groan

author sacrificed a satisfying ending for sophomoric and pedantic politics. subplots unanswered. infantile story arc

5 people found this helpful

Disappointing trilogy closure

Bone Silence is the 3rd installment in Alastair Reynolds' Revenger series. The sisters are being pursed, while they are trying to solve the mystery of the coins and the periodic occupations. On a frontier world, they come in contact with an alien, the clacker, who is being hunted for unknown reasons, and agree to take him to another world. They stop along the way for a bit of piracy and end up becoming the target of a concerted effort by the powers that be to take them down. They encounter a worthy foe in a young commander who possesses some unique bone skills. The sisters split up with separate ships and each has their own adventure. They finally link up again and learn the mystery of both the coins and the occupations with a few surprises as well.

Reynolds cobbles together a tale of multiple chase scenes, but saves the revelations until the very end. The identity and origin of their mysterious pursuer who can invade a mind through the bones is never satisfactorily addressed as is how the financiers decided that the sisters were the cause of the economic disaster. The battle scenes have a bit of dues ex machina as a 'ghosty' demise proves useful, but seemed rather random. All the sewer meanderings were tiresome. Finally the big reveal at the end was underwhelming. As a concluding tale, this was unsatisfying,

The narration was quite well done with a decent range of characters and solid pacing throughout.

3 people found this helpful

Alastair falls to political pitfall

Unfortunately Alastair falls into a typical Sci Fi pitfall of blaming humanity and justifying wrongs done to us as deserved. Reynolds has long been a favorite Sci Fi author of mine and I was disappointed to see over used socialist tropes steak their way into his book.

2 people found this helpful

Fairness = bad, Generational racial guilt = good

what a stinker of an ending. Hard turn out of nowhere into neo-Bolshevik territory. I'm a bit embarrassed to have recommended this series to people
Corbett's narration was fantastic, at least

1 person found this helpful

unbelievable this book ruined whole series

all the other 1 star reviews are correct. but I felt like I had a book written in the 50s. the characters assume and infer like they are the authority, but the assumptions and inference are so week and unsubstantiated, that I can't believe a whole society would adopt them without question. and why does a space ship not have video to transmit vs waiting for verbal descriptions.

1 person found this helpful

That's It?!? Disappointed...

I was hooked with "Space Pirates". I mean come on... SPACE PIRATES...!!! The world building has been great. Many tantalizing mysteries were there with a dawning realization that their purposes and/or origins would be revealed. Overall the story gets bogged down in its own "politics" as others have mentioned, which for me are the parts where I skip ahead because "how do you behave with ultimate power" is a tired concept. The "politic" description (and disappointment) mentioned by other reviewers is justified... more time spent on that than the narrative warranted. In the far-distance future world of this story, we are expected to accept that all this interesting stuff simply exists. Period. There was much more potential here and I am disappointed we won't have "the mysteries" played out or revealed... the ending seems like a definite "end" to the series so who knows.

I have purchased more of the authors books for reading but I'm concerned if this is any gauge as to how he treats his series' content.




Some possible spoilers ahead...!!!





Unfortunately, the interesting alien tech is all brushed aside with a dismissive "lost to time" mindset that seems like the author lost interest or couldn't muster the creative juices to deliver that satisfying ending. The "politic" description (and disappointment) mentioned by other reviewers is justified... more time spent on that than the narrative warranted. In the far-distance future world of this story, we are expected to accept that all this interesting stuff simply exists. Period.

And the greatest disappointment was the "humans caused all this and deserve the squalor they now exist within" message that was delivered at the very end. Heck, humans are even responsible for the bad condition of the sentient robots. This is perhaps the worst part of it since it was presented in such a way as to imply there was much more to that story arc.

No development of the characters beyond what we already know. The sisters are essentially "all forgiven" at the end regardless of the "piratey" behavior they embraced. I guess they only killed bad people so it is OK they are simply roaming free now. No consequences results in "no investment" mentally or emotionally which itself results in "doesn't matter any more". The characters are essentially static fabrications at this point and that is disappointing.

Further lack of character development is the "bad guy" in the story that we only know is a "match" for the sisters' bone skills. The title implies that bones would play a larger part but nope... at the end the "bad guy" is just a sniveling "mustache twirling" twit that we really don't care about either. All his motivations are externally attributed to him and are dismissed with the wave of a hand. He ultimately proves to only be necessary to drive the chase scenes. AND... we still don't really understand "the bones" other than some vague references that they have "powers" that we cannot understand (so why explain them).

Also agree with other reviewers regarding the ghostly resolution to the chase... felt like an "easy out" since the author appears to have changed his mind on the direction he wanted to go, and appears to have adopted the "screw it let's just wrap it up here" mindset... I wondered why we even bothered with the long chase if that ended up being the end of it... why bother? It really did seem like the author changed his mind halfway through and yet didn't want to discard the content he'd already written.

Who built the baubles? We will never know.

What/who orchestrates the Occupations? Who knows... "aliens"... that's all we are given.

So much wasted opportunity.

1 person found this helpful

Not Reynolds' Best Work

This is an entertaining if paper-thin yarn about electropunk Victorian space pirates that soils itself inside out at the end. Really expected more from Reynolds especially considering the first two books in the series were pretty good. I am glad to see that whoever recorded these books (presumably the studio intern) finally figured out how to work the master limiter (maybe next time he'll figure out the equalizer) and that the narrator made the bold decision not to voice any characters with disgusting slurping noises this time.

Should have stopped at Revenger

This book just dragged. I kept waiting for it to pick up but it never did. I really enjoyed Revenger. There were some interesting ideas here but the story never came to fruition. Just lots of exposition that built up to a Big disappointing end.

Satisfying overall with some reservations

The plot had some inexplicable holes and odd twists and turns that weren’t terribly persuasive but the author gets it back together by the ending, which I liked.

I wanted to like it...

but, the author summed it up best at the ending monolog, "this trip took us nowhere". Also, the choice of old world British dockworkers accents for this didn't help in any way. I like this author and would continue to try his other books but this one was unbearable.