Author(s): Alastair Reynolds

Science Fiction & Fantasy

The third critically acclaimed novel from SF's newest megastar returns to the universe of Revelation Space

Time: the early twenty-seventh century. Fifty years ago, human intervention triggered an ancient alien system designed to warn of the emergence of intelligence. For aeons the Inhibitors have waited.

Now the response is on its way...

Clavain defected to fight on the side of the Conjoiners, a feared and persecuted human faction dedicated to hive-mind consciousness. Four hundred years later, in the terminal stages of a brutal interplanetary war, something has struck terror into the Conjoiner Inner Sanctum. As the nature of the new threat becomes clear, Clavain begins to wonder if it isn't time to defect again.

Clavain and a misfit band of allies race towards Resurgam, where a long-lost cache of Doomsday weapons has been discovered; he wants the weapons for the good of humanity. But someone else already controls the lost weapons: and Triumvir Volyova has very definite plans of her own.

And the weapons themselves are not exactly lacking in free will...