In Absolution Gap, the direct sequel to Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds weaves a shimmering tapestry of ideas, characters, technologies, civilizations, and worlds, resulting in a masterpiece set in the author’s critically acclaimed Revelation Space universe.

Favorite characters such as Nevil Clavain and Ana Khouri return in guises old and new, adventuring and exploring across a clutch of intersecting timelines that cover nearly half a millennium. Enemy alien civilizations, as well as rival factions within humanity, contest the very nature of the galaxy, using weapons and machines of dizzying complexity, all in a tightly plotted, architectural extravaganza of the imagination.

Here are the great lighthugger ships, such as Gnostic Ascension and Nostalgia for Infinity, representing peak human ingenuity as they make way across the void, carrying vast crews of soldiers, scientists, and refugees. They are set against the Inhibitors, one of many galactic civilizations, some long dead, some newly come to human space, in a conflict that can only be described as war. Societies and races such as the Cathedrals and the Shadows, the Scuttlers and the Pattern Jugglers would test the limits of humanity’s greatest intelligences (human or machine) to understand, but Reynolds’ deft and subtle hand makes the incomprehensible comprehensible and endlessly entertaining.