# The Uplift Saga by David Brin



## Werthead

*Book 1: Sundiver*



> Two billion years ago, the Progenitors commenced the process of  'uplift': genetically engineering the more intelligent animals of many  scores of worlds to sentience and intelligence. They in turn uplifted  other races, and then others, in an unbroken chain that would eventually  span aeons and no less than five galaxies. Each 'Patron' race would  receive 100,000 years of indentured servitude from their client races  before the clients would be allowed to uplift species of their own and  become Patrons themselves. The Progenitors are long gone, as are many of  the races they sired, but the process of uplift goes on. When a race is  discovered in a tiny corner of one galaxy which has no Patrons and  claims to have evolved naturally without outside intervention, it sends  shockwaves through galactic society.
> 
> The  Solar system, 2246. Humanity has narrowly avoided being given to  another Patron race to 'complete' their 'long-abandoned' uplifting. At  the time they were discovered, humanity had already uplifted chimpanzees  and dolphins to sentience, and were able to claim Patron status for  themselves, to the fury of many, far older races. When a scientific  mission is launched from Mercury to investigate lifeforms discovered  living in the Sun's upper layers, several other alien races are furious  with humanity's temerity: the Galactic Library states that life cannot  exist in the atmosphere of stars, so their claims are clearly lies  intended to bolster their own status. Jacob Demwa, an expert in uplift,  is called in to help clarify the situation, but he finds several human  and alien factions battling to control the information about the  discovery for their own ends, and some of them may be willing to kill to  achieve their ends.
> 
> _Sundiver_ (originally published in 1980) is the first novel in David Brin's acclaimed *Uplift Saga*,  a space opera series running to six novels. The series has won two  Hugos, two Locus awards and a Nebula for Best Novel, and is highly  regarded in the SF canon. However, most of these plaudits are aimed at  later books in the series (particularly the second and third volumes, _Startide Rising _and _The Uplift War_). _Sundiver_ itself tends to get a little overlooked in the mix.
> 
> _Sundiver_  is a totally stand-alone SF novel. It's set about 240 years before the  other books and features no ongoing storylines or characters. Readers  are in fact often encouraged to start with the superb second volume and  disregard this one (there are also a few minor continuity issues between  _Sundiver_ and the other books), which is a bit of a shame. Though _Sundiver_ is the weakest book in the series and the most forgettable, it's still a reasonably entertaining SF mystery novel.
> 
> Our  primary POV in the novel is the conflicted character of Jacob. Jacob is  suffering severe PTSD after saving one of Earth's space elevators from  destruction through various feats of derring-do, which has led to  various mental problems that he has to deal with through conditioning.  This makes for a highly unreliable narrator, who often pauses to wonder  if his own psyche is undermining his efforts to solve the mystery. This  introduces an element of uncertainty into the story which is effective  at being unsettling and forcing the reader to re-examine everything  that's going on. On the other hand, Brin isn't as good at doing this  kind of thing as Gene Wolfe or Christopher Priest and eventually it  turns out that the amount of misdirection going on is rather slight  compared to the potential. Still, it's a nice idea.
> 
> The mystery  itself is at the centre of the book: what is going on with these  newly-discovered lifeforms floating above the Sun? There are your usual  assortment of false leads, red herrings, enemies turning out to be good  guys and vice versa, but the reader is not given sufficient information  to solve the mystery by themselves (always a slight problem with a  mystery-based narrative). The mystery is solved through the application  of scientific principles, which is quite enjoyable, but the way Jacob  gathers everyone around to reveal the secrets in a scene straight out of  *Columbo *is a little bit cheesy.  Luckily, the characters other than Jacob are a colourful and  interesting bunch (though the annoying journalist with the outrageous  French accent borders on caricature), and Brin is already doing his  signature trick of giving us really bizarre and 'different' aliens but  also making them relatable as individual characters, something that will  come out much more strongly in the later books.
> 
> _Sundiver_  (***½) is a reasonably solid SF mystery novel, though the solution is a  little bit too neat and the story's full potential is not realised. The  book's biggest problem is that its sequels are so vastly superior they  tend to outshine it, which I suppose isn't the worst problem in the  world to have. The book is available now in the UK and USA.


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## Werthead

*Book  2: Startide Rising*



> The abandoned and fallow ocean world of Kithrup, AD 2489. The predominantly dolphin-crewed starship _Streaker_  has sought refuge deep underwater whilst pursuing armadas belonging to  dozens of major Galactic races clash in the skies overhead, each  fighting for the right to capture _Streaker_ and the secrets she possesses. _Streaker_  has found a fleet of abandoned starships in a globular cluster that  date back to the time of the fabled Progenitors, and there are races  willing to commit murder and genocide to learn more about the birth of  intergalactic civilisation. The crew of the _Streaker_  will have to call upon all their resources and cleverness if they are  to escape from Kithrup, but the crew itself is divided over the course  of action to take, and the planet itself harbours dark secrets of its  own.
> 
> _Startide Rising_  was first published in 1983 and is one of the rare SF novels to 'win  the double', securing both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel, a  feat also achieved by _Dune_, _Neuromancer_, _Doomsday Book_, _Rendezvous with Rama_ and _Ender's Game_.  It's one of the best space opera novels published in the last thirty  years and is probably the most advisable starting point for reading  Brin's *Uplift Saga* (the first book, _Sundiver_,  is the weakest in the series and has little to nothing to do with the  other five books, though still a reasonably entertaining novel on its  own merits).
> 
> The book is notable for being a space opera where  most of the action takes place deep underwater, and where humans are in  the minority as characters. Most of the cast are neo-dolphins,  'uplifted' from animals into sentient beings. They are mostly at home in  the water, but have cybernetic walkers to allow them to interact with  humans on dry land. Because dolphins are a new addition to the ranks of  uplifted races they are also a tad of the flaky side, and several  subplots in the books follow the problems caused when some of the  dolphins' conditioning fails in the face of stress and they revert into  mindless animals (especially dangerous for the ones that have elements  of more hostile aquatic species spliced into their genetic code). Brin  puts a lot of work into the dolphin society, organisation and language  (the dolphins have a haiku-like way of speaking which bridges their  primal language of squeaks, clicks and sonar and the human language,  Anglic) and it's extremely convincing. The premise - talking space  dolphins! - could veer into silliness very easily, but Brin overcomes  this by simply taking the subject seriously, though injecting a  lightness of tone into proceedings to reflect the playful nature of the  species.
> 
> The  character-building is strong. The neo-dolphin captain, Creideiki, is  developed as a philosophical warrior who has developed a personal code  of combining the best traits of his pre-sentient ancestors with things  they have learned from humanity, rather than valuing one above the other  as some of his other crewmembers do. Similarly, many of the other  dolphins are painted distinctly with their own personalities, goals and  motivations, some of them in conflict with one another. The other  crewmembers of _Streaker_ - seven  humans and a neo-chimp - also come across well, though they fall into  broader archetypes than the dolphins: the befuddled professor, the  morally ambiguous and ambitious scientist, the hotheaded young kid who  discovers responsibility and maturity and so on. Still entertaining, but  it is interesting that the human characters come across as slightly  broader than the dolphin ones. I was also surprised that some characters  who play major roles in later books barely even appear in this one.
> 
> The  book is broken up by interludes focusing on the various alien races  battling for control of the planet: the humourless but honourable  Thennanin, the avian Gubru, the rapacious Tandu, the cruel Soro, the  weird Jophur (a race of hostile stacked donuts!) and so on. Brin doesn't  have much time to do more than characterise these races in the quickest  of strokes and they lack real depth, something I suspect Brin realised  as subsequent books flesh out various of these races in more detail (the  Gubru and Thennanin in _The Uplift War_, the Jophur in _Infinity's Shore _and so on). However, they are in the book primarily to provide an impetus for the _Streaker_  to get away, and the regular switches away to their POVs keep us  updated on the course of the battle and how much time the Earthlings  have before one of the alien races triumphs and is able to pursue the _Streaker_.  It's an effective way of building tension, especially as the novel  moves into is climactic stages and the author puts his foot down in the  run-up to the finale.
> 
> Essentially, _Startide Rising_  is a big, brash, colourful and fun space opera. He addresses some  interesting and real scientific issues and concerns (the need for the  Galactics to be ecologically aware to avoid 'burning out' their galaxies  of habitable planets in just a few tens of millennia is touched on,  though lightly enough not to get preachy), but his main objective is to  entertain, and he does that in spades. The structure of the series means  that a number of storylines are left hanging at the end of _Startide Rising_  which aren't revisited until the fifth book, which isn't a problem now  but was a bit more unusual at the time (especially as the fifth book  wasn't published until fifteen years after the second), but these  hanging elements are more, "What adventures will they have next?" rather  than cliffhangers. The book does a good job of standing alone, whilst  the subsequent book, _The Uplift War_, shows the fall-out of events in this novel on Earth and her colonies, but also works more or less as a stand-alone.
> 
> _Startide Rising_  (****½) is a tremendously readable, entertaining and smart novel that  takes a wild premise and runs with it. The novel is available now in the  USA, though is currently not in print in the UK (Amazon has some second-hand copies).


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## Werthead

*Book  3: The Uplift War*



> Far across the Galaxy, a dolphin-crewed starship has made a  discovery of startling significance. Senior Galactic clans have  dispatched fleets to find that ship, but have also decided to hold Earth  and her colony worlds hostage for the data being handed over. To this  end, Earth and her Tymbrimi allies have been forced to pull back most of  their military to defend their homeworlds, leaving outlying colonies  vulnerable.
> 
> Garth is one such world, a verdant planet nearly wrecked in an  ecological holocaust millennia earlier. Humans and their neo-chimpanzee  clients have worked hard to restore the planet to a livable state, but  now find their world under occupation by the hostile, avian Gubru. With  most of the human populace imprisoned, it falls to a band of chimps, a  single free human and the Tymbrimi ambassador and his daughter to resist  the occupiers...and try to keep a secret that Garth has held for years.
> 
> The Uplift War is the third novel in David Brin's Uplift Saga,  originally published in 1987, and takes place concurrently and just  after the events of Startide Rising, but many thousands of light-years  away. Whilst the events of Startide Rising set in motion The Uplift War,  knowledge of that novel is not required to really enjoy The Uplift War,  which stands alone. The novel won the Hugo and Locus awards for Best  Novel in 1988.
> 
> The Uplift War is a fine SF novel which is notably different in tone to  Startide Rising; in the intervening four years Brin had penned three  non-Uplift novels and had become a better, more experienced writer. The  Uplift War is slightly darker and much less frantic than its forerunner,  with a somewhat less frivolous tone. The cast of characters is smaller,  with a much greater focus on the motivations and ambitions of each  individual character. Startide Rising was good at this, but the larger  cast meant that there was a fair bit of 'off-screen characterisation'  (i.e. we are told about great a character is but only get glimpses of it  ourselves due to limited page space). Here much more is on the page,  and more effective for it. Brin seems to have realised that his alien  races in the previous novel were very broadly sketched, so here we get  much more information and depth to the Tybrimi, Gubru and Thennanin, as  well as the neo-chimpanzees whose culture and social structure are as  well-realised as that of the dolphins in the previous novel.
> 
> The book is essentially a war story where the military conflict is  undertaken under extremely limiting rules of war (though the ruthless  Gubru show some ingenuity in getting around these restrictions),  resulting in occasionally humorous comedy-of-manners moments as the  chimps (who, as a junior client species, have to show respect for senior  Patron races, even enemy ones, at all times) bow and use formal  greetings and dialogue against the Gubru whilst simultaneously trying to  blow them them with prejudice. These lighter moments are set in  contrast to the more ruthless methods imposed by the invaders at other  points.
> 
> This is a long novel - over 600 pages in paperback - but moves quite  quickly. Brin's prose is easy to read and quite page-turning, but bogs  down a little whenever the Tymbrimi characters appear, as they express  emotions through a series of psi-glyphs which appear above their heads.  Rather than explaining what these glyphs mean in the text, Brin instead  merely mentions their name and expects the reader to refer to the  glyph-glossary at the front of the book, the sort of narrative 'cheat'  more commonly encountered in epic fantasy. This interrupts the narrative  flow, but fortunately becomes less common in the second half of the  book.
> 
> Brin develops an ecological theme throughout the novel. The Uplift  universe is based on the idea that if races were allowed to exploit each  planet they colonised however they liked, then all of the Five Galaxies  would be 'burned out' in a few tens of millennia (an eyeblink for a  civilisation between two and three billion years of age). Even the most  fanatically conservative Galactic clans are aware of this danger, so  ecological maintenance and repair is a primary responsibility of all  races. This also handily explains the virtual non-existence of  biosphere-wrecking weapons, such as nukes and antimatter, from the  Uplift universe...at least whilst the rules of war are being respected.  Brin doesn't use this as an excuse to lecture - although the importing  of one of Earth's endangered species to Garth to help in the ecological  recovery skirts close to it - but instead as a way of intelligently  developing the plot and bringing about a logical conclusion to the  crisis. I suspect at the time (this book came out just before the movie  Gorillas in the Mist) the ecological angle may have come across as a bit  more strident.
> 
> The Uplift War (****½) is well-written, with memorable characters  (flamboyant neo-chimp Filben could helm his own spin-off series) and  some great ideas. There are moments of cliche and perhaps a slight  feeling that everything falls out a little too neatly to allow for a  happy ending (contrasted to the messy ending to Startide Rising, with  multiple characters killed or abandoned in hostile territory), which  dents the book a little, but overall this is a fine, colourful and  entertaining space opera. The novel is available now in the USA and,  second-hand, in the UK.


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## WizardofOwls

I love these books! Awesome series!


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## Werthead

*Book 4: Brightness Reef*



> The planet Jijo is home to representatives from six different  races, each hiding from the Civilisation of the Five Galaxies for their  own reasons. Most of their high technology has been abandoned, lest it  lead pursuers to them, but at great cost peaceful coexistence between  the six races has been achieved. At the time of the Gathering  representatives from these races meet to discuss the future...but this  Gathering is interrupted by the arrival of a starship. Fearing the  worst, the people of Jijo are faced with disturbing revelations from the  outside universe and discover that their little backwater world is  about to become very important indeed.
> 
> Brightness Reef is the fourth novel in David Brin's Uplift Saga and the  first in a closely-linked trilogy. Whilst the first three books were set  in the same universe and shared some references, they were mostly  stand-alone novels. This trilogy is a continuous storyline spanning  three novels, and indeed serves as a sequel to the events of both  Startide Rising and The Uplift War, though this does not become more  apparent until the fifth and sixth books.
> 
> Brightness Reef was published nine years after The Uplift War and it's  clear that Brin has become a stronger writer in the interim. His prose  is smoother and more varied in this novel than the preceding books in  the series. Brin abandons the straightforward POV structure of the first  three books in favour of a more varied approach, mixing third-person  limited narration with the first person accounts of the traeki Asx  (which, given that traeki are actually gestalt entities consisting of  several semi-autonomous lifeforms, is not as straightforward as it  sounds) and the memoirs of the hoon Alvin as he and his friends attempt  to build a bathysphere to explore an off-shore underwater trench.
> 
> Of the other main characters, we have an amnesiac who has lost the power  of speech and understanding language through severe head trauma, but  can still communicate via music; a girl from a primitive tribe  interacting with both the more advanced races of the Slope and then the  visiting aliens; and a number of other Jijoan characters representing a  number of different ideological viewpoints as they argue over the way  forward for their unique culture. Brin's characterisation has always  been strong, but here, given the much larger cast size, he is forced to  be more concise, building up characters, plots and events quite quickly  (though never rushed) in comparison. He pulls this off, and it's  interesting that although the events of this novel are restricted to one  small geographical area on one planet with no scenes set in space at  all, the large cast and shifting viewpoints give the novel a more epic  feeling than even the space battle-heavy Startide Rising. In fact, given  the low technology nature of the setting, Brightness Reef is probably  the closest Brin has come to writing a fantasy novel, and based on this  novel it's a setting that Brin would do very well in.
> 
> As well as individual characterisation, Brin has to create six (eight,  counting the more animal-like glavers and noors) distinct species, along  with their biology and culture, and show how they interact with one  another. Brin excels at this kind of 'worldbuilding', making each race  distinct and interesting. This is enhanced by giving us POV characters  from several of these other races to further bring them to life.
> 
> The pace of the novel is brisk, but the large cast means that Brin gets a  little bogged down in touching base with all of the POV characters on a  regular basis (probably the cause of the novel expanding from one book  to three, although it has to be said I doubt he'd have fitted the whole  trilogy into one novel, particularly in the last book where events take  on a truly cosmic scale), and the importance and relevance of all the  characters is still unclear at this point. There's also a question on  exactly how Brightness Reef fits in with the events of the preceding two  novels, though this is made abundantly clear in the last few chapters  as events build to a climax and the reader realises how Brin is bringing  together storylines he had been working on for fifteen years by this  point in a rather impressive manner.
> 
> Brightness Reef ( **** ) features superior worldbuilding, an epic scope  and a readable, varied prose style, but suffers in comparison to its two  forebears due to some bloat and a number of cliffhanger endings.  Nevertheless, it is a rich and enjoyable SF novel that leads directly  into its sequel, Infinity's Shore. The novel is available now in the USA  and, second-hand, in the UK.


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## Werthead

*Book 5: Infinity's Shore*



> Peace has endured on the world of Jijo, where six races shelter from the wider civilisation of the Five Galaxies, for decades. That peace has now been shattered by the arrival of a starship of the Jophur, a powerful Galactic race, searching for the fugitive Terran exploration vessel Streaker and the billion-year-old secrets it contains. As members of the six races struggle to survive under the brutal Jophur occupation, the crew of the beleaguered Streaker realise they must draw the Jophur away from Jijo and its innocent population, even if the cost is their own destruction...
> 
> Infinity's Shore, the fifth and penultimate book in David Brin's Uplift Saga, picks up moments after the end of Brightness Reef, with the arrival of a Jophur warship spelling disaster for the refugee nations of the Slope. The opening of the novel successfully gets across the scale of this chaos, with the Jophur brutally 'altering' the traeki ambassador Asx with the imposition of a master ring (traeki are gestalt entities consisting of independently intelligent rings which combine to form a sentient being; Jophur have a 'master ring' which dominates and controls the others), slaughtering some of the inhabitants ruthlessly and then engaging in clandestine negotiations with criminal elements to try and splinter the six races from one another. We briefly met the Jophur in Startide Rising, but Infinity's Shore delves much more deeply into their characters and we discover how unpleasant they can really be. This is emphasised by an interesting narrative device, where the first-person musings of Asx in the previous novel continue, but now under the aegis of 'Ewasx', the same being now perverted into a full Jophur. This gives us a somewhat schizophrenic POV character who is desperately trying to keep his other intelligences under control through the application of pain, which is an original, if dark, idea. Brin's writing skills here are first rate, as Asx continues to be a character in his own right, and the reader has to puzzle out what he is up to under Ewasx's very nose (or olfactory ring sense organ, more accurately) through limited information.
> 
> Elsewhere, the novel unfolds across a number of POV characters. The purpose of the very large cast of the first book is now revealed, as the events become even more epic. Different factions choose to fight or side with the Jophur on a large scale, whilst a few characters are now revealed to be in contact with the crew of the Streaker. We also get additional POVs from the crew of the Streaker as we learn what they've been up to since we last saw them blasting free from the Kithrup system in Startide Rising. It's a complex structure that sometimes threatens to become ungainly, but Brin maintains the cohesion of the narrative, and he admirably finds time to drop in a few POV chapters that are not strictly necessary but are there to provide atmosphere and colour, showing the scale of the unrest triggered by the arrival of the spacecraft.
> 
> Infinity's Shore manages to escape 'middle book' syndrome due to is structure: whilst there is a further book to come, Heaven's Reach, Infinity's Shore successfully wraps up most of the storylines on Jijo, and the planet is (somewhat regretfully, as Brin's worldbuilding skills here are impressive) left behind at the end of the novel as the focus switches squarely to the crew of the Streaker. This gives us a lot of endings and conclusions at the end of the book, with only a couple of cliffhangers left for the next book (though these are quite large).
> 
> Brin's skills with characters are impressive, with Asx/Ewasx being the most notable, but we also get great stuff from Emerson (the semi-amnesiac human who has lost the power of speech due to torture but can still communicate through song), Alvin (the Arthur C. Clarke-loving hoon whose journal extracts drive part of the story) and Gillian (the commander of the Streaker following the events of Startide Rising), not to mention the return of a number of dolphin POVs which continue to be entertaining. Brin also successfully builds tension as Streaker tries to escape the Jophur, but in a manner that will also leave Jijo free from reprisals, and various plans are outlined and tested before one is found that might just work. There are also some great details on technology, such as the steampunk non-digital computer that one character builds, or the various genetically-engineered insects and other lifeforms of Jijo that have tasks programmed into them from millions of years ago that the refugees can suit to their own ends.
> 
> As the novel continues, Brin laces in hints that something much bigger is afoot. Markings on some of the ships abandoned on the ocean floor, abnormalities in the hyperspace transfer points approaching Jijo and some strange problems in the Galactic Library's historical record suggest something else is happening, something so vast it will utterly dwarf even the chaos and warfare unleashed across the Five Galaxies by Streaker's activities. This then leaves the reader eager to learn more in the final, monstrously cataclysmic novel in the series.
> 
> Infinity's Shore (****½) is an inventive, enjoyable and page-turning SF nove that rounds off a number of storylines from the preceding books and sets things up well for the grand finale.


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## Werthead

*Book 6: Heaven's Reach*



> Three years ago, the human and dolphin crewmembers of the scout vessel _Streaker_  stumbled across a fleet of derelict starships. The revelation of that  discovery plunged the Five Galaxies into chaos, as vast galactic armadas  mobilised to intercept _Streaker_ and, when that failed, to lay siege to Earth itself, intending to hold it hostage for the secrets that _Streaker_ discovered. _Streaker_  fled to a remote corner of a fallow galaxy, lying low on Jijo where  refugee species had built a new society in peace. But the arrival of  pursuers has flushed out _Streaker_ from its hiding place. Fed up and annoyed after years on the run, the crew of the _Streaker_  has now decided it's time to go home, braving the machinations of  ancient alien intelligences, the firepower of vast blockading fleets and  the threat of a cataclysm that will transform the Five Galaxies  forever...a cataclysm that has happened before.
> 
> _Heaven's Reach_ is the sixth - and to date, final - novel in *The Uplift Saga* and is the very definition of the 'grand finale'. Storylines and character arcs begun way back in _Startide Rising_,  published seventeen years earlier, reach epic conclusions, major  revelations about the setting and the backstory take place and a number  of satisfying resolutions are found. Controversially, the author also  leaves a quite a few loose ends dangling.
> 
> Whilst claiming to be the concluding volume of the 'second *Uplift* trilogy', _Heaven's Reach_ drops a lot of events and characters back on Jijo in order to focus on the _Streaker_,  the Jophur battleship pursuing it and, slightly bemusingly, a new  subplot about a neo-chimpanzee pilot scouting E-space, a level of  hyperspace which can only be viewed in metaphors. The relevance of this  latter subplot becomes clearer later on, but the slight incongruity of  Brin dropping in this new storyline into an already crowded narrative  space is soon overshadowed by the sheer number of ideas and hard SF  concepts that Brin incorporates in the novel.
> 
> _Heaven's Reach_ is, by far, the most wildly inventive of the six *Uplift *novels.  Ideas that would fill up other novels, or entire trilogies, rocket past  the reader at a rate of knots: the Fractal World (a fresh spin on the  Dyson Sphere idea), a cluster of space habitats circling a white dwarf  so fast that time slows down, memetic entities, hydrogen-based lifeforms  and many more concepts are on display here, Brin unleashing them with  fiendish glee. The *Uplift*  universe has already been established as a colourful, epic setting  packed with thousands of sentient races and lots of cool ideas, but _Heaven's Reach_ brings it up to the next level and does so in a readable, gripping manner.
> 
> The characters' development continue to be a high point, with a few  newcomers (like the chimp scout, Harry) fitting in nicely amongst the  established cast. Seeing a few of the Jijo characters out in the weird  and wonderful society of the Five Galaxies also raises a number of  amusing culture clash storylines, though space constraints mean these  can't be developed too much. Gillian, the commander of the _Streaker_ and formerly a major character in _Startide Rising_,  also comes to the fore as an opportunity (albeit a slim one) to return  home arises. There is a slight backfiring here as Gillian makes frequent  references to the disappearance of Creideiki and Tom Orley in _Startide Rising_,  enough to make the reader expect an explanation as to their eventual  fate which is not forthcoming (although there is a vague hint of a  possible explanation at one point, though this is exceptionally vague).
> 
> This leads to the book's biggest problem: whilst several key  storylines come to a conclusion quite a few others are left dangling. A  character kidnapped at the end of _Infinity's Shore_ remains kidnapped. Most of the mysteries discovered by the _Streaker_  crew remain mysteries. A few of the cliffhangers are story seeds which  Brin seems to have dropped for development in future, as-yet-unwritten  stories and novels (and given it's been a decade since his last novel,  may never be written), whilst there's also a few deliberately ambiguous  endings which satisfy (after two decades - now three - would any  explanation for the _Streaker_  crew's discoveries satisfy?). Those hoping for this book to neatly tie  up every loose end (or even a majority of them) will likely feel  dissatisfied, whilst those who are happy with the prospect of unresolved  elements will enjoy it more.
> 
> For myself, _Heaven's Reach_ (****½) is brash, exuberant, almost endlessly inventive and, when the crew of the _Streaker_  finally give the Galactics the middle finger and head home, enormously  satisfying, let down by a few too many open questions at the end. The  novel is available now in the UK and USA.


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