Ark [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Gollancz
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575080590
• ISBN-13: 978-0575080591
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of Baxter's darker themed works, November 20, 2009

By 

Brian K. Ralli (Roseville, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ark (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this novel having read most of Baxter's other works including "Flood". As other reviewers have mentioned, you just have to except the plot device that we could actually develop a faster-than-light starship within the next generation. Much like "Flood", this is a very dark story following people living out their entire lives in the most dismal of situations. Like his novel, "Titan", Baxter portrays space travel as a very miserable and uncertain endeavor. It's not a complete downer, however, with an overriding theme that human ingenuity can conquer all, albeit a little implausibly sometimes. The novel leaves open room for at least 3 sequels following the continuing stories left open in this universe.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read and a great sequel to Flood, October 24, 2009

By 

J. Åstrøm (Lillehammer, Norway) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ark (Paperback)

Having read several other Baxter books, I found this now two-book SF series to be quite refreshing considering how other series he's either fully authored or co-authored. What I do like about the future Baxter paints in both Flood and Ark is that technological advancement seems to freeze in a not too far future, making this personally for me very believable. Although some of the technology presented later on (such as the collection of anti-matter, creation of the warp bubble and superluminal interstellar flight) may seem a little far-fetched - yet! - the author uses much of older and recent scientific research and discussion as background for his book. In other words, he has blended imagination and science in a very successful way.

Unlike another customer review here, I actually do think you should read the previous book, Flood, to understand Ark. Flood sets the desperate, gruesome and gloomy mood of the everflooding Earth and an apparent dying humanity. Ark represents the faint hope that is presented at the very end of the first book. I feel the stories are inextricably intertwined and equally important to understand the series.

The only reason why I don't give this book 5 stars is that I found it too short (!) and that it was a tiny bit less exciting than Flood.

But if you like a believable story about exploration of exo-planets, a play on how we might escape the solar system with a semi-current level of technology well mixed with a good human drama - Ark is for you.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An allegory for our times, January 14, 2011

By 

Joanne Marinelli (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ark (Flood) (Kindle Edition)

Let me enter into ARK by noting some minor difficulties that Baxter is not able to overcome. The sheer number of characters involved threatens to leave them undifferentiated. Some of the dialogue from Gordo, the old NASA right stuff archetype, and from President Vasquez might be interchangeable, for instance, and Vasquez herself is a model for most of the old women who surface and disappear in this ongoing catastrophe, but this novel is one of those rare works of science fiction that transcends genre, nearly the equal of more traditional literary forms, and it took my breath away from sheer relief to find someone who is a master of his science, with plausible if unlikely scenarios to dog our heels as we travel onward into this century.

Liu Zheng's sacrifice as the aeronautics engineer who left an entire life behind in China for the sake of his belief in a spaceship sanctuary, brought the magnitude of the flood crisis home to me with particular force, but the entire novel is grounded in a disaster that could happen, and Baxter rightly spares us little about the price tag for our own lack of humility and gratitude for this stable terra firma planet.

I also find ARK a telling political allegory about the end of American Exceptionalism, and the mythology deployed to sustain it for so long, and the hidden ugliness beneath our so-called civil convictions. This is without a doubt a masterwork, one which I hope to continue to enjoy as I buy up the prequel FLOOD, and Baxter's other spin offs in the franchise.