Ancestral Night
A White Space Novel
-
-
4.0 • 60 Ratings
-
-
- £5.99
Publisher Description
A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from multi award-winning author Elizabeth Bear.
Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants.
She thinks she knows who she is.
She is wrong.
A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run, and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.
When the authorities prove corrupt, it becomes clear that Haimey is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from its potential power - and from the revolutionaries who want to use it to seed terror and war. But doing so will take her from the event horizon of the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge. Along the way, she'll have to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time as well as her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever . . .
Energetic and electrifying, Ancestral Night is a dazzling new space opera, sure to delight fans of Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, and Peter F. Hamilton.
Praise for Elizabeth Bear
'Gripping, perfectly balanced, and highly recommended' Kirkus
'Like the best of speculative fiction, Bear has created a fascinating and complete universe
that blends high-tech gadgetry with Old World adventure and political collusion' Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anyone who enjoys space opera, exploration of characters, and political speculation will love this outstanding novel, Bear's welcome return to hard SF after several years of writing well-received steampunk (Karen Memory) and epic fantasy (the Eternal Sky trilogy). As an engineer on a scrappy space salvage tug, narrator Haimey Dz has a comfortable, relatively low-stress existence, chumming with pilot Connla Kuruscz and AI shipmind Singer. Then, while aboard a booby-trapped derelict ship, she is infected with a not-quite-parasitic alien device that gives her insights into the universe's structure. This makes her valuable not only to the apparently benevolent interstellar government, the Synarche, but also to the vicious association of space pirates, represented by charismatic and utterly untrustworthy Zanya Farweather. While fleeing Zanya, Haimey and her crew discover a gigantic, ancient alien space ship hidden at the bottom of a black hole at the center of the galaxy, and at that point, things start getting complicated. This exciting story set in a richly detailed milieu is successful on many levels, digging into the nature of truth and reality, self-definition vs. predestination, and the calibration of moral compasses. Amid a space opera resurgence, Bear's novel sets the bar high.
Customer Reviews
Low Tide…
Thought provoking, touching, funny, sad, exciting, Ancestral Night is a great read and well worth your time. Like the best sci-fi, it pairs questions about the nature of humanity, existence and relationships with mind expanding, adrenaline packed sequences. My love of Iain M Banks and my sadness for his loss has left little space in my heart for other Sci-Fi authors, but this book has carved its own small foundation that I hope grows as I read more of Elizabeth Bear’s work. Fantastic.
This is a good one.
If you like space opera, read this one. You will not be disappointed.