Absolution Gap

By: Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by: John Lee

The Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life-form reaching a certain level of intelligence - and they've targeted humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate.

But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety - or draw down its darkest enemy. And as she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse.

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor

Wtf happened to Clevain’s voice?

They completely switched Clevain’s voice with some shitty Texas accent and now the entire story is really hard to listen to… FFS. Figure it out.

Alastair Reynolds does it again

Quickly becoming one of my all time favorite authors when it comes to science fiction, Alastair Reynolds weaves a story of impressive scale and wondrous adventure. spanning well over one hundred years, Absolution Gap brings the Revelations Space saga to an extremely satisfying conclusion. I only hope this isn't the last book in the saga as while it ends beautifully I feel like the story could continue without any issue.

Truly remarkable, a joy and a privilege to read!

An incredible mix of hard SF, gripping action, clever and dynamic characters, and way out-of-the-box thinking. Also impressed that the author has enough faith in his readers not to spoon feed elements. I haven't been this excited about a series since starting the Foundation saga. Would give it 6 stars if I could. BRAVO!!

Mr Pink!

Holy ****, I love Scorpio so much. All my favorite characters keep dieing! Why Alastair!

One UK's best Sci Fi writers works magic again

Read. This. Series! Or listen. Narration is great. And author Alistair Reynolds writes everything I wish PFH had the talent to write. I wish I had picked this series first. Absolution Gap has been the best book so far!

So, look, if you want child-like reading/listening with cliche characters and cardboard conversations all held together by teenage het boy pin up fantasy, go with Peter F. Hamilton - he'll serve you up an imperial ass ton of hot garbage that will actually retard your ability rationally see the world.

But, if you want an epic space opera with characters that are alive, and if you want real science & speculation, Reynolds delivers all this and more.

Do you want male characters that are more than comical alpha male satire or female characters that aren't just auto-ambulatory flesh lights (like you'll find in Peter F. Hamilton's alt-right space fantasies,) Reynolds has got you covered. His characters have depth & emotional range & a uniqueness unto themselves.

Sentience thrives & life dares to step outside zero sum thinking - machines are both miraculous and menace. Old tropes and truisms only come out of character's mouths as one might expect in real life - as it should be when writing believable characters. Humans, if anything, are intergalactically famous for being trite - so true, yes, but - so humanity & all life in the universe is capable of so much more! Alistair Reynolds shows you this over epochs of space time. Not every story arc ends happy - there are wins & losses - friends die - some rise from the ashes through technology - but there are still Newtonian laws in place on the macro scale - there are limitations even to technological golden ages.

If you can manage to have an attention span longer than the half life of a fruit fly (and look, I'm actually ADHD, debilitatingly so - so, it's not hard, these books are compelling,) put in the effort on the first books and the first bits of this novel - and I promise you will find it all to be worthwhile & thrilling.