The Second Sleep, Robert Harris

Sent by his Bishop to officiate the funeral of a fellow cleric, Christopher Fairfax discovers a brewing heresy in the impoverished rural backwaters of southwest England. But, contrary to its seeming Dark Ages setting, this heresy involves the mysterious collapse of the unbelieving technological society that came before. His own interest piqued by the heresy, Fairfax quickly finds himself ensnared in an attempt to uncover forbidden knowledge from the past.

A surprising disappointment this one. Surprising because Harris has a knack of taking a high concept idea, and writing an efficient thriller around it. He's probably most famous for Fatherland, his alternative history novel in which a Nazi detective in a victorious Third Reich discovers the suppressed Holocaust. But I also rather liked his AI-infused The Fear Index, in which a hedge fund manager is out-foxed by the awakening of his algorithm.

Here, what seems like a solid gold starting point (especially now, given the pandemic) unravels as Harris fails to approach anything like a satisfying ending. Instead, the novel peters out in a rather incoherent climax that, it seemed to me, he tries to hide under the guise of Fairfax's incomprehension. The concluding revelations also fail to offer anything immediately relevant to Fairfax's world - contrary to the front cover blurb, "what if your future lies in the past?".

Overall, best just read A Canticle For Leibowitz and see how this high concept can be done properly.

Bone Silence, Alastair Reynolds

This is the third and, for now, concluding novel in Reynolds' spaceships and pirates mash-up series. What seemed (to me) an incongruous and implausible basis for even a single book has now successfully skirted the treacherous shoals for a complete trilogy.

It picks up directly from its predecessor, which concluded with the series' leads, the Ness Sisters, unwittingly triggering a financial disaster that reset the values of the solar system's mysterious currency, quoins. Now even more on the run, and with still larger prices on their heads, their voyage intersects with that of a fugative alien who promises answers in exchange for safe passage. All of which triggers a swashbuckling chain of adventures that ultimately reveals much more about the solar system and its history than the Ness Sisters had bargained on.

A very enjoyable and satisfying "end" to the series. It does tend to accelerate the revelations towards the end, probably not giving them their due, but it's nice to have some mysteries resolved. However, given the novel resolves one suite of mysteries with a "solution" that suggests many new ones (in addition to those, like the Ghosties and Skulls, that still remain), I doubt this is really the last we've seen of Adrana and Arafura. Good!

Recommended, even if you find the pirates-in-space premise absurd.

The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson

There is a multiverse. The histories of several hundred universes are close enough to our own to permit travel between them. But jumping to a world in which you exist is invariably fatal - the multiverse is unforgiving in this regard. As a result, the most valuable travellers are those already dead in other worlds. Something that's all too easy for the poor and dispossessed in our ruined post-apocalyptic world.

What an excellent debut novel! Every part of it works brilliantly - from its well-drawn (and frequently-duplicated) characters, through the slow-reveal of its setting, to the unfolding of its satisfyingly twisty plot. The author takes what's now become a familiar trope - the parallel world - and spins off their own fresh version, complete with duplicate-prohibition, a travellers mythology of how Mother Nature enforces it, and a zeitgeisty meditation on a class- and race-stratified society.

Early on, I had a feeling of overfamiliarity with its post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but it didn't take long to reveal itself as something more unique, and cleverly so to boot. In particular, its use of duplicated characters - some very familiar between worlds, some very different - is excellent. Both in illuminating the vicissitudes of life's paths, and making for a wonderfully finely-tuned plot as the narrator, Cara, leverages her growing knowledge of the multiverse to topple the tyrant that rules the one she has come to call home.

For sci-fi, it's worth remarking that the writing is well above and beyond too. It's sparing but hits the sweet spot of world building while avoiding "Basil Exposition". Ditto, its characters are far more subtly drawn than the genre typically manages, which works particularly in a plot that requires its actors multiple shades.

Overall, simply excellent. (And a novel that practically screams "make me into a film".)