where the narrative wants you to go, and driven to suspect who it wants you to suspect. Okay, so in a way, the person behind it wasn’t that much of a surprise (you’ll see why if you read), but it was about the journey there, that building of tension and then the sudden release.

And, honestly, I have nothing bad to say about this book. I enjoyed reading it a lot. Yeah, it was a slow starter, but when it got going, I read the remaining two thirds or so in one sitting. It’s a book that you don’t realise it has its hooks into you until it does and you can’t stop reading.

Which, in all, makes it the best sort of book.

We Have Always Been Here is a gripping sci-fi thriller that twisted in unexpected directions and kept me hooked all the way to the end. There’s a real palpable tension and delirium infused into Nguyen’s writing that enhances what could have been a straightforward thriller into something much deeper, sharper, and stranger. I’m excited to see what Nguyen writes next, as this was an excellent debut.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

Nguyen has created an interesting sci-fi world in which androids are a part of our everyday lives but not necessarily welcomed. In flashbacks from Park’s past, we are given pieces of information surrounding wars, riots, and Park’s relationships with androids. This does, however, cause the pacing of the story to suffer. These chapters feel drawn out, and border on info-dumping and boring.
I wanted to enjoy this book. Sci-Fi Thrillers are one of the niche genres I love dearly. But by the time we got to the grand reveal at the end, I was bored. The information felt force-fed to me, and it took away from my ability to truly enjoy this story. The pieces of a wonderful book are all there, however, the execution could perhaps use some more work.

Full review will be published on June 14th, 2021.

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book is not my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one rather than push myself to finish it only to give it a poor review.