Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction if you prefer. Fantasy too. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein and other SF books. SF movies and TV shows. Fantasy stuff like Tolkien and Game of Thrones. Laser guns, space ships, and time travel. etc. Star Trek, Battlestar, Star Wars, etc.
What are all your thoughts? I mean, I feel like the only way he could have made the ending THIS bad was by purposefully trying. The story is pretty much "and random aliens showed up and saved the day ta da the end fuck you".
Am I missing something here? Revelation Space and Redemption Ark are probably my top two science fiction books of all time, and I feel like Reynolds showed up at my door and kicked me in the sack with that ending. Is there something I'm missing that makes this ending better than how I perceived it?
It is a while since I read it. But the "ending" of the Revelation Space Universe is not written in Absolution Gap, but in the short story collection Galactic North, which describes the genesis of the Green Fly, the Nestbuilders and the far far future.
As said, it is a while, so I won't comment on Absolution Gap. But do your self a favour and finish the series with the bleak ending of humanity in Galactic North. Green is the future.
Is that what is being alluded to in the epilogue of Absolution Gap?
Yes, in the butterfly dress scene, she describes, how they have to flee from the Greenfly. The space wolfs are not a threat any more, but the human industrial accident the Greenfly is.
By the way, I cannot recommend "Diamond Dogs" enough, of all of Reynolds work, this one still bubbles up in remembrance in a quite minute.
I agree completely. Read Diamond Dogs. Great story.
Slow Bullets is pretty damn good too.
Great story, creapy enough in the back of my head that I will not reread.
I literally just started House of Suns today, but I'll check out that one eventually too, haha.
HoS was decent, but I really liked Galactic North. I really feel like his grand concept space opera ideas seem to work better in short story form.
I loved House of Suns. I should read it again.
How is that a better ending? I read Galactic North (which I loved for the most part), but the Galactic North short story didn't seem to add much to the Absolution Gap ending. People keep saying it does, but I don't see it. It's still vague and an open ending.
Do not want to judge the quality of the work. I just liked the short story collections.
But about the ending. In Absolution Gap, the future of humanity and the galaxy is still open, they have to flee, but the stories could still continue. So Deus ex Machina Patternjuglers+Grubs+Nestbuilders solved the Space Wolf problem, there is a new threat and the universe can go on, the problem could be solved.
After Galactic North, nothing is open any more, the Galaxy is converted to space habitats, no planets, brown dwarfs, star dust is left, only Fusion Reactors (stars) and space habitats. There are still humans around in some of the habitats, but humanity as a space faring and autonomous culture is over. As are all the over alien cultures in the galaxy. All replaced by the non sentient Greenfly, which is nonetheless a solid Kardashev scale III entity.
One, or maybe some more ships are still fleeing from the Galaxy, but their is no hope for them. They now have to cross intergalactic space, and by the time they arrive the universe will be several hundred million (if not billions) years older. There is no guaranty that they make it, and if they make it, that the Greenfly was not faster than them. There is no guaranty that they are remotely human, after such a long journey, which even in their reference coordinate system will take thousands of generations.
All the Conjoiner accomplishments and the Demarchists utopian societies are gone.
Yeah, it was pretty awful, and felt very much like it was just wrapping up stuff he didn't know how to end any better at that point. It was really a let down after an otherwise extremely good series - pretty much turned me off of Reynolds.
I suggest his short stories. The longer he writes, the shittier his stories are. His short stories are so good though.
I completely agree - - it was a hokey, out-of-nowhere unraveling of an otherwise great series. Been a few years since I read it but you pretty much sum up my feelings about it.
To me the sudden disappointment, synchronized with their solution to the inhibitors. That after everything we had built up until that point, in the galactic time table, it was suddenly all turned and dispatched. That the win we achieved was nothing we would have actually hoped for. Friends of mine said the same thing about House of Suns, which to me was just a very alien ending.
I just started House of Suns today. I'm 2 chapters in and it's just kinda hard to follow what's going on. Is the whole thing like that?
It starts leaving you with a lot of questions. I remember that. But the blanks all begin to fill in soon. The scope of the story is so advanced and massive you have to allow it a bit to unfold. But the scope of time and humanity is one of my favourites in this book. Love to know what you think of this one when done.
Ask me again in a few weeks and I'll let you know!
I've heard from many that this is his best work, so I'm rather excited.
So, what did you think?
I sweated cold with that ending.
Man, the greenflies. I tried denial but NO, it was foreshadowed in the good damn beginning! AAAAAARGHHHHH!!!!!
Was it? I read all the books at release and a lots gone on since then, could you elaborate please?
Absolution gap. First scene. The "green" stars the girl is looking at.
Ah thought you meant start of series, thanks
I guess I'm in the minority here when I say I liked the ending.
I liked that the Inhibitors weren't the worst thing out there. I liked that there were other species which had been hiding from the Inhibitors (something we saw the Shrouders do in the first book). I liked the Shadows and the moral decision Scorpio had to make in the end, and I really liked the implied twist that the Shadows were actually humans. That was a great little twist at the end, that we do survive and spread across the universe in an effort to avoid the Green, but in the end we face extension because of a decision made by a pig.
I would completely agree with you if he hadn't executed it in such a hamfisted manner. The shadows were not at all expanded upon enough in my opinion, and besides a small little hint from Skade there was no real indication that there was another species hiding there. Personally I think it would have been cool if the Amarantin/Shrouders were the species that brought the secrets to fight back the Inhibitors, but instead we get this really lazy Deus Ex Machina instead.
I hated the ending, too bleak. Humanity must eventually end, but to take the universe with it? Too much. I think it's a commentary on global warming or something to that effect.
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I also liked the imagery, but personally I felt that the entire narrative on Hela was boring as shit and I was just trudging through it to get back to the cool shit in space. Things got pretty cool once the other protagonists showed up to Hela.
But that's totally subjective.
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You make a good point. I feel like the mystique and wonder of the Inhibitors was executed perfectly in the first two books but in Absolution Gap they were just there too often. They didn't seem scary anymore.
You should never read any Peter Hamilton
That was my reaction. I've never read so thoroughly disappointing.
But it wasn't for just the ending but the general realization that the whole trilogy is just a mess concocted by a person that really doesn't know how to build a story which came out interesting in the beginning only by a sheer stroke of luck. It was showing cracks by the end of Revelation Space but the atmosphere and freshness of the ideas was carrying it over. It was a major step down in Redemption Ark but the scope of what was going on made it up for me. Absolution Gap was just no no no no no no no no no no and no. You could see it is going to go nowhere around the middle of the novel (when a girl is revealed to someone else we thought she was) and it was only worse from there on.
Reynolds has plenty of great ideas he just hasn't absolutely any clue or skill on how to make them work in a book. He should find some other writer good with stories and characters and write a book together.
As for people claiming that Galactic North is the "real end". Doesn't matter. IT STILL FUCKING SUCKS.
Stupid fucking book...
That disappoints me, I kind of wrote Reynolds off after terminal world. don't get me wrong I actually loved the book, but his statement that he'll never write anything else in that universe because he didn't think it needed anything more told me a lot about what he seems to think an ending is. I was just about to give him a second chance with this series, but if he's botched this ending to I think I'll skip it.
I know this post is pretty negative, but honestly I think that the first two books are completely amazing in their own right. The series has a horrible fucking ending, but up until the last few chapters of the last book, the series is pretty amazing. As I've stated, Revelation Space and Redemption Ark are probably two of my favorite books of all time. Give them a chance!
Alright I'll bite the bullet and read them, hopefully if I go in with low expectations it won't be such a let down ;) and if you haven't read terminal world by him I suggest it, it's A pretty cool sci-fi/steampunk style book
I have a pretty large list of books on my "to read" list, but I'll add that one on there!
Even though sci-fi is more widely known for it's ideas rather the characters. I still think Absolution Gap failed so badly because the characters weren't consistent from the previous books. I just felt like I was reading a different series at times. Only character I could relate to was Scorpio towards the end, everyone else just sort of vanished.
Killing off Clavain could've been done way better. It seemed like it was done sloppily as a way to get the story moving somewhere. I loved Revelation Space, Chasm City, and really enjoyed Redemption Ark. I wasn't as entertained with Absolution Gap.
Redemption Ark pretty much made the entire story peak and I don't know how it could've gotten any more epic without some kind of time skip. Instead we got Absolution Gap which deviates the story. It wasn't a bad book but it really didn't live up to Redemption Ark. It wasn't very congruent and felt like a standalone book rather than a sequel.
Perhaps, he just didn't want to write more books because if he continued the story from Redemption Ark, I feel like it would've lasted way too long.
I still think Reynolds writes some really interesting stuff, don't know if Absolution Gap was one of those.
I completely 100% agree with every thing you just wrote to the letter.
I was sooooo angry when I finished. I absolutely loved the series and was so let down by it.
It was a pretty cheap ending...he just told us what happened. His story was so full of detail and culture and then he just gives us a poor summary of the events. He not only used deus ex machina but literally just told us using the character's dialogue. I don't have a problem with it as a story device when used properly (the stand uses it to great effect) but it has to be shown or it loses its power. 7/10 for a series that was a 9.
I felt like the book punched me in the face. Then laughed.
Wouldn't have been so bad if the third book hadn't been such a grind for me.
I couldn't get through the slowish beginning of that book, when they are still on that planet they were stranded on at the end of book two. Maybe it was better that way.
Well, let's stay positive: After the Revelation Space series, he published, Pushing Ice which was much better at offering the reader a brief summary of events instead of a proper ending..
You're not the only one. The Amazon reviews for that book are some of the worst he's ever had.
It felt like he lost interest in the series and wrote a completely unrelated story that was nominally tied to the previous books to finish off a contract with his publisher.
Damn it. I just started book 5.
Which one is 5?
Why do good epics always turn into soap operas? is it the nature of man to throw himself at a bag of dicks when the end is near. My legacy is nothing but apparently it gets worse near the end...
Just saying hi 👋from the future. A future where “inhibitor phase” was released in 2021 (and greenfly has yet to decimate us all). Seems the “absolution gap” story is continuing before that fateful end. Does this group have any thoughts on the continuation of human space epoch in that book? (But hands up, i did arrive here after being infuriated by the warbling slow pace and messy ending in absolution gap).
I am from a slightly more distant future and am wondering that same thing
I just finished inhibitor phase. I loved it. The hela story is more or less left behind. If you are on the edge, deciding to reinvest if this story, my advice is, do it.
Thanks, I probably will. I am just freshly annoyed from Absolution Gap, especially after binge reading all three Inhibitor only just to have it end "and a bunch of other stuff happened too."
Yup. It was a narrative recovery operation IMO! He pulled it off. Its a great read.
Absolution Gap was a slog. I skipped over most of the second half of the book. Unsatisfied with the ending.