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Absolution Gap cover art

Absolution Gap

By: Alastair Reynolds
Narrated by: John Lee
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Summary

The Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life-form reaching a certain level of intelligence - and they've targeted humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate.

But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety - or draw down its darkest enemy. And as she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse.

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor

What listeners say about Absolution Gap

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Great start awful endings

I have listened to this entire series, and whilst the worlds and characters are well visualised, The author spends a vast amount of time describing walking and sludge yet skips over intense and pivotal battles and key plot climaxes. So despite a promising start it lacks an ending or closure. You are much better off with Peter Hamilton if your tastes run to space operas

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Reasonable story ruined by accent changes

For some reason John Lee decided to totally change certain voices (Clavain in particular) for this book. It totally ruins the listening experience as you feel like they are different characters. To make matters worse he's given Clavain an American accent and he isn't very good at it; sometimes it's a southern drawl sometimes is a different American accent and sometimes it's English. He's also changed Scorpios voice, but less dramatically.
It's a shame because the series as a whole was good; this amateur decision is seriously irritating. Once you've given a characters a voice then stick with it...

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Too much left to the imagination

All three books do a great job at starting plot lines and describing minute details of the world, but in the end they all fizzle out. The reader is left to extrapolate the story from the established trajectory for themselves far too many times.



John Lee's narration is, however, somewhat improved over the previous 2 books.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Ends with a whimper instead of a bang

After listening to the previous two volume I decided to persevere in the hope that the authors grand vision would finally be attained, unfortunately my faith was misplaced.

Very much weaker than the first two volumes the plot makes little sense, the final confrontation is almost pathetic in its non-event.

The trivia and obsessive detail drives you mad long before it ends, many questions are left unanswered and the few that are are answered weren't worth the wait.

Highly disappointing, unfortunately I really can't recommend this book to anyone, it promises much but fails to deliver on almost all levels.

It genuinely feels like the author ran out of ideas and had no plan on how his story was to finish, very unsatisfying.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • JS
  • 07-09-20

Curious Accent

Fascinating!
But why did the narrator suddenly decide to affect a new accent for Clavain, this time?

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Boring, then ok, then really boring.

World building is so good, boring characters, no action. Shame, really is. The last book had everyone salivating over a mega confrontation between world breaking machines and the heroes with super weapons.

Half the heroes vanish outside the plot and wage this war, except, yes I'm serious, the ships and weapons and signals and radar and everything else is conducted in some phased higher dimension you can't see anything of.

That's right, the last two books worth of build up gets played out over the course of this book, except its all invisible and you see and hear nothing at all of it except here and there as very boring status updates. Let down would be understatement of the year.

Well what do you get then?

You get the boring part from Judas unchained where Oz is stuck on the icey ways with the elves.

If you've read the previous two books toss a coin on listening to this one, it's a double edged sword, normally you'd say "only for fans" but I fear the larger a fan you were of the prior books the more you'll be unfulfilled by this one.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Waste of time

The epic space battle I was looking forward to, after persevering with the earlier books, didn't arrive until the epilogue, and then it was just a couple of sentences!!! I was so disappointed.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Slightly disappointing conclusion to an epic story

There is too much time jumping and it gets confusing unlike the previous novels. end of this story is kind of under wealming compared to the great first novel.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Story is nice but...

There are many good starts in the story but they dont have a worthy ending.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Remarkable finale

Some of the most memorable scenes in Reynolds' universe, AG is grandiose and macabre and dizzying. A worthy finalé.

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1 person found this helpful