Dense Yet Intriguing Tale Won’t Be For Everyone. This is one of those dense tales that starts off very slow – through nearly the first half of the book – with a lot of what would actually happen if a suspicious object exhibiting these properties was found. Including all the damn meetings. Once “the action” begins, it gets into technical diatribes the likes of which would give Andy Weir or Tom Clancy (RIP) wet dreams. Pages on pages of how a drill works and similar, for example. And there is a lot of real world political commentary on everything from “climate change” to using – and effusively praising – a barely renamed SpaceX. (Calvert still uses the actual names of their technologies, even as he renames the company behind those technologies likely in an effort to avoid any potential lawsuits.) Then there are the straight up horror elements. Lots of things to throw lots of different readers off.
But at its heart, this is a tale that those who enjoy tales such as Contact or Arrival or Project Hail Mary will enjoy, and in that vein there really is also a lot to like here. Yes, if you read a lot in this space – and it isn’t like this is the romance genre with literally millions of extremely similar books – it could feel derivative of other works, but for me, having read perhaps a dozen or so similar tales over as many (or more) years… there was still enough of a spin that I hadn’t seen done quite this way that it ultimately was quite enjoyable indeed. Whether that be a particular competition I’d never heard of, one character’s actions deep in the book that come as a surprise to our narrator, or even quite the way everything works out here… it is similar enough that fans of this space will appreciate the overall tale while different enough that it really does feel at least decently fresh enough to be enjoyed.
Overall, this really is ultimately one of those scifi books where you really need to read it for yourself to really make up your mind, if you’re interested in it at all at this point. So read it – and leave a review where ever you saw this one and let us all know what you thought of it once you do.
Very much recommended.
This review of The Object by Joshua T. Calvert was originally written on May 4, 2026.