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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?
Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants.
2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed.
Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber.
Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?
Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants.
2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed.
Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber.
Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different---and rigidly enforced---level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue.
The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Among the ruins of alien civilizations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives. And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them.... Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds that have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded by layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely remembered technologies inside.
For short-lived races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets - the rest is debris. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron. His work consists of rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance.
In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.
The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.
In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.
A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds. The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family - composed of successive generations of clones. Yet these clones are not identical. For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone "brothers" have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies. Or maybe not so friendly....
One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanity’s new homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanity’s most powerful industrial family, is framed for his murder.
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
It's the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they're calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine. A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who's psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army's Mindstar Battalion.
After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. There are two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds.The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.
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.
I really expected to like this book, but as it turns out, this book crawls at a slow pace, to many plots and characters. With this many characters, John Lee has problem with the voice of each, John Lee is the one the saves this novel.
I'm a hardcore SiFi fan and I just could not listen to it more than a hour at a time, I would just drift off, especially during the very vebose discription of equipment or gadgets. I guess some readers like those details, but I like a good plot that moves me and keeps me sitting in the car in the drive way awaiting the next turn of the plot.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful
How did the narrator detract from the book?
I love John Lee. In fact, I only know about these books because he read them. But he takes one of the main characters - Nevil Clavain - and completely changes his accent/speech structure and thereby changes the character that he performed so well in Redemption Ark.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful
I had such high hopes for this book, I loved Chasm City, Revelation Space was good, Redemption Ark was good. This just did not make any sense. Confusing, out of character and the ending was just horrible. What a let down. John Lee does his best here but it does not help.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful
What was most disappointing about Alastair Reynolds’s story?
In the preceding book Redemption Ark, The protagonists were racing to get the awesome weapons to fight 'the Wolves'. Willing to kill anyone who got in their way.
In this, the next book in the the series, the protagonists spend 7-8 'years' (With the 'Wolves' consuming planets, suns, and destroying whole star systems like crazy) working to infiltrate a heretical church, just to get permission to look for a giant weapon inside a nearby gas giant. The church that owned the planet and gas giant did not even own a starship. The ship the protagonists were in was the most advanced ship in the possession of all mankind after the rest got destroyed by the wolves. The ship was invisible even to the vastly technologically advanced 'Wolves'.
They could have just gone to the gas giant and taken the weapon, and the stupid church could not have stopped them! But instead they spend 8 years wasting time infiltrating this church, all the while the wolves could show up at any time and destroy the gas giant weapon, the amazing ship, and the stupid church. The whole book was a stupid waste of the protagonists time and mine!
This book was a horrible ending to a great book series! I am getting my money back!
The narrator John Lee is great.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
This is book three in the main arc of the Revelation Space series which has some very high points. This is the low water mark. I found the frequent shift in focus from Galactic civilization genocide to a Procession of Cathedrals to be distracting and just not interesting. Yes I listened to the whole book but, no, I cannot begin to tell you what the significance of the cathedrals marching off a cliff has to do with anything. That whole story arc seemed to be there just to pad the time out to a respectable duration. Some scenes are interesting, although right now I cannot call them to mind, the overall distaste for the book has obscured my memory. Some characters, like Clavaine, carry over from the previous book and provide some continuity to the familiar. One new character, Scorpio is the most engaging and the easiest to identify with and he is not even human! The rest of the cast and crews of the various spaceships and cathedrals are interchangeable, and completely disposable. I just can’t be made to care about any of them. Their motives are so foreign, so alien, that their major and minor crises have no emotional impact. The climax of this novel seems so trivial compared to the galatic level crisis of the rest of the series that I kept wondering when the big thing would start to happen. It never did. This capstone of the Revelation Space series is a big disappointment. Gone is the ingenious interplay between human factions that was so prevalent in REDEMPTION ARK. Lost is the rush of grand ideas that fuel CHASM CITY. I hope that Alastair Reynolds can redeem himself in the next book THE PREFECT. If not, we’ll always have CHASM CITY.
Living up to the standards set by the novel itself John Lees phones in this performance. His voice seems to have no excitement, no emotion. The first few lines delivered by some characters are given in the accent of one of the other characters, as if he had lost track of the story. I can hardly blame him, since the book lost me long before the end. I am not sure that even John Lee at his best could have elevated this novel from the doldrums.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I would write a review of the whole series...but why. Why? After spending so much time listening only to be left with something short of nothing as an ending.
Metaphor? Sure...it's a metaphor.
Lazy? That's what I don't quite understand! These novels were work for the writer, obviously. They were entertaining. Yes, there was some amount of over-explanation, but overall, enjoyable. Then, in the end? !Whomp! It's done and over without much of the careful description, back story, care and craft that's preceded the end credits.
Enough to make me pound my head against a desk until I work a better end through sheer delirium!
6 of 7 people found this review helpful
As much as I like Reynolds, I can't give him a stellar review for Absolution Gap. It's as if he just gave up on the storyline and starting writing minor drama to fill the pages. The ending was horrible, especially having come to think so highly on the Revelation Space opera. All of the sudden, nothing characters pop up that do nothing for the story, and then go away (thankfully) as fast as they arrive, and almost all of the major players I had come to appreciate are killed off in the beginning to be replaced with paper-thin characters that even by the end I can't find myself either liking or hating. If I had to describe Absolution Gap in a word, it would be "blah."
9 of 11 people found this review helpful
I absolutely LOVED the first two books in this series. So when I started listening to Absolution Gap it was with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it was within the first few moments of the book that my hear began to sink...
1. John Lee: John Lee has been consistently excellent as a narrator not only in the first two books of the series, but in a myriad of other books. WTF, Mr. Lee? VERY POOR CREATIVE CHOICES. Narration was inconsistent. He COMPLETELY changed the accent and delivery for one of the principle protagonists of the series...jolting, without apparent rational, and just plain terribly upsetting. So much upsetting I figure Mr. Lee simply MUST have taken creative direction from someone other than himself...he's been just so good in everything else he's read its the only thing which can explain such a awful showing.
"One more time with a bit less affect, Mr. Lee..."
2. Where is this train going? The plot is almost incomprehensible and contributes almost nothing to the larger themes explored in the first two books. Ok, I appreciate I may not be the brightest candle on the cake, but I'm hardly neophyte in the genre. Again...just terrible. A metaphor, perhaps? as another review pointed out/ If so, its a key in the hull of an upside down fishing boat on Easter day.
3. Put the ending first! The entire story wraps in just a few pages...it would have save me a lot of a grief had the book been presented in reverse order. Forget that...shame on me for suffering though so much junk instead of just flipping/scrubbing to the end.
Do I sound over the top? Does my frustration seem irrational? I mean, for pity's sake, its only a BOOK, right? Well, what can I say? I'm a huge an of both the author and the narrator and neither delivered. And, because I loved the first two books, I felt a PRISONER for most of the 27hrs of this book, compelled by hope, until the very bitter end, that THINGS WILL GET BETTER IN JUST A FEW MORE MINUTES...WE'LL TURN THE CORNER YET!
Instead, we just went over the rails and off the cliff.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
Here's the thing, it's almost as if Alastair Reynolds got tired of writing this series. He pretty much wraps up the series with a brief epilogue. Alastair could have easily written a whole book which covers the just the epilogue.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
This is a great book- WAY better than Redemption Ark was, so I'm glad I finally broke down and listened to it. Where Redemption Ark drove me crazy with too much Skade & too much irrational conjoiner behavior, here we just have two intertwining rollicking adventures. not quite as strong as revelation space, but a pleasant surprise.
We start off on the Pattern Juggler world where Redemption Ark ended, with Clavain and the refugees trying to set up a new temporary society. We skip from there to a lighthugger and then to Hele, which is a small world far away from mainstream society. A miracle occured there hundreds of years ago which led to a new religion. There is also a bridge, possibly built by aliens, and Reynolds usual odd ball characters. It's a good ride that pulls you in like many of his best stories.
9 of 12 people found this review helpful
All three books do a great job at starting plot lines and describing minute details of the world, but in the end they all fizzle out. The reader is left to extrapolate the story from the established trajectory for themselves far too many times.
John Lee's narration is, however, somewhat improved over the previous 2 books.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I have listened to this entire series, and whilst the worlds and characters are well visualised, The author spends a vast amount of time describing walking and sludge yet skips over intense and pivotal battles and key plot climaxes. So despite a promising start it lacks an ending or closure. You are much better off with Peter Hamilton if your tastes run to space operas
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
I just started reading this book after reading the two previous books. It's nice to be back with an author who takes his time, lets characters develop and doesn't play silly buggers with physics for the sake of plot. These are slow burn books and you cannot be in a hurry when you read them but they reward you this one has a really nice sense of foreboding from the start.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
After listening to the previous two volume I decided to persevere in the hope that the authors grand vision would finally be attained, unfortunately my faith was misplaced.
Very much weaker than the first two volumes the plot makes little sense, the final confrontation is almost pathetic in its non-event.
The trivia and obsessive detail drives you mad long before it ends, many questions are left unanswered and the few that are are answered weren't worth the wait.
Highly disappointing, unfortunately I really can't recommend this book to anyone, it promises much but fails to deliver on almost all levels.
It genuinely feels like the author ran out of ideas and had no plan on how his story was to finish, very unsatisfying.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
Some of the most memorable scenes in Reynolds' universe, AG is grandiose and macabre and dizzying. A worthy finalé.
For some reason John Lee decided to totally change certain voices (Clavain in particular) for this book. It totally ruins the listening experience as you feel like they are different characters. To make matters worse he's given Clavain an American accent and he isn't very good at it; sometimes it's a southern drawl sometimes is a different American accent and sometimes it's English. He's also changed Scorpios voice, but less dramatically.
It's a shame because the series as a whole was good; this amateur decision is seriously irritating. Once you've given a characters a voice then stick with it...
excellent book and performance except that clavain's accent changed dramatically from the previous book which can be quite jarring
John Lee is in his element as usual. The story is not quite as good as the previous books in the series, hence 4 stars. Still a first rate book, but it has a lot to live up to. I hated what the Skade character did. Shame she didn't really get her comeuppance. I grew to like Scorpio the pig and was glad he made it to the end of the book. At least some of the baddies get bumped off. Shame some of the good guys 'buy it' by the end. Still, I enjoy Reynolds a great deal. I had to listen to the epilogue twice to understand it. I will definitely listen to the next book
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Too many holes in this one to be believable. Could be the last of this series I listen too which is a shame.
What was most disappointing about Alastair Reynolds’s story?
Unbelievable storyline. Situations created could easily be circumvented by the players and the final outcome was unjustified.
Who might you have cast as narrator instead of John Lee?
No-one. He is perfect.
Do you think Absolution Gap needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
For me, this is likely to be my last of this series and wish I had stopped before this one.
The story was. well I found fragmented. .and the somewhat monotone narrator didnt help. so I struggled with this one. I would perhaps liked the story better had I read it myself..
After listening to book 3, I didn't have the highest of hopes for book 4. After reading it however, I found my doubts dashed and my hopes for book 5 higher than ever. It's on par with book 2, my favourite so far.
Oh, and congratulations to John Lee for remaining my favourite narrator.
a good finish to the trilogy, although it seemed to end fast like it was rushed. worst part is it left me craving more of the story.
still a great trilogy.