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Heritage Universe #5
Resurgence
Hans Rebka, interstellar trouble-shooter, had solved the mystery of the gigantic Artefacts and defeated the warlike Zardala - but that was only the warm-up for the main event. In one arm of the galaxy, something is destroying whole stellar systems, Rebka and his motley crew discover a battle beginning.
440 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
191 people want to read
About the author
Charles Sheffield
216 books171 followersCharles A. Sheffield (June 25, 1935 – November 2, 2002), was an English-born mathematician, physicist and science fiction author. He had been a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronomical Society.
His novel The Web Between the Worlds, featuring the construction of a space elevator, was published almost simultaneously with Arthur C. Clarke's novel about that very same subject, The Fountains of Paradise, a coincidence that amused them both.
For some years he was the chief scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation, a company analysing remote sensing satellite data. This resulted in many technical papers and two popular non-fiction books, Earthwatch and Man on Earth, both collections of false colour and enhanced images of Earth from space.
He won the Nebula and Hugo awards for his novelette "Georgia on My Mind" and the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel Brother to Dragons.
Sheffield was Toastmaster at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore.
He had been writing a column for the Baen Books web site; his last column concerned the discovery of the brain tumour that led to his death.
He was married to writer Nancy Kress.
His novel The Web Between the Worlds, featuring the construction of a space elevator, was published almost simultaneously with Arthur C. Clarke's novel about that very same subject, The Fountains of Paradise, a coincidence that amused them both.
For some years he was the chief scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation, a company analysing remote sensing satellite data. This resulted in many technical papers and two popular non-fiction books, Earthwatch and Man on Earth, both collections of false colour and enhanced images of Earth from space.
He won the Nebula and Hugo awards for his novelette "Georgia on My Mind" and the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel Brother to Dragons.
Sheffield was Toastmaster at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore.
He had been writing a column for the Baen Books web site; his last column concerned the discovery of the brain tumour that led to his death.
He was married to writer Nancy Kress.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 13, 2025
За съжаление, коварен мозъчен тумор е попречил на мистър Шефилд да довърши тази серия.
Но аз съм доволен, че прочетох и тази пета, последна книга.
Струваше си да се срещна с любимите герои в още едно шеметно приключение, отвело ги на опасно пътуване в съседния, но необозримо далечен спирален ръкав Стрелец. Загадката наречена Строителите и техните артефакти набира сила, но не е било писано да я разгадаем!
Макар и да намирам стила и изграждането на героите за малко наивни, удоволствието да ги следвам по страниците на романите му си остава изцяло мое!
Но аз съм доволен, че прочетох и тази пета, последна книга.
Струваше си да се срещна с любимите герои в още едно шеметно приключение, отвело ги на опасно пътуване в съседния, но необозримо далечен спирален ръкав Стрелец. Загадката наречена Строителите и техните артефакти набира сила, но не е било писано да я разгадаем!
Макар и да намирам стила и изграждането на героите за малко наивни, удоволствието да ги следвам по страниците на романите му си остава изцяло мое!
June 12, 2021
Resurgence, the fifth book in Sheffield's Heritage Universe series that began with Summertide in 1990, ended up being the curtain call for Hans Rebka and Darya Lang and their pals. It was a little bit of surprise to get a new Heritage book, as the fourth book, Convergence, had seemed to tie most of the loose ends up as well as could be expected, but it was a very nice surprise. It's another good story of exciting exploration and adventure, with interesting scientific puzzles and odd bits of archaeology, cosmology, and speculative physics. It doesn't tie up -all- of the loose ends or answer -all- of the questions, and you cannot help but wonder what marvels Sheffield might have had in store for his delightful characters and loyal readers if he had been able to continue the series.
September 8, 2018
Okay, I stopped reviewing the individual books and I'm going to give a review of the entire series since I've read it all at once and it seems to make more sense this way.
These are not my favourite Sheffield books. The characters have managed to stay little more than archetypal caricatures (the pampered scientist who doesn't know what the world is really like; the stoic but loveable troubleshooter; the slaves that REALLY WANT TO REMAIN SLAVES; the comedic duo of mischief that are always scheming but rarely get away with what they wanted, and always end up helping the other characters against their will) even if they had FIVE BOOKS TO DEVELOP SOMETHING RESEMBLING A PERSONALITY.
The writing is not excellent, it often gets too technical in the science aspects (I know this is hard sci-fi but that's not a good reason for having paragraphs that seem lifted out of a research paper) and there's a lot of repetition (troubleshooter! Blind alien! Blue monstrosity! But also entire explanations of in-universe things - though that might be an issue only because I was reading them back to back, and it would actually would have been useful if years had passed between a book and another... But I have a feeling that some things were repeated inside the same book).
The story also seems kind of lacking in purpose: every book seemed to point in one direction only to switch topic in the next one without really justifying it.
And yet, I read all five books in less than a month, and the reading experience was quite enjoyable. Sheffield's writing has some compelling quality that keeps my eyes just stick on the page, and my mind always yearning to go back to reading.
These are not my favourite Sheffield books. The characters have managed to stay little more than archetypal caricatures (the pampered scientist who doesn't know what the world is really like; the stoic but loveable troubleshooter; the slaves that REALLY WANT TO REMAIN SLAVES; the comedic duo of mischief that are always scheming but rarely get away with what they wanted, and always end up helping the other characters against their will) even if they had FIVE BOOKS TO DEVELOP SOMETHING RESEMBLING A PERSONALITY.
The writing is not excellent, it often gets too technical in the science aspects (I know this is hard sci-fi but that's not a good reason for having paragraphs that seem lifted out of a research paper) and there's a lot of repetition (troubleshooter! Blind alien! Blue monstrosity! But also entire explanations of in-universe things - though that might be an issue only because I was reading them back to back, and it would actually would have been useful if years had passed between a book and another... But I have a feeling that some things were repeated inside the same book).
The story also seems kind of lacking in purpose: every book seemed to point in one direction only to switch topic in the next one without really justifying it.
And yet, I read all five books in less than a month, and the reading experience was quite enjoyable. Sheffield's writing has some compelling quality that keeps my eyes just stick on the page, and my mind always yearning to go back to reading.
November 7, 2023
7 stars out of 5. Conclusion of Heritage Universe. The various crews who explored other Builder Artifacts have been sent out to an unexplored section of the galaxy, the Sagittarius Arm, after a dead Chism Polypheme piloted ship and about 20 mummified passengers arrive at the Bose transition point of the Miranda Port from the Sag Arm. Chism Polyphemes live thousands of years and have been flying to this region of the galaxy for eons so something really alarming is invading the region to cause both Polyphemes and the unknown species to die instantly. Julian Graves leads up the expedition and Louis Nenda takes own his crew on their his ship to help find answers. Nenda hires another crazy Polypheme to pilot his ship into the region, and the 3 other groups head off into their own direction to find answers. All find something alarming. And each ship's name becomes ironically true. The plot is expertly woven. The physics are mind blowing. The characters are all exposed during adversity. I didn't want the story to end.
July 2, 2018
A really weak ending to a series I otherwise really enjoyed. Hard Sci-fi for the most part with adventure and some humor thrown into the mix. I wish I knew if this was how Sheffield planned to end the series or if his untimely death left it unfinished. I suspect the latter. So much is left unsaid, and a really unsatisfying ending with regards to the characters themselves. That being said the series as a whole is great but its the characters I'll remember.
The scheming, untrustworthy Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda. Nenda's rivalry with Hans Rebka. The humorous Ai E.c Tally. And of course Darya Lang. The scientist who never stops searching for the truth to the mystery behind the Builders but who unfortunately ends the series debating who to seduce to get what she wants. That felt out of character to me.
I suspect I'll be re-reading this series from time to time throughout the years.
The scheming, untrustworthy Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda. Nenda's rivalry with Hans Rebka. The humorous Ai E.c Tally. And of course Darya Lang. The scientist who never stops searching for the truth to the mystery behind the Builders but who unfortunately ends the series debating who to seduce to get what she wants. That felt out of character to me.
I suspect I'll be re-reading this series from time to time throughout the years.
August 25, 2024
Having solved all the problems in the current galaxy, we get a mystery from the next galaxy over. Something big, and mean. This was full of new characters I really didn't care much about, and started so slow that I had to forget how boring it was more than once in order to pick it up and keep going.
Turns out the problem is probably just another broken toy of the ancients. But this is where the story ends until AI is good enough to mimic authors.
Turns out the problem is probably just another broken toy of the ancients. But this is where the story ends until AI is good enough to mimic authors.
February 5, 2022
Well, with the Heritage series finished, most, but not all the questions we answered. The relationships between the characters didn't work out as I would have thought. Overall, I enjoyed reading the collection. I enjoyed the different thought on what time might be. If you're into hard science fiction, you'll most likely enjoy.
August 2, 2021
I Have some difficulty in classifying the whole Convergent seriies ....is it hard SF or Perry Rhodan style Spacey opera. Nevertheless I like all books in the series.
September 29, 2022
Hard Sci Fi. Fifth in the series You don't need to read them in order. Usual mix of humor and conflicgt begtween the characgters. Unexpected story.
December 25, 2022
Terrifically inventive universe, with not much of a story to tell in it for this book.
December 17, 2015
The Orion arm of the Galaxy had many builder artifacts, none less than 3 million years old, until a new artifact appeared and not too long afterward all of the artifacts disappeared. Read Summertide, Divergence, Transcendence and Convergence, the first four books in the Heritage Universe. Back with us are the characters from those novels. Troubleshooter Hans Rebka, Darya Lang who literally wrote the book on builder artifacts, E. Crimson Tally an embodied computer, ethical counselor Julian Graves, traders Louis Nenda and Atvar H'Sial and their slaves J'merlia, Killik and Archimedes.
It has been two years since the artifacts disappeared, but now a ship has arrived from the Sagittarius arm. The Chism Polypheme pilot and all the Marglot passengers dead, but the logs showing a previously unknown set of Bose nodes that will allow a ship to cross the void to the Sag Arm. Julian Graves rounds up the Hans, Darya, Louis, and Tally from their far flung locations and gets them to crew a venture to the Sag arm and the Marglot home world. Filling out the crew are five survival specialists.
When they reach the Sag arm they are not in the Marglot system, but in some mysterious system where the star has gone out and the planets are impossibly cold. There are several different ideas on how to proceed. They split up and investigate in different groups.
The book is written in the same style as the predecessors. A large veil of mystery with new information being doled out a little at a time. What really makes it work though are the characters. I love the way that Sheffield has made Rebka and Nenda dislike, but respect each other. One of many dynamics among the characters.
If you liked the previous books in the series, you'll like this one. You could read this one as a stand alone, but it'll much nicer if you know the history of the characters and know the abilities of the non-humans.
It has been two years since the artifacts disappeared, but now a ship has arrived from the Sagittarius arm. The Chism Polypheme pilot and all the Marglot passengers dead, but the logs showing a previously unknown set of Bose nodes that will allow a ship to cross the void to the Sag Arm. Julian Graves rounds up the Hans, Darya, Louis, and Tally from their far flung locations and gets them to crew a venture to the Sag arm and the Marglot home world. Filling out the crew are five survival specialists.
When they reach the Sag arm they are not in the Marglot system, but in some mysterious system where the star has gone out and the planets are impossibly cold. There are several different ideas on how to proceed. They split up and investigate in different groups.
The book is written in the same style as the predecessors. A large veil of mystery with new information being doled out a little at a time. What really makes it work though are the characters. I love the way that Sheffield has made Rebka and Nenda dislike, but respect each other. One of many dynamics among the characters.
If you liked the previous books in the series, you'll like this one. You could read this one as a stand alone, but it'll much nicer if you know the history of the characters and know the abilities of the non-humans.
February 12, 2012
The fifth installment in Sheffield's Heritage Universe series. I was surprised to discover this book existed, as I thought the fourth book tied up most of the loose ends and given at least a bit of a resolution as to what had happened to the mysterious Builders, creators of artifacts that have existed in the universe for millions of years.
I wish I had stayed in ignorance. The book isn't bad, but it isn't great either, and is probably the poorest Sheffield book that I own. It takes quite a while to get going, with the cast from previous books brought back together, with some new characters in the mix, who are all then thrust in to a new, unusual situation. All well and good, but it just feels dragged out. Then by the end, a bit of resolution is given, but in a data-dump fashion.
All I can think is the publisher really wanted the book, and Sheffield thought he could make an extra triology with this as the transition from the old to new. Originally, I thought was this was published in 2003 and there were no other books, that this idea had fallen by the wayside. When I looked at the book page however, I see Charles Sheffield died in 2002, the UK version of this book was published posthumously.
I've got a lot of Sheffield books I really like (his Proteus series inparticular) so it's a shame one of the last books he finished is not one of his strong ones (in my opinion.) There's still a lot of his stories I haven't read yet, and I'll be tracking them down and I expect there to be some real gold in there.
A caveat for the review: I was reading this while being kept up a lot each night by a toddler with a cold. I think even if I was getting my full sleep ration I wouldn't have been very impressed, but I might have been more agreeable than this review sounds.
I wish I had stayed in ignorance. The book isn't bad, but it isn't great either, and is probably the poorest Sheffield book that I own. It takes quite a while to get going, with the cast from previous books brought back together, with some new characters in the mix, who are all then thrust in to a new, unusual situation. All well and good, but it just feels dragged out. Then by the end, a bit of resolution is given, but in a data-dump fashion.
All I can think is the publisher really wanted the book, and Sheffield thought he could make an extra triology with this as the transition from the old to new. Originally, I thought was this was published in 2003 and there were no other books, that this idea had fallen by the wayside. When I looked at the book page however, I see Charles Sheffield died in 2002, the UK version of this book was published posthumously.
I've got a lot of Sheffield books I really like (his Proteus series inparticular) so it's a shame one of the last books he finished is not one of his strong ones (in my opinion.) There's still a lot of his stories I haven't read yet, and I'll be tracking them down and I expect there to be some real gold in there.
A caveat for the review: I was reading this while being kept up a lot each night by a toddler with a cold. I think even if I was getting my full sleep ration I wouldn't have been very impressed, but I might have been more agreeable than this review sounds.
November 19, 2022
I don't know whether to rate for the stories themselves, or the complete bodge made in packaging this epic.
You know how Tolkien originally wrote one doorstop and the publisher forced him to have it printed as a trilogy? This is a series of stories with fairly good demarkation lines between them that has gotten re-bound and re-titled at least twice, with confusingly similar names to boot, until nobody knows which books they've read and which are new and no way to purchase the latter independently.
It makes the numbering of Fallout games straight-forward by comparison.
Anyhow, this is a bit by-the-numbers space opera, but these are really nice looking numbers. A whole hoard of colorful and interesting characters from various species that are themselves quite up to the standard of Niven et al.
Which is appropriate as it is sort of a Ringworld story. Except instead of one "big dumb object" (as the trope is named) the forerunner aliens left hundreds of exceeding enigmatic and really, really, freaking big objects. Which are both frustratingly opaque and have a tendency to kill explorers so most of the various species have been smart enough to leave them alone.
Not our heroes, of course. Who through the course of these stories make more and greater breakthroughs into...even bigger and more opaque mysteries!
This is creativity that sits just on the safe side of the cliff edge of parody. Case in point; the galactic scourge that everyone thought would never return (spoilers! not!) the inscrutably alien and nigh-unstoppable Zardalu....which are purple, tentacle-walking land squid!
You know how Tolkien originally wrote one doorstop and the publisher forced him to have it printed as a trilogy? This is a series of stories with fairly good demarkation lines between them that has gotten re-bound and re-titled at least twice, with confusingly similar names to boot, until nobody knows which books they've read and which are new and no way to purchase the latter independently.
It makes the numbering of Fallout games straight-forward by comparison.
Anyhow, this is a bit by-the-numbers space opera, but these are really nice looking numbers. A whole hoard of colorful and interesting characters from various species that are themselves quite up to the standard of Niven et al.
Which is appropriate as it is sort of a Ringworld story. Except instead of one "big dumb object" (as the trope is named) the forerunner aliens left hundreds of exceeding enigmatic and really, really, freaking big objects. Which are both frustratingly opaque and have a tendency to kill explorers so most of the various species have been smart enough to leave them alone.
Not our heroes, of course. Who through the course of these stories make more and greater breakthroughs into...even bigger and more opaque mysteries!
This is creativity that sits just on the safe side of the cliff edge of parody. Case in point; the galactic scourge that everyone thought would never return (spoilers! not!) the inscrutably alien and nigh-unstoppable Zardalu....which are purple, tentacle-walking land squid!
November 1, 2016
Overall, this is a good exploration science fiction series.
Having said that, some of the series mysterieres are never resolved/explained. I don't know if Sheffield planned to do more with it later or not but if you are a reader that needs all the i's dotted and t's crossed, you may go crazy.
Having said that, some of the series mysterieres are never resolved/explained. I don't know if Sheffield planned to do more with it later or not but if you are a reader that needs all the i's dotted and t's crossed, you may go crazy.
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January 9, 2010baen ebook
August 3, 2015
another good one in the series hope to get into the next book soon
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews