Title: Absolution Gap
Series: Revelation Space #4
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 704
Format: Digital Edition
Series: Revelation Space #4
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 704
Format: Digital Edition
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Synopsis:
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Quaiche is sent out
to find sellable things for his Ultra masters and as it is his last
chance, he'd better find something good. He finds a bridge on the
moon Hela with an extinct species on it. He also finds a planet,
Haldora, that randomly blinks out of existence. With his lover dying
during this exploration, and a religious virus in his brain, Quaiche
goes full on cult and starts a new religion based upon the planet's
disappearance.
Rashmika Els has
grown up on the moon Hela and she is convinced that the extinct
species, the Scuttlers, were not wiped out by the Inhibitors but by
something else. Her brother had gone into the religious machine setup
by Quaiche and Rashmika is determined to find him and prove her
ideas. She gets embroiled in some plots Quaiche has going and it
becomes evident that Rashmika has a lot of secrets of her own.
Scorpio the pig has
been running things on the planet Ararat while Clavain has been off
whining, sulking, do whatever the phracking loser has been sitting on
his ass doing in the hinterlands. Unfortunately, when a one person
craft comes to Ararat and disgorges Ana Khouri, things start to get
complicated. Skade and the Conjoiners have been fighting Remontaine
and his group of people. The Inhibitors are now involved and things
are bad. Ana has a super baby (mentally) that Skade kidnaps. Skade
crashes on Ararat, bringing the baby and the Inhibitors. The group on
Ararat rescue Aura, the baby and then a group takes the spaceship and
escapes into space. Aura tells them to go to Hela but Scorpio ignores
her and heads back to Chasm City, only to see the whole system being
infested and destroyed by the Inhibitors.
The Inhibitors are
now making a push to wipe out humanity as a whole and Aura claims
that only at Hela can Humanity's salvation have a chance.
Everything comes
together at Hela. Rashmika is actually Aura with her memories blocked
and the disappearing planet Haldora is actually a machine for
communicating with an alternate universe. The beings in the alternate
universe claim they can destroy the Inhibitors if humanity will open
the door for them. Everyone wants to let the Shadows through except
Aura realizes it is a test by a third party. Humanity doesn't let the
shadows through and passes. They get help from this mysterious party
and humanity begins to win the war against the Inhibitors.
The book ends 400
years after these events where Humanity is once again on the run from
the Green Plague, a plague that turns all star systems into green
globes and allows humanity to survive, but at the cost of any outward
expansion. Very bleak.
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My
Thoughts:
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Something about this book just didn't grab me. Part of it is that
the whole time frame thing really throws me off, even while making
perfect sense. Without a FTL means of travel, events happen at
greatly disparate times until they all come together. I think part of
my issue is that Reynolds starts his threads so far apart that I feel
like I'm reading 3 different novels at once and it's not until the
last 25% or so that they get tied together. I also don't like the
Conjoiners as specific characters, ie, Clavain, Skade, Remontaine,
Aura, etc. As a group I find them fascinating but as individuals I
almost universally hate them all.
For this book I found the ideas are what carried me along. However,
at over 700 pages that is a lot of “idea” to drag along.
Overall, I just don't have a lot to say. I am enjoying this Revelation
Space but not nearly as much as Neal Asher's Polity books.
I am enjoying it much more than Banks' wretched The Culture series
though. I consider Asher, Reynolds and Banks the triumvirate of
British SF for some reason and they're ranked as I listed them. I
have to admit, I was hoping that I'd enjoy them all equally but since
they all write rather differently, that isn't to be the case. At
least I'm enjoying Reynolds enough to keep on reading his stuff.
★★★☆½
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