A terrifying space horror that will have you questioning what it means to be human
—Amanda Khong, Bookish Brews
Bookish Brews Snapshot
We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
Dr. Grace Park is not privy to the ships secrets in her role as a psychologist, which becomes increasingly terrifying as the androids start to malfunction and people are falling victim to waking nightmares of paranoia and insanity. Will they be able to get a message home for help?
🗺️ Adventure 💫 Atmospheric 🎭 Dramatic 📘 Standalone
Book Review
Horrifying, atmospheric, convincing, icy, eerie, epic, well researched, smart
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.
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 seems 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? This 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 about how 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!
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.
Book Club Questions
- In the moment where we discovered the namesake of this book, what were you thinking and feeling? Did the reply of “we have always been here” give you any theories for how the rest of the book would go?
- At any point did you get lost with the explanations of physics? Did that affect how you enjoyed the book at all?
- How did you feel about the different perspectives between the earth-born and the space-born? Did it feel reminiscent of anything we see in our world today?
- How did you feel about the ISF? How do you think it got to the position where it had so much control over people?
- Would you choose to go on a mission to see if a planet was habitable like Park did? Why or why not?
- How did choosing Park to be a non-conscripted psychologist affect how Lena Nguyen was able to present the horror in this novel? Do you think this was a good choice?
