60 years have passed from the end of REVELATION SPACE as the second novel in Alastair Reynolds’ sequence about a humanity threatened with extinction by a galactic army of intelligence suppression machines called the Inhibitors begins. Reynolds actually published another novel that I’m reading now, called Chasm City, but it’s a standalone story set in this same future history but not involved in the story line.
Ana Khouri, Ilia Volyova, the tragically ill captain of their lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity and the planet Resurgam are the main characters carried over to Redemption Ark, though Sylveste and the neutron star/quantum computer Hades are present only in the conversation of others. Khouri, under an alias, has become a high level government official charged with tracking down Volyova, who is considered a mass murderer. The two are actually working together, with the decades-long hunt a cover, to develop a plan to save the planet’s people from the Inhibitors.
The machines are hard at work in the Delta Pavonis system and their efforts are soon vast enough to be seen with the naked eye from Resurgam’s surface, so the two woman find the rebel leader Thorn in order to convert him to their cause. This they do, not without barely avoided risks.
Back in the central world of Yellowstone, the long war between the Demarchist and Conjoiner factions is nearly over. The latter’s vastly superior technology is overcoming the former’s larger numbers but the winners are no longer that interested in pressing home the victory. You see, they’ve become aware of the wolves too and are sending their most advanced ships to Resurgam to reclaim the immense weapons held on the lighthugger.
Stirring the drink is a 400+ year old Conjoiner called Neil Claivin. Originally a military leader of an Earth faction at war with them, he defected after the creator of the Conjoined technology saved his life by flooding him with the microscopic machines. Claivin never completely made the jump, though, and when he learns of the extinction machines and what Conjoiner leadership plans to do about them, instead of leading the squad tasked with recovering the weapons he defects yet again and finds allies who go with him to try and grab the weapons for use on behalf of all Humanity.
Getting to the Delta Pavonis system is no simple thing, nor is the set task once there. And the Inhibitors have been busy in the meanwhile–even with the advanced star drives the transit time is still several years–reshaping several planets in order to build a weapon even deadlier than one might imagine.
Reynolds does a better job this time out, his writing is still compelling and colorful but there seemed like far fewer wasted (i.e., unnecessary) paragraphs, pages and chapters. Claivin and Khouri are impressively drawn characters and Skade, the Conjoiner leading the anti-Inhibitor effort, is one twisted little bitch. There’s a definitely a bit of middle book syndrome, you can’t read this without having read REVELATION SPACE first and the ending is, of course, not much of an ending. Fortunately I found Absolution Gap, which is next, at the used bookstore.
recommended
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