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    Poseidon's Wake
    Poseidon's Wake
    Poseidon's Wake
    Audiobook27 hours

    Poseidon's Wake

    Written by Alastair Reynolds

    Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "Few SF writers merge rousing adventure with advanced futuristic technology as skillfully as Alastair Reynolds" (Toronto Star), the award-winning author of On the Steel Breeze. In the conclusion of his Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars-and a last opportunity to redeem their name... Send Ndege. The cryptic message originated seventy light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier? Ndege's daughter Goma, a biologist, joins the crew of the Travertine dispatched to Gliese 163 to uncover the source behind the enigmatic message. Goma's odyssey will take her not only into the farthest reaches of space, but centuries into her family's past where the answers to the universe's greatest mysteries await...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 2, 2016
    ISBN9781470380373
    Poseidon's Wake
    Author

    Alastair Reynolds

    Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St. Andrews Universities and has a PhD in astronomy. He stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer. Reynolds is a bestselling author and has been awarded the British Science Fiction award, along with being shortlisted for the Hugo Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award.

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    Reviews for Poseidon's Wake

    3.5/5

    109 ratings6 reviews

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    • 1/5
      should have been a duology.
    • 3/5
      After decades of reading science fiction, I discovered Alastair Reynolds about three years ago and, given the scope of his work, am astonished that I had not previously encountered him. Poseidon’s Wake is the final book of a trilogy set in the not distant future. The action in this installment takes place a generation after the second book. In previous installments, an alien artifact was discovered many light years away, and a human “starship” was launched to colonize the planet of Crucible. Conflicts with artificial intelligence develops on both Crucible and Mars. In Poseidon’s Wake, humans advance even further into space to investigate a signal from a previously launched mission. This is excellent science fiction, as you can always expect from Reynolds, however, at 1,800 pages, it is at least 300 pages too long. The amount of “bloat” and padding is what I would expect of someone trying to extend a 250 page novel to 300 pages. In one sequence, a primary character spends roughly 5 pages apologizing to another. What could have been accomplished in half a page runs interminably for five pages. Later, a similar situation develops with identical results; page after page of apology. It’s almost as if Reynolds has a fetish for apologia. Alastair Reynolds is amazingly prolific, and his grasp of “hard” science fiction is as good as it gets. His imagination for advances in physics and cultural changes are amazing. However, I have come to the conclusion that his huge body of work is accomplished at the expense of polish. Reynolds’s activity consists of, write, write, write, PUBLISH. Write, write, write, PUBLISH. What is missing is polish and editing. This, along with many other of his works would be far better were it 100 pages shorter. It is simply bloated, turning a 4½ star effort into 3 stars.Oh, and elephants in space is just stupid.
    • 2/5
      If there’s one thing that really annoys me, it’s when publishers completely redesign the covers of a trilogy for the last book. As Gollancz did for the Poseidon’s Children trilogy. Now the design for Poseidon’s Wake is a very attractive design, but it’s not the same as the two earlier books, Blue Remembered Earth and On the Steel Breeze. Argh. And after all that… Poseidon’s Wake proved a disappointing end to what had promised to be a good sf trilogy. The story picks up several decades after the events of On the Steel Breeze. the holoship Zanzibar is now just a belt of rocks orbiting Crucible, the settled planet orbiting 61 Virginis (I think). And then the world receives a message from Gliese 163, a star system some seventy light-years distant, which reads only “Send Ndege”, Ndege being the woman who was responsible for turning the Zanzibar into rubble by playing around with the Mandala and accidentally triggering it. So Crucible sends a mission to Gliese 163, which includes not Ndege but her daughter, Goma, and several others. En route, Goma’s uncle, Mposi, the head of the mission, is murdered, and the evidence points to a Second Chancer (ie, religious extremist) in the team. The ship arrives at Gliese 163 and discovers… that the three taken by the Watchkeepers are still alive – well, two of them are, Eunice Akinya and the uplifted elephant, or Tantor, Dakota – and Eunice was the source of the message. Because she’s fallen out with Dakota. Who now rules a colony of thousands of Tantors in Zanzibar, which was not apparently destroyed but sent on a near-lightspeed journey to Gliese 163. Oh, and there’s a waterworld superearth whose oceans is dotted with thousands of two-hundred-kilometre-diameter metal hoops, whose apexes are almost out of the atmosphere – and the world is protected by a belt of hundreds of artificial moons in complex orbits. This was all built by the Mandala-builders, and is perhaps a clue to their history and technology… so obviously everyone is keen to go and have a look at it. Including the Watchkeepers. But the moons will only let organic intelligences through… I remember enjoying Blue Remembered Earth and On the Steel Breeze (read in 2012 and 2014, respectively), but this was all a bit meh. The characters were mostly unlikeable, and it was hard to figure out if they were meant to be likeable. One character is set up as a possible murderer, but he’s paper-thin and not at all convincing. Even Dakota, the uplifted elephant – and since uplifted even further by the Watchkeepers – doesn’t really come across as an alien intelligence. The prose is sketchy, with very little description (except of planets and stars and suchlike), which I didn’t like. And the book’s big takeaway is that apparently the universe doesn’t offer meaning, life has no meaning – and I’m sorry and everything, but I pretty much figured that out when I was about eight years old. There’s an interesting discussion about intelligence without consciousness, made in reference to the Watchkeepers, who apparently are no longer conscious. Because a feed-forward intelligence is not conscious, and a feedback intelligence, given enough resources, can simulate a feed-forward intelligence… except if A is superior to B, why use more resources to simulate B than A requires? It is, in somewhat apposite words, completely illogical. I didn’t take to Poseidon’s Wake, but no doubt others will.
    • 4/5
      Started out well, but became a bit disjointed towards the end as Reynolds obviously realised it was already too long, but hadn't yet tied all the threads up. Personally I'd have created a fourth book rather than rushing everything into the end of this one. Really would have benefited from a recent re-read of the preceding two novels as the complexities of the Aikima family history are not re-explained, or easily recalled.We are now a few generations down the tree from the original exploits of Eunice and her grandchildren. Their great-grandchildren ( I think) are livign with the intelligent elephants on the world of Crucible, still marked by the alien Mandela. A clear text, light constant message arrives ' bring Negele' - who is their elderly mother, in no fit state for the rigours of spacetravel and sleepover. The message has come from an otherwise insignificant star some 70 light-years away. That it's in Swahili, suggests a human aware sender, but littel otehr details can be gathered. Surprisingly few political machinations take place and an an expedition is launched, no generational ship, merely 50 odd crew in sleep caskets. Meanwhile one of the older relatives in another branch is Kanu, currently ambassador for the Evolvarium machine intelligences on Mars. However there remain groups of humans who object to the current treaty and wish to free/conquer their former colony. Kanu gets caught up in such an incident, which ultimately leads him to becoming aware of the message to Crucible, and another actor in the drama that unfolds at the destination.While the science remains at Reynolds' ever impeccable levels, sadly the story telling falls slightly sub-par on this one. The strands don't weave effortlessly together, but are pulled vigorously into a specific shape, and the reader feels it. Choppy sequence changes from Goma to kanu and back, contrived circumstances, ridiculously complicit timing events, and then characters and themes abandoned once they'd served a minor point. A fairly prolonged philosophical info-dump formed the 'conclusion', of the plot events. I'm really not sure that an SF novel was the place for this, whilst to a degree commentary on social themes should be present, this was hardly subtle. Alien maths proves there is no god, but you don't have to suffer the nihilism of despair, for a single act of human kindness refutes this. And having all of characters then completely change their personalities wasn't very convincing. An extended epilogue didn't really help, even if it did rush together the remaining strands. The trilogy is nominally closed at this point, but the future of the Risen leaves space for more novels in the universe, and I suspect there is a lot more ground to be covered.
    • 3/5
      A solid close for a neat space opera...
    • 2/5
      Get to the point, Alastair. You're dragging this series on too long now.