Empire of Light

Like a lot of threequels, this read isn’t for those who haven’t already digested the previous installment novels. Not only do many of the background conflicts and events rely on an understanding of those books, but the history between the major characters is found there, too. This is no criticism, however. A lot of series these days try too hard to be a ‘big tent’ for an expanding readership, that early chapters drag with exposition and ‘catch-me-up’ material. If Tolkien felt compelled to do this, he would have needed another hundred pages. I personally prefer when authors treat the reader with enough respect to trust us to remember (or re-read) important previous material- that’s what all the fan Wikis are for, right?

No, show more my peeve with this story is that it starts off extremely promisingly, with a collection of characters and motives that are all appealing, both new and returning, with those in the latter category having undergone substantial personal evolution between novels. They are drawn together and undertake a hero’s journey in the form of an expedition into hostile alien territory, further outside of human space than anyone has ever traveled before. And then, with this spectacular set up, the remainder of the story devolves into a finger-pointing mystery among the characters to uncover the infiltrator in their midst. This would have been welcome in a moderated dosage; a sideplot that allows the greater focus to move on to more wondrous, alien, Space Opera, big concepts. However, the story really spiraled into one betrayal after another, and while this kept the tension and action quite high, I feel like it missed an opportunity to accomplish both of those things more engagingly using external threats. It’s possible I feel this way only because of how stupendous the epilogue was in this regard, and it reminded me of all the things that later half of the story proper missed. While this bodes well for my enjoyment of the 4th installment novel, Marauder, it did cause my attention to drift at moments. show less

This continues the adventures of Dakota Merrick and the Shoal member Trader In Faecal Matter Of Animals which started in Stealing Light and was followed by Nova War. The plot concerns the seeking out of an ancient weapon called the Mos Hadroch and its transportation across the galaxy for use in ending the war against the civilisation known as the Emissaries in which the Shoal have been engaged for centuries.

The name Mos Hadroch has faint echoes of Frank Herbert’s Dune series but Gibson’s is a more straight forward action adventure story with twists, turns and betrayals aplenty, not to mention novae, space battles and murder, though there seemed to be a bit less violence than in the two previous volumes. All this is grist to the show more Space Opera mill which Gibson is grinding. But some of his characterisation runs up against a problem common with SF which deals with humanity in altered states. For example, Nancy Kress’s Beggars In Spain has humans who no longer need to sleep and are said to be more intelligent as a result. However their behaviour and actions are not depicted as being so endowed.

Here, several of Gibson’s characters have machine implants in their heads but beyond being able to communicate with each other (and some spaceships) at distance their behaviour does not seem much different from that of “normal” humans, either in Gibson’s invented world or our own.

Empire of Light rounds off his trilogy nicely but Gibson still leaves the possibility of sequels. show less

This finale is a must-read, if only to cap-off the excellent [b:Nova War|6635349|Nova War|Gary Gibson|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514RmNg15EL._SL75_.jpg|6829759], but unfortunately it was not the strongest of the series. It really needed a major new plot point in the middle third -- some new world or species -- to break up a rather tedious journey that added little interest and distinctly overlapped similar events from the first book. However, the first and final thirds were both pretty good, and Gibson continued to pull in additional ideas and concepts (most drawn from established sci-fi canon, but nicely implemented and integrated). Previous parallels to Dune were cemented with an epilogue wink to Duncan Idaho...but these show more are all good sources, and it was good to seem them told afresh. show less

The third instalment to date and even more frantic and destructive. A great read that drew me in like a deep gravity well, the chapters getting shorter as the action escalated to the end of the book. Will there be more?
I enjoyed this one, twists and turns, superweapons to be used and defeated, enemies within (literally), hard graft to win the day and all well written.

Not as well told as Nova War and it does feel a little as though the author wanted to get to the end and do something else, but it did wrap up story-lines well enough - although I now see there is a fourth novel in the 'sequence'.

An epic finish to the trilogy.

Excellent, will be re-reading the series when I get it as a proper book instead of an ebook