Heaven's Reach
Written by David Brin
Narrated by George Wilson
4/5
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About this audiobook
David Brin
David Brin is an astrophysicist whose international-bestselling novels include Earth, Existence, Startide Rising, and The Postman, which was adapted into a film in 1998. Brin serves on several advisory boards, including NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, and speaks or consults on topics ranging from AI, SETI, privacy, and invention to national security. His nonfiction book about the information age, The Transparent Society, won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Brin’s latest nonfiction work is Polemical Judo. Visit him at www.davidbrin.com.
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Reviews for Heaven's Reach
380 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A satisfying end. Wouldn’t say no to more. Always somehow managed to steer just clear of being sci-fi that feels more like fantasy.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5* 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 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I 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 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. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything, 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 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 now split from the other 4 galaxies. The Streaker returns to Earth and Larl gets sent beyond the known galaxies.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tasty morsel of a novel. Completes the Streaker journey. But we still don't know anything about Herbie and the Progenitors, dammit.