Absolution Gap [Paperback]

Oh, the humanity! Everything everybody wrote below is true: great, gothic science fiction, creeping horror, technology, darkness. Wonderful, additional storylines thrown in. Oh, and real character development. The first two books (three, including Chasm City) sold me on the Epic Quest of mankind against the Inhibitors, with wonderful little mysteries thrown in, along with tantalizing hints that they all might be related.

But what do we have here? Toss the major connecting thread between the books... the Inhibitors explained away in less than four pages. Magical "out-of-nowhere" saviors who are hinted at only twice in the entire story, and done in a way that they seem nothing more than a callous afterthought.

Imagine this...you've worked your way through the first two (three, including Chasm City) books, slowly grown used to and then developed an affinity for Mr. Reynolds' wonderfully unique style. You're happy with the subtle hints at 700 years of human history, having been given enough of the details to fill in the dark, gothic story with your own imagination. But five hundred pages to go, you start thinking, "Now we'll see the culmination of it all!" Two-hundred fifty pages, and you're thinking, "Ok, anytime now..." One hundred pages, and there's a sinking feeling..." Fifty pages, with the ending to the central theme of the series nowhere in sight, you finally realize the awful truth: this whole storyline was *never* about the Inhibitors. It was *all* a mechanism to force us to fill in the blanks of the future history of humanity, with the Inhibitor battle only a convenient way to move things along.

Until, that is, Mr. Reynolds couldn't write about it anymore. So, with nothing more than a rubber stamp called "Epilogue", the story ends. No mysteries solved. Mademoiselle? Nope. Conjoiners? Nope. Plague? Nope. Inhibitors? "Poof!" they are gone with the aid of magical fairies, only to be replaced by newer, badder bad guys. But none of this was what this story was about. As a literary mechanism, I applaud Mr. Reynolds' achievement. If you read books to be entertained along the way, this whole series is wonderful and I highly recommend it - I enjoyed 3/4 of it immensely. But if you like a story with a good ending, it is supremely disappointing... I, for one, feel cheated. It's actually worse than Hamilton and the Night's Dawn ending. Mr. Reynolds' style is to leave much to our imagination, and for most of this series he does so brilliantly. But, where he carefully takes thousands of pages to weave us a story of the past 700 years, he give us the future in a mere four.

Oh well. I suppose it was worth it.

First, I'd like to mirror what many of the other reviewers have said. Specifically a correlary between Stephen Baxter and Reynolds. He does seem to have a bit of a problem continuing this story.

I think what nobody has mentioned here, and bears mentioning, is that Reynolds left his job as a scientist to pursue writing full time to write this book. It seems that perhaps he got a little cocky.

Where the previous two books (I disagree that this is a four book series) were cold, realistic, hard science fiction (with the notable, but forgivable exception of Skade's FTL escapades and the cache weapons), his resolve to write concise books simply disappears with the third. Bizarre weapons ("hypometric" weapons, "bladder mines", "cryo math", and so on) and forces peek out and begin to play very large parts in this book.

Additionally, characters are spun through very strange trajectories not expected from the previous books. Scorpio is nearly a different character entirely. Brannigan is, well, a person again. Khouri is almost maternal, and rather boring. Clavain is near useless, and certainly uninteresting, and Skade is implausible(er) and not nearly as formidable.

What happened? I don't think anyone but Reynolds can really answer this. As somebody who went to amazon.co.uk to get copies of his books which were unavailable here in the US, I am definitely somebody who is a fan of his. After reading this, however, I'm not sure I'd read another of his books. My hope is that he will realize from the vast majority of reviews of his recent book, that he has taken a turn that was unexpected, and that perhaps he should reconsider.

At any rate, I would also suggest buying as a paperback. Or borrowing. This isn't worth the cost of admission, and it really wasn't worth the time I spent reading it. The suspense at the end of the book (a paltry 60-80 pages) is roughly the same quality as the middle to end of the second book, but is completely blunted by a weak, anticlimactic ending. This series needed a solid ending, regardless of whether it was a lead in to another book. What we have here is loose ends gummed up, rather than sewn up.

Suggested for hardcore fans who have to know, recommend against it for anyone else.

With this book, unlike the previous 3 of his I have read, I was disappointed.

The entire question of shrouder/mademoiselle penetration of the conjoiners vanishes. Presumably if the Night Council WAS mademoiselle, it still existed somewhere.

The protagonist AND antagonist from Redemption Ark are removed from the story early in a clearly contrived fashion whose only impact besides clearing the slate for new characters is to give scorpio periodic memories.

The Nestbuilders are only presented in an allusive fashion, but play a large role in the plot. Invisible Hand material (when the story goes to far to be recovered by characters in their enviroment, a new element will be used to resolve the conflict in the plot) in my opinion. The Shadow entities on the other hand at least were built up in the story some.

Greenfly seem to be thrown in after the fact as a way to not have a totally happy ending, particularly if he is planning on writing in this universe more, possibly about Sky Haussmann, assuming he is the person described in the evacuees from Yellowstone.

I would wait for paperback on this one if I had to do it again.