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""Few SF writers merge rousing adventure with advanced futuristic technology as skillfully as Alastair Reynolds" (Toronto Star), the award-winning author of On the Steel Breeze. In the conclusion of his Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars--and a last opportunity to redeem their name... Send Ndege... The cryptic message originated seventy light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier? Ndege's daughter Goma, a biologist, joins the crew of the Travertine dispatched to Gliese 163 to uncover the source behind the enigmatic message. Goma's odyssey will take her not only into the farthest reaches of space, but centuries into her family's past where the answers to the universe's greatest mysteries await.."--… (more)
User reviews
We are now a few generations down the tree from the original exploits of Eunice and her grandchildren. Their great-grandchildren ( I think) are livign with the intelligent elephants on the world of Crucible, still marked by the alien Mandela. A clear text, light constant message arrives ' bring Negele' - who is their elderly mother, in no fit state for the rigours of spacetravel and sleepover. The message has come from an otherwise insignificant star some 70 light-years away. That it's in Swahili, suggests a human aware sender, but littel otehr details can be gathered. Surprisingly few political machinations take place and an an expedition is launched, no generational ship, merely 50 odd crew in sleep caskets.
Meanwhile one of the older relatives in another branch is Kanu, currently ambassador for the Evolvarium machine intelligences on Mars. However there remain groups of humans who object to the current treaty and wish to free/conquer their former colony. Kanu gets caught up in such an incident, which ultimately leads him to becoming aware of the message to Crucible, and another actor in the drama that unfolds at the destination.
While the science remains at Reynolds' ever impeccable levels, sadly the story telling falls slightly sub-par on this one. The strands don't weave effortlessly together, but are pulled vigorously into a specific shape, and the reader feels it. Choppy sequence changes from Goma to kanu and back, contrived circumstances, ridiculously complicit timing events, and then characters and themes abandoned once they'd served a minor point. A fairly prolonged philosophical info-dump formed the 'conclusion', of the plot events. I'm really not sure that an SF novel was the place for this, whilst to a degree commentary on social themes should be present, this was hardly subtle. Alien maths proves there is no god, but you don't have to suffer the nihilism of despair, for a single act of human kindness refutes this. And having all of characters then completely change their personalities wasn't very convincing. An extended epilogue didn't really help, even if it did rush together the remaining strands.
The trilogy is nominally closed at this point, but the future of the Risen leaves space for more novels in the universe, and I suspect there is a lot more ground to be covered.
The action in this installment
This is excellent science fiction, as you can always expect from Reynolds, however, at 1,800 pages, it is at least 300 pages too long. The amount of “bloat” and padding is what I would expect of someone trying to extend a 250 page novel to 300 pages. In one sequence, a primary character spends roughly 5 pages apologizing to another. What could have been accomplished in half a page runs interminably for five pages. Later, a similar situation develops with identical results; page after page of apology. It’s almost as if Reynolds has a fetish for apologia.
Alastair Reynolds is amazingly prolific, and his grasp of “hard” science fiction is as good as it gets. His imagination for advances in physics and cultural changes are amazing. However, I have come to the conclusion that his huge body of work is accomplished at the expense of polish. Reynolds’s activity consists of, write, write, write, PUBLISH. Write, write, write, PUBLISH. What is missing is polish and editing. This, along with many other of his works would be far better were it 100 pages shorter. It is simply bloated, turning a 4½ star effort into 3 stars.
Oh, and elephants in space is just stupid.