Space Opera Fans discussion
This topic is about
Edges
BOTM READER
>
Oct 2021 READER Edges by Nagata
date
newest »
newest »
I just liked and very much enjoyed this book.
I liked this fine but I discovered midway through that it belongs to a larger universe. This book is the first in a trilogy but I think 5th or 6th in the Nanotech Succession/Deception Well related novels. This is self-contained as far as I could tell, but I haven’t read the other books to know what I’m missing.The aspect I really liked was the fact that there are no warp drives or jump gates, it’s the old school “travel between stars takes centuries” stuff, which fundamentally changes how one views the universe and one’s own life.
Just to note how much I enjoyed Edges. I really got into it. The concept of “ghosts” seemed a little far out for me but was used to great effect. I thought the Chemzene would be a rehash of the Inhibitors in Reynolds Revelation Space books, but this moved in a different direction and was an interesting take on the idea. What Urban , Clementine er al would find in their expedition and the obstacles they encountered was compelling enough to keep me going. My only complaint is that I prefer that a book, even if part of a series, have a little more resolution ie be a bit more self-contained. Here you really need to read the next installment to find out what happens. I did like this enough to go on to the next book “Silver” however which I am enjoying as well.
It’s Clemantine and Chenzeme.
Have you read the other Deception Well books?
I just finished Silver the sequel - definitely worth reading but I didn’t like it quite as much as Edges. It seemed to bog down a little and seemed almost borderline fantasy. I preferred the more “space-based” Edges which had a little more suspense around what the travelers would find - eg were there any other humans left?
Official description:
From the Edge of Apocalypse:
Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.
No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.
With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.
Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.