Heaven's Reach

Tasty morsel of a novel. Completes the Streaker journey. But we still don't know anything about Herbie and the Progenitors, dammit.

The final part of the second Uplift trilogy. A real space opera, developing the themes in the earlier books and set off Jijo. Interesting astrophysical ideas and clever tying together of the plot lines. Lots of loose ends at the end though - some return to an uncertain future of Jijo in Galaxy 4

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now split from the other 4 galaxies. The Streaker returns to Earth and Larl gets sent beyond the known galaxies.

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Everything, almost, seems to come together to cause a galactic disaster in this book. Can the long lost natives, fighting amongst themselves, survive the problems to come, and just what, exactly, is going on in a universe gone crazy? Planetary and galactic politics cause all sorts of chaos.

I consider David Brin one of the three best genre writers among those who started writing after 1970 (the other two are Lawrence Watt-Evans and Steven Brust; Barry Longyear might be on that list except I think he started writing before 1970, and I haven't seen anything new from him in quite a

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while. Barry Hughart would be on that list if he hadn't had to give up writing due to his idiotic publishers).

I'm a huge fan of a lot of his work. His original Uplift trilogy is a favorite of mine. But I was disappointed by the first two books in his second Uplift trilogy. Heaven's Reach represents a significant improvement on those books.

It might get a bit too cosmic (in the same way that his Kiln People did, towards the end), but it's a solid, intelligent, imaginative, and well-written book. Perhaps I like it more because the action takes place out on the space lanes, rather than being cooped up on the sooner planet of Jijo.

Many mysteries are explained, and the resolution, while by no means tying up all the threads of the Uplift series, is quite satisfying. I plan to go back to the first two books in the trilogy to see if I like them better in the light of this book.

And I'll be re-reading the entire first trilogy before too long, of course.

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* Listen to the crash
* Of breakers on yonder reef,
* And. tell me this ain't real! * So says Olelo, a dolphin crew member on one spacecraft on the last pages of the book, Heaven's Reach.

This is a difficult review for me. Brin's book, Uplift War is one of my favorite science fiction books. Heaven's

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Reach, continuing the same story three books later is a very difficult read. As other reviewers have said, there are way too many POVs.

Let me itemize the evidence for the crime of excessive POVs: Harry Harm, ASX/EASX, Sara, Emerson, Lark, Gillian Baskin, Tsh't, Rety, Dwer. Have I left out some POV characters, who knows, who cares.

I found about the first 100 pages to be highly readable. Then around page 100 I started getting confused by the quick jumping from POV to POV. I started skimming hard. After about another 100 pages I found interesting answers to the questions in the stories. There are about 100 pages starting around page 200 that give answers to why the find from 4 books ago has started an all out attack on Earth. There is information about the older races who are on their path to leaving the physical realm. I find the the author does answer the questions raised in the series if you carefully read pages 200 - 300.

After page 300 I went back to skimming until about 50 pages from the end. The book does a complete job of detailing the fate of each of the separate POV characters in this one book.

So, in conclusion, this book has serious problems. There are some interesting storylines: Harry's adventures in E-Space, Gillian's conversations with the old ones, how galactic civilization is changing over millions of years. I would not generally recommend this book for people to read. I had read all of the first Uplift series and the first of this series. so I was interested in finishing the series for myself. Some other people who have read and enjoyed other titles in this series might want to read this one.

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This review covers all three books in the 2nd Uplift Trilogy, (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach).

At the end of the day, this rather long story, (nearly 2,000 pages over three volumes), is a good book that leaves some big openings for more adventures in the Uplift Universe. With

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that said, I really enjoyed the first three Uplift books, (Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War), more than I did this second trilogy. I think that is due to the stand-alone nature of the initial three volumes. I liked that each of those books told a relatively complete story that was set against a larger backdrop that stayed mostly in the background. Further, this fourth installment, (again, I'm talking about three books here), could have stood some editing. There is quite a bit of repetition of information - and not all of that can be attributed to getting the reader up to speed with what happened in the preceding volume. Rather, it sometimes felt as though Brin had lost some threads and was reminding himself, (and the reader), of where things stood. At times, he was (validly) revisiting a situation from the perspective of a different character - but often it felt like redundant info-dumping. Yes, we know most of the Galactics are against the upstart human 'wolflings' and their client species, the neo-chimps and neo-dolphins - please stop hitting us with that particular truncheon!

On to the good things: The overall story is really pretty great. As an unabashed and unapologetic Space Opera tale, this 2nd Uplift Trilogy does not disappoint. Throughout these Uplift books, Brin has taken a 'kitchen-sink' approach to the science, (he even says so in the afterword). He throws one big idea on top of another on top of third and a fourth. And then keeps doing it! His position as consultant for NASA is showing here in a big way - and that's a good thing because the ideas are grand and he does a good job of laying it out for us lay-people. Among all that science and big ideas, there are also a wide variety of characters to track - and there is a fair amount of head-hopping as a result - but Brin is a talented enough writer that he pulls off that aspect quite well. Helping to ease the transitions, most perspective shifts happen at logical chapter breaks. Now, with such a large cast of players, some are bound to be more interesting than others and a handful of characters do seemingly get short shrift - but I can see where Brin might re-visit some of them in order to explore their stories in greater depth. There are also other characters from the first three books that don't show up here at all, (most notably the ones left behind on Kithrup at the end of Startide Rising - which was, for me, the standout book of the entire Uplift series). I hope Brin's future plans include coming back to tie up some of those loose ends.

Having finally finished this trilogy, I feel like I have completed a marathon. Not that I've ever run a real marathon! LOL! Still, with the unrelenting onslaught of difficulties that every character seemed to be going through, always battling uphill against incredible odds. Facing implacable enemies. Managing one hair-breadth escape after another... it's nice to call this one done - at least for now.

Next up, I might have to try a nice post-apocalyptic story - just to lighten the mood! ;)

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Ties up most of the loose ends - just in case you'd wondered what happened after _Startide Rising_.

Brin's concluding book in his Uplift series continues the story of the escape of the spaceship Streaker from the fanatic Jophur, told from the many diverse points of view of the characters we've grown to love. However, in this book Brin chooses to expose another layer of his mysterious universe,

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writing for the first time about how various orders of life interact (both humans and Jophur are of the same order), providing a much wider perspective on just how significant or insignificant humanity's toils may be. This made for a very interesting read, as we discovered a lot more about how the universe works beyond the level of the "great galactic civilization" that is so impressive in previous books. While the multi-book plot of the voyage of the Streaker does finally come to and end, and Brin does address some of the series-long plotlines and mysteries, much still remains unexplained, and his introduction of a new, higher level of order poses even more questions. Despite this, I found the book to be a satisfactory conclusion to the long-running story, as most of the primary characters have found a level of peace.

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