As a quick aside, I slammed through Dan Brown’s latest novel, prior to Absolution Gap. Not much to be said there. Heh.
[ This post will contain possible spoilers. Nothing too glaring, but be warned regardless! ]
Absolution Gap is the final part of the Inhibitor story arc in Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe, granted other (later) novels touch on the ending aspects. We start off the novel picking up where Redemption Ark left off, roughly 20 years in the future. We find out the Inhibitors are still focused on humankind’s annihilation, yet some remarkable technological advancements have occurred. The remainder of the novel is straightforward. Leaps of time occur as he does so well as a writer, and it’s not too hard to keep up with.
Reynolds seems a bit too focused on ramping up humankind’s technology with massive leaps and bounds. It felt rushed. Sure it was necessary to what his goals were story wise, but it was too much of a leap of faith on his part. Part of Alastair’s charm, for me at least, is how he can write brutally technical passages explaining very difficult concepts and ideas. We’re left to sit back in awe at these technological MacGuffins, but if anything their lack of explanation was too distracting this round. Yes it’s neat what they did, but his quick wash over the nitty-gritty details disappointed.
I was also dismayed at how his voicing of the Inhibitors in Redemption Ark did not translate over to Absolution Gap. Reynolds has a remarkable gift when it comes to non-human voicing, and approach to trying to convey alien thinking. It would have been fantastic to see this pushed further in this novel, especially when it came to some of the actions performed by the Inhibitors. They lost their evil, and coldness in this novel, and to me it’s a shame. They were personified so well in previous novels, chillingly so.
The rest of the novel is fairly well done, but again we see some tarnishing of ideas as they develop. The Quaicheist religion was interesting at first, but failed to deliver. The demise of Clavain was heartbreakingly simple, but again felt way too rushed. The Captain of Nostalgia For Infinity countered with some excellent development, but then we’re left with a lame closure. The rest of the characters continued along their merry way, most of whom we had been introduced to in Redemption Ark, but over all they were flat.
The most common theme of people discussing or reviewing this book is the ending. For me it was suitable, and left the reader pondering the relationship between the shadows and our universe. I’m surprised that people couldn’t see beyond the boundaries that Reynolds had written about all this time. He was never far from pushing the idea of just how fucking big the universe is. He hinted, quite often, about using the space BETWEEN the stars. Perhaps people expected the utter annihilation of the Inhibitors. I was reminded about Asimov’s inability to close things appropriately (hi2u Foundation series). Closure appears to have been beyond Reynolds writing, and I can’t quite figure out why — I would have to ask the chap about it, heh. This could be a similar case that befell Asimov. I could have done without the epilogue. It seemed totally disjointed from the entire concept of the book.
Over all there is a common theme of things being rushed. Perhaps it was a result of a real world deadline, or perhaps pressures from other agencies in his life (editors, other stories in his head, etc). One thing is for sure, it’s still a solid book. Just don’t expect a blockbuster, knock your socks off read.
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