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Failure to Communicate (Xandri Corelel) Paperback – October 15, 2019

by Kaia Sønderby (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 160 ratings
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As one of the only remaining autistics in the universe, Xandri Corelel has faced a lot of hardship, and she's earned her place as the head of Xeno-Liaisons aboard the first contact ship Carpathia. But her skill at negotiating with alien species is about to be put to the ultimate test.The Anmerilli, a notoriously reticent and xenophobic people, have invented a powerful weapon that will irrevocably change the face of space combat. Now the Starsystems Alliance has called in Xandri and the crew of the Carpathia to mediate. The Alliance won't risk the weapon falling into enemy hands, and if Xandri can't bring the Anmerilli into the fold, the consequences will be dire.Amidst sabotage, assassination attempts, and rampant cronyism, Xandri struggles to convince the doubtful and ornery Anmerilli. Worse, she's beginning to suspect that not everyone on her side is really working to make the alliance a success. As tensions rise and tempers threaten to boil over, Xandri must focus all her energy into understanding the one species that has always been beyond her: her own.
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  1. Print length
    319 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    October 15, 2019
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 0.72 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    9198529706
  6. ISBN-13
    978-9198529708
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Claudie Arseneault, author of City of Strife:

"I'm a sucker for political plotlines, and this one was a great and relentless ride. The overall pacing of this book felt pretty flawless, the intense scenes buffered with nice and fun moments that just kept adding to the universe and characters."

RoAnna Sylver, author of Chameleon Moon:

"I just love this book so much. It deserves to be seen. It deserves to break out in a huge way. I want it to explode across bestseller lists and public consciousness, and I want every sad, lonely, frightened person whose brain doesn't mesh with others or function the way we've been instructed... to read it."

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kraken Collective; 2nd ed. edition (October 15, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 319 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9198529706
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9198529708
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.72 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 160 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
160 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Alex
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing worldbuilding with well-rounded characters
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
I have seen several people recommend this book on Twitter as an amazing indie book with an #ownvoices autistic protagonist, and I was not disappointed. Failure to Communicate was absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to read the sequel (not to mention the beautiful covers for both books).

Xandri was a detailed, three-dimensional protagonist who was easy to get attached to. I loved reading about the way she perceived patterns, people and the world, and I also loved the ways in which she was unique – for example, that nobody else thought to make friends with the ship’s AI. I also loved the many, many different alien species that were hard to keep track of at first, but once I got used to it I appreciated the thought and worldbuilding that went into making many unique species.

One of my favourite tropes in sci-fi on spaceships is the crew as family, and that really shone through here. While they had their disagreements and tension, Xandri’s crew held together, and they were especially ride-or-die for her. I loved the way most of them kept her needs in mind and helped her cope without making her feel like a burden, and how they (especially Diver) went out of their way to defend her.

This book also had mention of polyamorous communities, as well as a budding polyamorous relationship between central characters, although it didn’t become official in this book. Still, I absolutely loved the dynamic between the three of them and I’m eager to see more.

Failure to Communicate also had themes that went much deeper than fluff between crew members. The blurb starts with naming Xandri as one of the only remaining autistics in the universe, and pretty early on the book explains the way people now engineer their children before birth to get rid of any irregularities or neurodivergency. In a way, autistic and mentally ill people were wiped out – not by killing them outright, but by not letting them be born at all. While the crew knows Xandri and supports her, there is much ableism from strangers and the society in general – some of it unintended. Since there are only a few autistic people are left, all most people have to go on are inaccurate, generalised texts that show them as cold and without emotions. The level of ableism in this society was often sickening, especially towards the end (and yes, I was disappointed by Christa reverting to ableist comments even at 96% in the ebook).

The book also addresses gun violence and gun control, not only through the Anmerilli but also by directly referencing 21st century “Ancient Earth”, which was surprising but not unwelcome to see.

While these parts may have been difficult to read, I loved the way the book handled and addressed the deeper issues while also keeping them balanced with funny or heartwarming scenes.
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L Dopa
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing? Amazing!
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2017
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As a writer and an autistic writer, I try to find self-pub books by autistic and neurodivergent authors and buy them and read them, because I believe in fostering the environment I want to create in. Failure to Communicate felt like a published-quality book. The grammar, structure, pacing, character development and diction were all top notch. The story was easy to follow and held my interest. The characters were well defined and despite having unusual names, I was pretty consistent at keeping them distinct in my mind. And coming from an autistic writer, the autistic main character is very well portrayed and very likeable.

I'd say that Xandri and I are pretty similar in terms of what people expect of us. Although I have more emotional issues and sensory issues, I found myself relating a lot to the experiences that Xandri goes through in the novel. She's often worried about saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing; she knows that people are boxing her in with their ideas of what it means to be autistic, and is ready to fight them; she gets tired and worn down and has comfort objects and people she trusts and stims she likes. She was really cool and her job was very interesting. And despite the social impairments that us autistic people have, she had many friends and was able to win over allies in her assignment. I liked seeing an autistic character with a lot of friends and a healthy support network.

The story was really interesting. The sci-fi elements were cool and well-described. You could really see the worlds the characters visited, and the author combined images that can be seen in our reality with concepts that cannot, like sling space and the moebius strip fountains. (Also, I love fountains!)

Great work, you should read it and support this author in making future books!
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Top reviews from other countries

Aniket
5.0 out of 5 stars Captures the autistic experience in a stunningly fleshed out sci-fi world. Amazing writing.
Reviewed in India on April 23, 2024
Verified Purchase
The detail of autistic lived experience in a world that's sci-fi is incredibly beautiful and detailed and the way it starts off with the classic autistic experience of being socially rejected but over time you realise.....she's loved. She's loved and respected and has an amazing life. It's the greatest affirming work I've read in a long long time.
Thank you for putting this out into the world.
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Siavahda
5.0 out of 5 stars Found-families in space and alien anthropology!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
Wow.

I've seen people raving about this book for quite a while now; many trusted sources from all over the place. I even picked it up at some point, but I didn't get past the first few pages. I must have been in a weird headspace or something, because as well as being objectively a fan-freaking-tastic book, it includes so many of my favourite things that it's kind of like Sønderby wrote it for me personally!

Suffice to say, I love this book. I bought the sequel and prequel - and Sønderby's YA book Damsel to the Rescue - before I even finished it. I knew by the time I hit the halfway mark that I was going to have to devour everything by this author!

Xandri is a first-contact specialist in the far future; living and working on the spaceship Carpathia, she and her team of xeno-biologists discover new worlds, new sapient species, and figure out the best way for the intergalactic Alliance to reach out them. Part anthropologist and part biologist, she's the very best the Alliance has - despite the fact that she doesn't actually work for the Alliance, strictly speaking. Carpathia is owned and run by Chui, an ex-military human captain who has made it her mission in life to make first-contact as peaceful and painless as a process as possible for as many sapients as she and her crew can discover. However, their missions aren't always 100% by the book, and so when the Alliance summons Carpathia to more-or-less conscript Xandri, Chui has to answer. It's understood that this is the price they pay for the Alliance looking the other way on how the Carpathia manages their business.

Now, though, a non-Alliance species, the Anmerilli, has made a break-through that means they must become allies - because if they choose to side with the Alliance's enemies, instead, all sapients everywhere would be in unspeakable danger. It's up to Xandri to figure out how to convince the xenophobic Anmerilli to do what they've spent the last six years refusing to even consider - join the Alliance - and avert the threat of either a devastating galactic war, or genocide.

No pressure, or anything.

I love intricate worldbuilding, properly-alien aliens, and anthropology, so Failure to Communicate was just one check mark after another for me. It would have been a well-written, fascinating, and compellingly addictive book anyway - Sønderby really knows what she's doing - but the fact is that Xandri is also autistic. And as someone still coming to the terms with being diagnosed as on the spectrum, that made her story far more personal than it might have been otherwise. Although Xandri and I aren't identical, I recognised a lot of the struggles she dealt with every day, and while some made me laugh, and others plucked at my heart-strings, more than a few punched me in the gut. This is an #ownvoices book, so Sønderby knows exactly what she's writing about, and it shows. In the hands of a lesser writer, even being #ownvoices wouldn't have made this book so powerful, but Sønderby is, as I've said, an incredible writer. Several of my most-loved tropes make their way into Failure to Communicate, but it's not the tropes themselves that made me stay up until 4am - it's the execution. To take an example: it's not the found-family trope that made me tear up, but how Sønderby used it, creating a wonderful cast of characters gathered around one of my favourite protagnists ever.

I was also surprised and delighted to discover that not only is Xandri queer (bi- or pansexual, I couldn't say, but she experiences attraction to human men and women) but Failure to Communicate chronicles, among other things, the delicate development of a fledgeling polyamorous romance between her and two other characters. Polyamory has become a norm in some human sectors in the future, apparently. Yay!

Unfortunately, humanity has become much less liberal in other ways. Xandri is autistic, yes - but only because of a brief fashion that saw a generation of humans conceived and born without the pre-natal screening that would typically catch and detect 'flaws' like autism. (Whether the screening process would have involved 'correcting' the autism or aborting the 'defective' fetus wasn't explicitly clear). The results of that fashion-trend so horrified, not just humanity, but all the Alliance, that in the aftermath it has become illegal to not use such pre-natal screenings. This means that Xandri is one of only a handful of autistic people in the Alliance - and likely that handful will be the last, at least for the foreseeable future. Much of the stigma Xandri faces for her autism relies on 'Ancient Earth' beliefs, cruel bs about how autistic people don't understand or care about emotions and the like. It was simultaneously painful and validating to read about - even as a much more 'higher-functioning' individual than Xandri, I recognised a lot of the prejudices and misunderstandings she had to deal with - including well-intentioned gestures that aren't nice or comforting at all for an autistic person.

Luckily, Xandri has a small cadre of people around her who understand, and work to develop that understanding when they occasionally make mistakes. Even if they hadn't been fierce supporters of hers in other ways as well, that alone made me adore them - including her pet birds Marble and Cake, who brought a light-hearted adorableness to every scene they appeared in, often just when I as a reader most needed it!

The plot itself isn't dull, but it is a little familiar; that's not a detraction, though. Xandri's autism makes the situations she finds herself in complicated enough that the plot doesn't feel predictable or easily resolved at all - the first-person narration was an excellent choice in adding that layer to the story. A storyline that might have bored me in the hands of another author had my attention by the throat here - and judging from all the high-starred ratings, I don't think it's just that her thoughts and choices made so much sense to me as a fellow autistic person. I think she's just an amazing character, and Sønderby is an amazing author, and honestly, it's almost physically painful to sit here writing out a review when the sequel is waiting for me right by my elbow!

Tl:dr; neurodiversity, alien anthropology, and found-families combine with high-stakes sci-fi politicking for a read I couldn't put down. Go and buy a copy already!
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Claudie
5.0 out of 5 stars Easily one of my favourite book this year
Reviewed in Canada on July 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
Allow me to flail with pure love.

This book does everything right. It managed to get completely past my natural editor tendencies to take a novel apart and get hung up on the bits that could work better. Probably because I'm not sure there ARE much of them.

The characters in this are absolutely wonderful. ALL OF THEM. Xandri is so relatable in so many ways--her determination, her kindness, her honest reactions (both internal and external). She has so many layers of complexity and awesomeness, and all of it just naturally -fits- together into a seamless, amazing character. And although none of them narrate, you get exactly the same sense of relief and depth from the rest of the crew including the aliens and their culture (which is often where I find First Contact fails me).

Xandri is also autistic, and the perspective here is absolutely wonderful--it is one thing to hear and read about what it's like to be autistic, and to sort of experience it within the frame of a character, her reactions, her thoughts, etc. They say ownvoices books can be windows for outsiders, and this window is gorgeous as heck.

I jumped into this without having truly read the blurb (I jumped into it because of how much RoAnna loved it, basically), and when the elements of an alien diplomacy intrigue spread before me, I got pretty excited. I'm a sucker for political plotlines, and this one was a great and relentless ride. The overall pacing of this book felt pretty flawless, the intense scene buffered with nice and fun moments that just kept adding to the universe and characters. The sweet polyam develops over the course of the novel, building itself in a totally natural way (Xandri is bisexual, I think I haven't mentioned yet).

I also greatly appreciate the wide variety of fauna and flora you get to see in this, and how Xandri's love for alien species reflects is for both sapient and non-sapient ones, in addition to subtly showing up in her way of describing things.

This book is a gem. I laughed and cried and read late into the night, and it will say with me for a long time. Please read and love it too <3
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Kittyknowsthings
5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than I expected - and I expected a lot
Reviewed in Germany on February 14, 2017
Verified Purchase
I read the prequel to this - Testing Pandora - on wattpad as it came out at the recommendation of a fellow avid autistic reader and was in love with Xandri Corelel from the very first pages. It is so very rare to find a well-written autistic protagonist, the plot was fascinating, the characters believable enough they got under my skin (*cough* Christa *cough*), and the world drew me in instantly.
I pre-ordered Failure to Communicate as soon as I heard it would exist.
I went into this with the highest of expectations - and Kaia Sønderby went on to surpass every one of them
My kindle suggested it should take me about eight hours.
I devoured it in three and a half.

To the fellow abuse survivor reading this after Testing Pandora:
The abuse that was mostly alluded to in the last part is more explicitly described in this one, so tread with caution. A more explicit warning of potentially triggering material can be found by deciphering the word salad below on rot13.com
Knaqev erzrzoref nohfvir glcrf bs gurencl, ure zbgure'f vagrafr rzbgvbany nohfr, naq frzv-rkcyvpvg qrfpevcgvbaf bs frkhny nohfr qhevat ure choregl, juvpu ure zbgure npgviryl npphfrq ure bs vairagvat. Zber vagrafryl noyrvfg bcvavbaf va trareny ner nyfb ba qvfcynl.

Mild spoilers ahead for those who wish to know more of what they are getting into:
I was delighted to see the author upping the diversity, and to see her expand the world we had only gotten a sneak-peak of so far.
The stakes are upped considerably in a way that still seemed consistent with the world and characters, making this a breathless read.
The main antagonist is well-hidden until they are revealed, and handled with a nuanced care that many successful authors could learn from.
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bananaphone
4.0 out of 5 stars Great autistic rep!
Reviewed in Canada on February 8, 2019
Verified Purchase
I really liked this book! It is so rare to find a good, relatable, well written autistic character. This one delivered on that front and on being a fun and interesting book as well!

I did find the autism to be a bit heavy handed, with a little too much detail/explanation on sensory things or social things. Perhaps though this would be helpful for an allistic to understand the character better, but as an autistic person it felt a bit too much like stating the obvious. But aside from that it is a great representation of an autistic character for me. I like how it has turned what is commonly thought of as a weakness into a really useful strength in Xandri's world, yet still without completely erasing all the ableism present in our world.

The story itself was fun I really enjoyed it. I was often internally laughing or cringing along with the events. It's a really neat setting, great world building. I liked having Xandri's perspective and knowing only what she knew about the world and trying to figure it out along with her. It was interesting and goodness that climax had me stressing and indefinitely cried at the end. I loved the budding poly-romance with Diver and Kiri. They are both so good to Xandri. And Kiri sounds like a total badass babe tbh. I liked the relationship she developed with Anton and Katya and I LOVE LOVE LOVE Aki <3.

Good read overall. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in realistic autistic characters. Or people who like actiony-suspensy-people puzzley-diplomaticy kinds of books!
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