Customer Reviews

Redemption Ark (Revelation Space)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just a warning to anyone reading the reviews below. These reviewers tell you specific facts about the ending of the book.

One of the best things about Alastair Reynolds is that he is a practicing astronomer who really knows what he is talking about when it comes to space and planetary motion. If Reynolds makes up something that is not realistic by today's standards he is at least basing it on the current theories of space and time. This is why a science major like myself would appreciate reading his fiction more than most of the pop that found in the sci-fi section of today's book store.

However, there are many problems with Redemption Ark. It was far less enjoyable to read then either Chasm city or Revelation Space. The strength of Reynolds writing comes largely from his was imagination that is not too far detached from realistic outlook on scientific principles of today (such as our inability to achieve the speed of light). He presents us a whole new and exciting world of the future, the world that is based on the assumption of human race having the intelligence to propagate its survival by colonizing space. The setting Reynolds presented was so convincing and intriguing that it made Revelation Space almost like an ethnographic account of new cultures as well as a novel at the same time. Chasm city had some of the same element but Redemption Ark had almost nothing new. Once again we find ourselves in the same world but we are no longer impressed by it, but find ourselves in a familiar territory.

Writer's style also started wearing off in its ingenuity. Reading Redemption Ark felt like being supplied with tiny spoons of interesting plot points drifting amid empty conversational and narration filler. It is if we are feed the relevant information at more or less constant rate as we progressed towards the end. At times there were many lines like: It was time to do what had to be done or Now she knew what to do or Now he understood the significance. Some chapters ended as over dramatized, unfinished soap opera episodes.

Yet although the aforementioned flaws are more or less forgivable the biggest downfall of Redemption Ark is failure to introduce and develop likable characters. There are too many characters that are poorly developed that get too much attention and plot time. One of such characters was Felka, a semi-crazy side kick of Clavain who we really do not know much about except her affection for Clavain. There is Galiana, mentioned way too much and too often but without enough of concrete information for us to draw up her personality. But the old characters are back but they are no longer as intriguing as before. Volyova is back but is more irritating this time.

The hardest thing about reading Redemption Ark was the first two hundred pages. The prolonged introduction to new characters and setting up of a plot was just too long and mind-numbing. Too bad I couldn't amplify my conciseness like a true Conjoner and read those pages fifteen times faster.

Overall, I think that this is a worthy read for any Alaistair Reynolds fan. It is somewhat less satisfying then his previous works but nonetheless Redemption Ark is still entertaining. I'm looking forward to reading more from Reynolds although I truly hope that whatever else he will write will have nothing to do with Revelation Space universe. It is time he applied his creativity onto a new project, Revelation Space saga had all the development it needed. Go Reynolds!

Who wouldn't love a plot like this? 4 km-long starship, "Nostalgia for Infinity", gradually being absorbed by the super-technovirus, the Melding Plague and/or the ship's former Captain, his mind now having merged with said Plague. The way-to-cool Triumvir Ilia Volyova trying to get control of 33 mysterious Hell-Class weapons in order to direct a pre-emptive strike against the galaxy's most fearsome menace, the soulless Inhibitor-machines, bent on extinguishing 'outbreaks' of starfaring, intelligent life. Meanwhile her associate Khouri (who survived Revelation Space!)attempting to organize the evacuation of 200.000 people from Resurgam before the Inhibitors can finish the ultimate doomsday weapon of their own, made out of the Delta Parvonis system's biggest planet! And on top of this: two competing factions of the ultra-advanced, hive-minded Conjoiners, one led by the old war-hero, Nevil Clavain, the other by his adversary, the scary cyborg woman, Skade, race towards Resurgam to reclaim the weapons for their own, more or less, righteous purposes. And that's just scratchin' the surface! This book is an incredibly cool scifi-read with more than its share of incredibly cool - and even some quite sympathetic characters (like the tormented Clavain, and the unwilling trader-turned-heroine, Antoinette Bax). Not very 'deep' characters, mind you, but they never really were in 99% of all scifi I read, so I don't mind.

What I *do* mind, however, is that the story seems strangely unfinished by the end of it. Many of the sketchy interrelations between the characters (such as between Khouri and Volyova) are barely resolved, if at all. Too many interesting characters (such as Clavain's lost love, Galiana - and to a large extent: Bax) are just left in plot limbo. And the relentless exposition of Reynold's hard-to-access-for-the-less-than-well-educated astronomy and quantum physics concepts makes it a heavy read at times. And as for the pay-off: the final showdown with the Inhibitors, well ... where did it go? It seems as if Reynolds is either aiming at picking up on a lot of things in a sequel (and I haven't yet read "Diamond dogs ... " by the way) or simply discovered that he was late for lunch and then quickly patched up what he was working on at the time and shipped the novel off to publishing. A real shame ... for it is in all other respects a great scifi-book.

"Redemption Ark" is billed as a sequel to Mr. Reynolds's intriguing "Revelation Space, and in some sense it is; but it's much more than that. It brings back a few of the characters--and settings--of its predecessor, but it veers off in a totally unexpected direction. The author introduces plenty of new characters--human, machine, and combinations of the two--and new puzzles. The conflicted warrior Nevil Clavain assumes the hero's role and Skade (of the detachable head) serves as his bizarre opponent.

Clavain is intriguing: like the lonely private eyes of the hardboiled detective tradition, he doesn't always quite know what's going on; and his plans don't always work quite as designed. He battles the life-destroying Inhibitors (machine intelligences that want to "inhibit" intelligent life), the forces unleashed by Skade, and a few others as well. Spaceship captain Antoinette Bax and her mechanic and more than friend Xavier Liu, who are enlisted in Clavain's pickup army, supply the human factor. Their heads aren't detachable, and they don't deal in cosmic issues; they just want to survive. And then there's Scorpio--he's a . . . err, never mind. Best if you see for yourself.

There's plenty of great science here, too. The author, an astronomer by trade, instructs his readers on how to destroy a star, and how a starship might gain sentience of its own. And the author's technique is unorthodox, he writes as though he's saying to his audience, "look--we've all read space operas--we all know how battles go." So he pretty much shows you more of the befores and afters, and less of the action than do many authors. Some may be put off. I thought it was clever.

It's a year since I finished Revelation Space but, finishing Redemption Ark yesterday, I had the distinct impression that was a much better written book.

Reynold's strength is clearly his ability to come up with those hard scientific ideas that are a foundation of SF, but perhaps he doesn't know that - no matter what the genre - characters are at the foundation of any good story. In this area I believe Reynolds' has failed to develop plausible, complex and interesting characters. Perhaps total failure is too strong a word, but certainly next to the strength of his SF ideas the characterisation is very weak.

Perhaps the biggest glaring problem I had is this: This is an optimistic view of the technology and spread of humanity seven hundred years into the future, but also a attempt at realism - so why has their actually humanity barely developed in this period? Why has society and culture hardly evolved?

Reynolds makes half-hearted attempts to invent new social organisations. The Conjoiners are his prime example and tantalising reference to them is made in the first book. Here, we finally get some details only to learn that beneath the surface they resemble every other human group in the book - being populated by self-serving squabbling humans who nonetheless all exhibit remarkable ability to do high-level physics on the fly but are unable to progress beyond the petty competitiveness and oneupmanship that dominated their collective pasts.

We get told of bigger, broader motives - Clavain's desire to save humanity - but we never really FEEL them. Reynold's DESCRIBES a lot of internal conflict - the decision to blow up Nightshade - but rarely SHOWS us.

In short, I found all the characters to end up being pale imitations of each other and was lead to wonder whether we shouldn't let the Inhibitors destroy this fascinatingly technological yet spritually barren interpretation of humanity's future after all.

There was plenty more to indicate to me Reynolds is already falling away into a being a churner of mass-produced triviality, something rife in the fantasy genre but so far less prevalent in SF.

The whole episode of the capture of Zodiacal Light is a glaring omission and could have made one of the best chapters in the book. I was reminded of the contrast between this and Neil Stephenson's Confusion where an entire book is devoted to a swashbuckling boat-capture adventure! Reynolds skims over this with a bare minimum of attention, missing a great opportunity no seasoned storyteller would pass up and also an obvious opportunity to develop Scorpio's and the other pigs' characters (think about how weak Scorpio's evil intent towards humans seems especially after he just changes his mind later on after some cathartic experience we weren't even present for).

Perhaps Reynold's ideas for this book exceeded his ablities on this occasion. If I could offer some advice I would say go back to basics. If he could combine his talent for hard-SF concepts with strong story-telling basics we would have a winner.

Alastair Reynolds has it, and he is running with it. Somehow out of a genre that hasn't had much interesting things happen to it in recent history (I think) Alastair has created a unique and highly colorful landscape of technology, characters, motivations, and catastrophes that is simply incredible. I usually read fantasy, but I picked up Revelation Space and couldn't just stop with that one and continued on with Chasm city and now, Redemption Ark the newest book in his science fiction futuristic series.

The complexity of this book alone should win awards within literary circles, the sheer number of plots, subplots and threads of storyline is staggering, but somehow, surprisingly, Reynolds weaves it all together and the reader is completely in the story for the entire length of the book. I think that this is probably one of the best books out today for science fiction or for fantasy, and I highly recommend reading this book to whoever has a rainy Sunday to read good literature (good luck putting it down once you start.). I highly anticipate the new book in the series and hope it is as good as the last 2. Thank you Alastair for bringing some excellent literature to this genre of writing.

This is the third book by Alastair Reynolds that I've read. I've read them all in sequence, and I was very excited to learn of this book, Redemption Ark, especially after I was somewhat disappointed by his second book, Chasm City, but very impressed with his first book, Revelation Space.

Redemption Ark IS very spell-binding. The science fiction is edgy (bording on evil) and remarkable, and the character development is quite good. I especially like the stuff about inertia supression technology. But the book is very anti-climactic at the end, just like Chasm City, which is why I was disappointed. The whole issue with the "wolves" was gone over too fast in the end, and you don't hear anything more about the Exordium (sp?) experiments and inertia suppression technology, and you don't really get to know what the weapons cache is really capable of. It seems like the author was in a hurry to finish the book, that's all. I have a feeling there must be another sequel to this book the way it ended (I hope so). Wait until it comes out in paperback, or check it out of the library.

Mr. Reynolds has done quite a good job with this book: the backdrop of the Conjoiners, the history glimpses between the Earth of today and 500 years of the "future" plus a very realistic portrayal of space combat.

The last 150 pages really flies, full of action and resolution.

What I particularly enjoyed was how this book actually could stand on its own in many ways, and was not the typical "bridge" between an exciting first third of a story and the thrilling conclusion. Very well done and highly recommended.

Picking up 50 years after where Revelation Space left, this fantastic hard science fiction novel (second of a trilogy) once again brings a cast of characters - some new and some from the first book - from light years apart (in time and space) and builds their story arcs until the collide and the climax of the book.

In the 26th century, humans have split into factions: the Conjoiners, with their augmented mental abilities and group mind capabilities; the Demarchists, who hate human augmentation of any kind and losing their war with the Conjoiners over control of the Yellowstone system (which they don't realize the Conjoiners may not want anymore); Ultras - cyborgs, that started out human - who pilot trade ships between the stars; and everyone else, who are mostly out for their own gain, survival, or both.

When centuries old Clavain learns that the Conjoiners have learned of the Inhibitors - semi-intelligent machines charged the suppression of intelligent life in the galaxy - is the source of all of the extinct civilizations on the brink of space travel for the last few hundred million years and that they plan to run and leave the rest of humanity to suffer the same fate, he defects from the Conjoiners and travels into the heart of the enemy looking for allies to help him recover a cache of Hell Weapons, stolen from the Conjoiners decades before, that are in the Delta Pavonis system on an Ultra lighthugger; weapons that the Conjoiners want back as well.

Meanwhile, 50 years after Revelation Space, in the Delta Pavonis system, the survivors of that same lighthugger are struggling to guide the colony of 200,000 living on Resurgam under a brutal authoritarian government towards their salvation from the Inhibitors, who have arrived in system after being alerted by the activities that brought Revelation Space to conclusion (I will leave out the details for those a book behind). The Inhibitors have begun to dismantle some moons in the system with the goal of building an extinction weapon.

Clavain's rag-tag army and the Conjoiners giving chase are heading to Resurgam unaware of the system's fate and their role in it. I am so looking forward to reading the conclusion in Absolution Gap (update: see my review for Absolution Gap to learn why my excitement became disappointment)!

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I've read all the real sci-fi greats from Asimov to Clarke to Pohl but I have a limited appetite for the fantasy end of sci-fi like LeGuin.

If you also prefer imagination sparked by hard science and are looking for a new author in the mold of Simak and Poul Anderson with the texture of Herbert, Zelazny and Niven, you will be thoroughly impressed.

Starts a bit slow but Reynolds soon weaves a complex story with intricate charactors and compelling science. It's good enough to 'have' to replace my half-finished copy I accidentally left on a recent flight!