|
Redemption Ark
by Alastair Reynolds
Reviewed by David Cake
Alastair Reynolds is in many ways clearly the sort of science fiction writer that got many people reading science fiction in the first place. He writes serious space opera, adventure fiction with lots of genuine scientific speculation, and action on a planetary scale. Redemption Ark is the third in his ongoing series.
Redemption Ark is a very fine example of what space opera for a 21st century audience should be. It has space battles, galaxy threatening villains, feats of engineering on the scale of solar systems, and protagonists that are often much more capable than modern humans. But its science is not just sound (generally taking into account the theory of relativity and the real conditions of space, for example) but also fascinating, with some speculative quantum physics working its way into the plot. And its aliens are genuinely alien, its competing human cultures obviously different but never caricatured, and its ideas about other forms of technology besides quantum physics manipulation just as well done.
In short, this is a hard science fiction space opera executed with great skill. And its also got a very fast engaging pace, an interesting plot, and some very challenging ideas.
Its not perfect. Characterisation can lapse a little, with occasional two dimensional villainy or not fully explained changes of heart. At one point, two characters who do not know each other well and are only working together due to recently applied coercion, lapse into a perfect threatening villain double act, which is somewhat jarring.
But overall, I have to heartily recommend this book.
In particular, I would recommend to those who like authors like Larry Niven or Greg Bear, the hard SF old school, or those who like modern space opera such as Iain M. Banks. Like most modern hard SF, its clearly a post-cyberpunk work, with artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cybernetic implants, and nanotech viruses all featuring. But its clearly a book for those who like to speculate big, not the near future of most cyberpunk novels but the future of starfaring humanity and the rest of the galaxy they live.
If you wanted to read Redemption Ark without reading the two previous novels, Revelation Space and Chasm City, you could probably manage it without getting too confused. Redemption Ark follows fairly directly on from Revelation Space, with several recurring characters and continuing the major plot from that novel, but the recurring characters are properly introduced, and all relevant plot points from earlier books are explained at some point. It also has one section that refers to characters and events from the intervening novel Chasm City (though only a section, and events from Chasm City are definitely somewhat peripheral). So Reynolds has taken the effort to ensure that it can be read as a standalone novel, but its still much better read as the third in a series. Its also fairly obviously not intended as the last in the series.
|
