Redemption Ark is the third novel
set in the same universe as Alastair Reynolds's somewhat splendid
Revelation Space and Chasm City (one of which deservedly
won the British Science Fiction Award, as I recall).
 The
plot sets up a number of different characters in a very complex
universe, managing to carry off the original Star Wars trick of
throwing a melange of groups and back-history into the mix so fast
you feel you've walked into a twenty part series of Flash Gordon
during episode eighteen, having totally missed the first seventeen.
Of course, we are now two books into the series, but these are
very stand-alone novels, and only a couple of the characters from
the last book get a direct carry-over.
The human colonized section of the galaxy has suffered a terrible
blow after the Melding Plague has swept through it - an alien disease
which corrupts nano-technology and sends the tech haywire, merging
with human flesh where it can.
Humanity has fallen into a near dark age, with a war being fought
between the two main factions ... the Demarchists; normal
humans, and their enemy, the Conjoiners. The Conjoiners are
a borg-like hive-mind who can link minds and parallel process their
thoughts at a greatly enhanced speed.
The hyper-intelligent Conjoiners have stopped the production of
FTL drives for decades - a real problem, as none of the rest of
humanity understand how to make them. Battles are now being fought
for the last of the interstellar drive vessels trading among the
stars.
The mystery of why the Conjoiners have banned FTL-travel proves
one of the driving plot-lines of the book. Along with the true motives
of a bunch of killer machine life, the Inhibitors, who have just
turned up with the view of making humanity extinct.
The race is on for a stash of lost Conjoiner technology, hell-class
weaponry which nobody alive even understands any more. Imagine the
talking bomb in the movie Dark Star - then give it the personality
of Hannibal Lector - and you have some idea of what a hell-class
puppy can do.
These weapons, as readers of the earlier books will know, are on
the plague ship Nostalgia for Infinity, which is still hanging
around the small colony planet of Resurgam. The only problem is
that as a result of Melding Plague, the vessel is possessed by a
barking-mad suicidal Captain, who has been cruelly warped into the
very substance of the ship.
Redemption Ark is an absolutely cracking page turner. Reynolds
manages to blend the space opera of Iain Banks with a Stephen Baxter-like
enthusiasm for the beauty of advanced physics turned to quantum
weaponry, and combines the whole act with the scale of a Greg Bear
spectacular.
If you are the busy sort who rations your SF reading to, say, only
five books a year, make this one of them for 2002!
Stephen Hunt.
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