Product Description

A further awe-inspiring leap into the darkly imagined future of REVELATION SPACE. With his first novel Reynolds laid the foundations of a galaxy-spanning future for mankind; with each novel he takes us further into that galaxy, revealing another aspect of a future that has few boundaries. Look further into the dark heart of mankind: awe-inspiring doomsday weapons, vicious AIs, cities overwhelmed by plagues that twist and meld man and machine: the further we go into this future, the more it is revealed to be the creation of a uniquely talented writer who is making a massive impact on world SF.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36982 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 565 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With Absolution Gap, Alastair Reynolds completes the star-spanning Inhibitors trilogy in which the previous books were Revelation Space and Redemption Ark. The Inhibitors are a mechanical plague, mindlessly but very resourcefully wiping out space-going civilisations that come to their notice. Their latest target is humanity, which lost a round in Redemption Ark. One small human faction now has stealth weapons and technologies that can almost fight Inhibitor assault to a standstill, but running away still seems the only long-term option.

From the same cryptic source as that supertechnology, filtered through a young girl's mind, comes the urgent message to make an interstellar trek to Hela, barren moon of the gas-giant Haldora. Hela is home to an obsessive religion fuelled partly by mind viruses and partly by the miracle of Haldora. This unpredictable, unbelievable event happens in an eyeblink, but more and more often. For the devout this increasing frequency is a signal of the End Times, which is why a group of vast mobile cathedrals lumbers forever around Hela--to keep Haldora at the zenith for best observation of its marvels. And on this last circuit, with a madman in command, the greatest cathedral of all plans an impossible short cut over the mysterious, delicate bridge spanning an immense rift in Hela's surface: Absolution Gap.

There's a lot of action with both familiar and enjoyably exotic weapons; there's suffering, deceit, loss and triumph; there's a hideous revenge straight out of Jacobean tragedy, a series of awesome revelations and the last voyage of the lightship Nostalgia for Infinity that was so strangely transformed in Revelation Space. Ultimately, behind the enigma of Haldora, a dreadful choice awaits: whether or not to bargain with powers that may be the answer to the Inhibitors--but may be something worse. Alastair Reynolds makes his huge story compellingly readable, with characters we care about, and gives impressive descriptions of beauty and cataclysm. This is very superior space opera. --David Langford

About the Author
Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. Since 1991 he has lived in the Netherlands, near Leiden, where he works as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. The first three books in his loosely linked series, Revelation Space, nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke and the British Science Fiction awards, Chasm City, winner of the British Science Fiction Award, and Redemprion Ark, are all Gollancz bestsellers.

Customer Reviews

Holy Disappointing Ending Batman!
Was Reynolds rushing to finish this in time for the holiday shopping season? Completing this book brought back memories of my rush in grad school to conclude a thesis that I was losing interest in and time to complete. If I had blinked quickly I may have missed the Nestbuilders that seemed to be thrown in as a last-minute solution to what could have been a grand trilogy. I would have liked the satisfaction of actually seeing the inhibitors thrashed and ripped out of space (vice reading a synopsis in the epilogue) and of reading a plausible development of the mysterious Nestbuilders/galactic saviors. I knew I was in trouble when I held the last few pages in my fingers and felt cheated at the end to have invested so much time and, afterwards, handed a muddled unsatisfying ending. Too bad the heroes of the story failed to save the ending for the readers. I think we are all being too nice in our reviews because each of us enjoyed the previous books too much to trash the final chapter.

Too Much Deus Ex Machina
This is my first online review, so will be a little ragged. Having read Revelation Space and Redemption Ark some time ago I was looking forward to Absolution Gap with eager anticipation.

Firstly, the aspect of this novel that I really enjoyed was the emphasis on the characters rather than the narrative. I felt like I was getting to know and feel for the characters better than the previous two novels.

The narrative however seems to have come under attack by one of the Inhibitor's weapons and has suffered severe damage. Reynolds has not capitalised on or expanded the story lines from the previous two installments and has introduced many plot elements that add nothing of value.

Deus Ex Machina is invoked far too liberally.

He is also rather inconsistent with his arbitrary adherence to or violation of the known laws of physics.

Having been rather negative so far I will conclude by saying that I still thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to any space opera or hard(ish) SF fan.

Rushed and ragged
I like many other reviewers looked forward to the latest of the stories set in Revelation Space.

Without, hopefully, spoiling it for others I will say if you are looking for something in the mould of Chasm City you are going to be less disappointed than if you were looking for the final chapter of Revelation Space/Redemption Ark.
The key characters in the latter books hardly get a mention. On the plus side the central story is unwound in a similar manner to the second book and these sections are as enjoyable as his other work.
Its a shame the Inhibitors are dealt with in such an off-hand manner in this book; almost as if references to them and some of the other related characters were grafted onto the central story which could have been written without reference to characters we already had met. I think perhaps the book would have been better if it hadn't tried to tie the loose ends up in such an offhand way but had just stood alone.

I can only assume that either

(a) Alastair was getting fed up with the universe he created and wanted to get an already contracted book out of the way so he could move on
...or....
(b) Publishers don't apply the strict rules to sucessful authors that they do to new ones (look at the page glut of later Asimov works vs early ones ;-) and in their rush to get our money they relax some standards.

Either way... I wish this had been two books of the same high standard as the previous ones. I did enjoy it but unlike other readers I won't be pre-ordering his next book and will probably wait for the paperback.