ABSOLUTION GAP, Revelation Space 3 by Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by John Lee

We’ll Always Have CHASM CITY

This is book three in the main arc of the Revelation Space series which has some very high points. This is the low water mark. I found the frequent shift in focus from Galactic civilization genocide to a Procession of Cathedrals to be distracting and just not interesting. Yes I listened to the whole book but, no, I cannot begin to tell you what the significance of the cathedrals marching off a cliff has to do with anything. That whole story arc seemed to be there just to pad the time out to a respectable duration. Some scenes are interesting, although right now I cannot call them to mind, the overall distaste for the book has obscured my memory. Some characters, like Clavaine, carry over from the previous book and provide some continuity to the familiar. One new character, Scorpio is the most engaging and the easiest to identify with and he is not even human! The rest of the cast and crews of the various spaceships and cathedrals are interchangeable, and completely disposable. I just can’t be made to care about any of them. Their motives are so foreign, so alien, that their major and minor crises have no emotional impact. The climax of this novel seems so trivial compared to the galatic level crisis of the rest of the series that I kept wondering when the big thing would start to happen. It never did. This capstone of the Revelation Space series is a big disappointment. Gone is the ingenious interplay between human factions that was so prevalent in REDEMPTION ARK. Lost is the rush of grand ideas that fuel CHASM CITY. I hope that Alastair Reynolds can redeem himself in the next book THE PREFECT. If not, we’ll always have CHASM CITY.

Living up to the standards set by the novel itself John Lees phones in this performance. His voice seems to have no excitement, no emotion. The first few lines delivered by some characters are given in the accent of one of the other characters, as if he had lost track of the story. I can hardly blame him, since the book lost me long before the end. I am not sure that even John Lee at his best could have elevated this novel from the doldrums.