Redemption Ark | ||||||||
Alastair Reynolds | ||||||||
Gollancz, 567 pages | ||||||||
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A review by David Soyka
Redemption Ark picks up from the debut novel of Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space, after a side trip in
Chasm City, which is set in the same milieu, but is not part of a strict sequence. While Redemption Ark is a direct
sequel to Revelation Space, and there are guest appearances from Chasm City, it's not necessary to have read either
of the previous books, though there are a couple of minor references that might not be clear to the uninitiated. If you had to
pick one novel out of the lot to read, this would be the one. Reynolds has sometimes been accused of writing a great 400 page
novel but taking 600 pages to do it. Redemption Ark still clocks in at 567 pages, and considering that this Gollancz edition
is in a larger format than the previous novels, may very well have a higher word count, but, nonetheless, is a page turner. And
once you read Redemption Ark, you'll probably want to collect them all.
This time around, replacing Sylveste in the anti-hero role is Nevil Clavain, who strikes me as a much more appealing character. Also
of more interest this time out are the depictions of Khouri and Volyova. Added to the cast is Antoinette Bax, a private pilot
carrying on her father's just barely legal interplanetary trading activities with her loyal sidekick Xavier Lui. By chance of
circumstance, the pair get caught up in Clavain's defection from the Conjoiners, mentally augmented humans with a collective
hive mind, in a quest to repossess a collection of doomsday weapons controlled by Volyova and her ship, which has metabolically
fused with the consciousness of its late Captain. Meanwhile, Skade, the ostensible baddie, is pursuing her own agenda to
retrieve the doomsday weapons and eliminate Clavain.
What's triggering all this is the disturbing discovery of an answer to the Fermi Paradox -- the reason that humanity has never
encountered other intelligent life forms is because something out there destroys it at the point when they approach Faster than
Light (FTL) interstellar transport. This force is a machine collective called The Inhibitors, acting on the orders of its
creators from a long ago past to prune nascent intelligence in the universe by destroying stars and their surrounding
worlds. (Which leads to perhaps the funniest line in the book, albeit which Reynolds presumably didn't write, the cover blurb
that, "The Inhibitors have returned. Don't make any long-term plans.") The three factions -- Clavain, Khouri and Volvyana,
Skade -- believe in different responses to this threat. Various complications ensue.
This is, of course, space opera, but space opera in which principles of theoretical physics must still be honored, though thankfully
the explanations are not as distracting as they were in Revelation Space. Reynolds is an astrophysicist, and I suppose
there are folks who not only care about such explanations, but actually understand them. They can probably appreciate a novel
that portrays how FTL combat might actually work in ways that I cannot.
But, it's the story that counts, and with a cliffhanger at the end of almost every chapter, Reynolds demonstrates mastery of the
form while also managing to combine certain noirish elements, such as making Volyova a chain smoker and an investigator with
dual loyalties whose office contains filing cabinets overstuffed with paper documents that manage to co-exist
with advanced technologies such as interstellar spacecraft, life
prolongation, and machine-augmented humans. Arguably, at times the clichés of these conventions can be annoying -- the genetically
enhanced hybrid pig Scorpio who refers to people as "pal" whose hateful view of humans undergoes a change of heart, as well as
characters who keep rising from the dead, for example. There's also a burgeoning love relationship that is handled awkwardly.
But these are quibbles. If you like hard SF, even if you have know no idea what the hell Stephen Hawking is talking about half
the time, with fast-paced action and hard-boiled characters driven by necessity to take steps they'd rather not, you're in for a great ride.
And, yes, even when the ride is over, there are more than enough loose ends left untied and questions unanswered, that another
installment of the saga appears imminent. Stay tuned.
David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art. |
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