Ziggy Da Luca is a linguist recruited by NASA for reasons she can't quite fathom. After seeing the video they've intercepted, it becomes clear her work is far more central to their plans than she realised.

Sent to the moon to investigate a hatch discovered by the Russians, Ziggy faces challenges she's never trained for. Seen by some as a liability, she must contend with her own crew as well as the Russian cosmonauts, as everyone races to uncover the hatch's mystery.

What she finds there is beyond anything she could imagine. The future of humankind could be changed for ever. The only question is whether she'll make it home to tell her story.

An uneven journey into the character’s inner selves while investigating a mystery on the moon, which never reached any great heights. Overall, this just left me underwhelmed and wished that the book had been maybe had another round of editing. I enjoyed the beginning, the political clashes with the time period for the space race and the initial investigation of the artefact on the moon. But I found some later sections repetitive, which just left me feeling that the narrative was being hammered home too hard about the method the artefact used and the reactions of the characters. The main character of Ziggy De Luca was likeable, she saved the book from getting the lowest rating for the review.

Overall, I found this a frustrating read with a unique idea that was let down with the way the story & the characters blended together.

Ziggy Da Luca is not an astronaut – she’s a Buddhist linguist. And yet she quickly finds herself as an additional extra on board a US spaceship heading to the Moon. The reason? A recently intercepted communication shows that the Russians have discovered a mysterious hatch on the Moon.  The discoverers of this mysterious hatch have now disappeared. There is now, in this alternative 1977, a race between the Russians and the Americans to get to the Moon and find out what has happened. Ziggy’s skills may be needed to decipher the alien symbols.

However, Ziggy feels that she is out of her depth. Relatively untrained in space operations, with little experience of even using a gun, she is seen by at least one of the crew as necessary but unwanted excess cargo. Ziggy has to put up with Griffin’s antagonistic behaviour for the good of the mission, even though he knows that it is wrong and does little to moderate it.

The team arrive on the Moon to see their Luna-orbiting command module destroyed whilst they are on the way down to the Moon surface. With little alternative choice, Ziggy and the rest of the surviving astronauts (which unfortunately still includes Griffin) have to enter the alien artifact to survive.

Once inside, things get very strange, and not necessarily what they appear to be. The Americans meet the Russians who are as bemused as they are. This strange world inside the alien artifact feels a little like Fantastic Voyage (1966) as the group travel inside a world of expanding and contacting spaces, surrounded by pipes with strange fluids and symbols drifting inside. Ziggy and Kovacs, her Russian counterpart, find that they can speak to each other by telepathy and can see inside other’s minds. The story is then filled with images and flashbacks of their individual memories. But to what purpose?

The rest of the book is about how (and if) Ziggy and the team survive with the Russian cosmonauts to return home, as well as try together to uncover the mystery of the alien artifact in changed circumstances. Needless to say, revelations about human past history and the reasons for their vivid imagery mean that the future of humankind could be changed for ever.

An alien first-contact story, Celestial shows that M. D. knows his science fiction. There’s the alien artefact like the monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or even his Rendezvous with Rama (1973). The idea of first contact and the process of trying to decipher alien languages reminded me of Ted Chang’s Arrival. In other places, the Cold War standoff between the Russians and the Americans reminded me of the ending of the movie Ice Station Zebra (1968). There’s even a nice nod to Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Lachlan takes all these familiar aspects and does what a writer should do - turns them into a story that is not what you expect, nor can you predict.

Celestial is deliberately quite different in style to Lachlan’s usual Fantasy writing, although it does feel more like soft-styled ‘New Wave’ Science Fiction rather than anything particularly hard-SF based. What happens inside of the artifact reads a little like a contemporary version of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961), or perhaps Tarkovsky’s movie of it (1972), or the biggest psychedelic trip since the 1960’s (see also  2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Expect lots of introverted navel-gazing and fractured visions, dreamlike flashbacks as the human presence inside the alien ‘thing’ causes changes to happen, both to the humans and the environment they are in. Each person seems to get different responses. Is what happens due to the aliens trying to make contact, to create a means of communication with the humans, or is it something more? Is it just the impact of psychological stress, of being there, with the strange environment amplifying the group’s emotions and relaying them back?

Things are initially unclear, and Lachlan does well to keep all options open and all the plates spinning as the plot develops. What Ziggy and her colleagues see as visions take up most of the book, which keeps the reader guessing, until by the end world religions, mythology and self-enlightenment are all involved.

On the downside, I can see that this book may not be for everyone. What feels like a typical Analog-style story to start with ends up being rather esoteric towards the end. As the alien contact seems to amplify human emotion, feelings of love, hate, revenge and everything in-between are on display and ramped up to eleven, which some readers may find annoying. In particular, Griffin seems to be particularly unsubtle, although the reasons for his attitude are explained along the way.

Overall, I thought that Celestial was pleasantly surprising.

This one may not be for everyone, but its elegant unravelling of an unusual plot and imaginative use of science fictional tropes made Celestial an enjoyable read for me.

Celestial suffers a little from bad timing. Whilst historical science fiction (sci-fi set in the past) has always been with us, the period chosen her - mid-seventies NASA - has recently been very well covered by Apple TV's For All Mankind. Is less serendipitous is having a female protagonist suffering sexism and racism, For All Mankind, and in its own way the Lady Astronaut series have picked these issues off. This isn't a problem if your story is good, and at least it means the background scenario is familiar, but unfortunately the version of the space race painted is tissue-thin, and the same can be said of the cosmonauts when they turn up.

This is largely moon-bound though and is a variation on the "mysterious artifact" narrative. A hatch has been found on the moon, and is covered in language, our heroine Ziggy Da Luca is a linguist and so in theory it all makes sense. There is a question as the book unfolds as to how much use a linguist is, as the artifact soon starts playing with their minds, and summoning up impossible objects and people. At the heart of it the book is about fear and unrepressed desires and has the sense of some seventies sci-fi (when it is set) that extrapolates imagination into reality. Unfortunately, this is where the problem with the tissue-thin characterisation of NASA comes in. Ziggy is adequately fleshed out but has a psychological sister issue which makes her dreaming make sense. Her male, sexist, racist, VietNam vet companion is clearly the source of all tension and problem on the mission, even when they catch up with the Russians, and nearly all of the conflict would be over if he was taken out of the equation. The reader can see this, the characters can't and so a frustrating em passe kicks in.

The book clicks along, and perhaps if you haven't read or seen anything like it before it might work, but I found it a bit of a slog in the back end. It was also more than clear where it was going, and more or less how it was going to get there. Not a slight on Star Trek to say its done this story a number of times, and each time better, I found this frustrating.

Okay, so I am writing this review right after finishing this book. And I don’t know how in-depth this review is going to be because I’ll be honest, I’m not completely sure what I’ve just read.

For the first 100 pages this was a 4.5 star read for me and then as we go through the book, it becomes very fast paced and via that fast paced-ness it begins to lose sense. Which I feel is the whole point of the novel but in parts there were a few plot points that I felt didn’t make any sense, and were sort of unfinished.

Celestial reminds me of Arrival and Annihilation, absolutely nothing is founded on our reality as we know it and everything has its own logical pathway. I loved the film Arrival and the short story it was based on, and Annihilation was fantastic in book and adaptation. I’m not sure why then that Celestial fell a bit short for me. I think I agree on a few other reviews that Celestial feels more Fantasy than it does Sci-Fi and perhaps this is what makes the novel slightly confusing.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed reading Griffin, he was a really interesting side character and every time he spoke I really paid attention. I felt like the author was using him to push the story forward and I think without Griffin there wouldn’t have been that “grounding” that keeps us in the centre. The tension between him and Ziggy was constantly intriguing and I wondered when it would hit a point of no return.

The writing was very well done and I thought it was a strong piece, however, I think it wasn’t necessarily the book that I thought it was when I was going into it. I liked it but I didn’t love it like I hoped I would.

I had a lot of fun in reading this alternate history that mixes sci-fi and actions. Some parts are bit over the top but it's a well plotted and gripping story.
Loved Ziggy and the world building, good storytelling.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

So... Ziggy is recruited by NASA. She isn't quite sure why as she isn't an astronaut, instead, she's a linguist, specialising in ancient languages - spoken and written. She is sworn to secrecy and fast tracked to a launch. Sent to the moon where there's a hatch that had been discovered by another party who failed to return. And it soon becomes apparent why she is there. But they are not the only interested party. There are the Russians who first made the discovery... And they are back and they also want answers...
And that's all I am saying. For full fun and frolics, it's best to go in knowing as little as possible for maximum reaction.
Ziggy herself is a cracking character who I took to straight away. She's in an environment that she knows little about and initially she is a bit subservient and cowing. But that soon changes once she find her feet and, woe betide those who dare to cross her!
It's set in the past - the late 70s and that era has been recreated well, especially the attitudes and technologies available. I found this to be convincing and also consistent throughout the book.
As for the realism... it's a bit on the bonkers side but also strangely credible too. Improbable but not implausible I think is the best way to describe it.
All in all, a cracking space romp that I thoroughly enjoyed. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

"Celestial" is a cracking story, with great characters, great writing, and (obviously!) a great setting. For me though, the plot felt a bit forced and didn't quite live up to what the opening promised. I'll admit it: I sighed in disappointment a few times. It's still a very, very good book though and a nice bit of escapism.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.