Bone Silence

Revenger #3

by Alastair Reynolds

Return to the third book in the Revenger Trilogy, for another thrilling tale of set among the stars . . .

Quoins are accepted currency throughout the thousands of worlds of the Congregation. Ancient, and of unknown origin and purpose, people have traded with them, fought for them, and stolen quoin hordes from booby-trapped caches at risk to life and limb throughout the Thirteen Occupations. Only now it's becoming clear they have another purpose . . . as do the bankers who've been collecting them.

The Occupations themselves are another puzzle. The rise and fall of civilisation may have been unevenly spaced across history, but there is also a pattern. Could something be sparking the Occupations - or ending them? And if so, what could it be, lurking far beyond the outermost worlds of the Congregation?

The Ness sisters are being hunted for crimes they didn't commit by a fleet whose crimes are worse than their own. If they're to survive, and stay one step ahead of their pursuers - if they're to answer the questions which have plagued them - it's going to require every dirty, piratical trick in the book...

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Audiobook, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space

603 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2020

About the author

I'm Al, I used to be a space scientist, and now I'm a writer, although for a time the two careers ran in parallel. I started off publishing short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone in the early 90s, then eventually branched into novels. I write about a novel a year and try to write a few short stories as well. Some of my books and stories are set in a consistent future named after Revelation Space, the first novel, but I've done a lot of other things as well and I like to keep things fresh between books.

I was born in Wales, but raised in Cornwall, and then spent time in the north of England and Scotland. I moved to the Netherlands to continue my science career and stayed there for a very long time, before eventually returning to Wales.

In my spare time I am a very keen runner, and I also enjoying hill-walking, birdwatching, horse-riding, guitar and model-making. I also dabble with paints now and then. I met my wife in the Netherlands through a mutual interest in climbing and we married back in Wales. We live surrounded by hills, woods and wildlife, and not too much excitement.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third, more traditional space opera by Alastair Reynolds has now come to a close.

Sisters, pirates, the unraveling of the mystery of humanity, the clackers, and the aliens. It's all here. Space battles, old alien skulls with powers, pride, vengeance, greed, and acceptance.


Honestly? For most of the book, aside from a few areas where the pacing was a bit off, it was a very popcorn read. I've never read a space opera that so closely conformed to the mythos of pirating without feeling at all contrived. All the elements were there but it all felt natural and obvious in the SFnal rules of the galaxy. And the mystery only helped. Hell, the mystery, once we know what it really is, was enough to land this book another star. :)


While these books don't really feel like the oldschool Reynolds I've fanboyed over, I am far from disliking them. BUT, I still only think they are above average, not fantastic.
Great to quench boredom, tho. :)

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

LE: "Notes and sketches for the Revenger books", from the author's blog:

http://approachingpavonis.blogspot.co...

-----

“This little civilization of ours is squalid in places, unjust in others. It is constructed to a large degree upon a foundation of greed and inequality. But it is not beyond salvation, and just as crucially it is all we have. There are fine things about it, too. There are lovely worlds, more than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes. There are beautiful cities and fabulous ruins. If we are feeling adventurous, there are baubles. If we are not, there are teahouses and cakes, and I should not care to place one above the other. I wish to have both things in my life: adventure and comfort.” *

I second this statement wholeheartedly; Al Reynolds has a way to resonate with his readers, no matter the strangeness of his universes.

And even if this series is not his best work, I still liked it a lot. What’s not to like reading about unique worlds, marvelous technologies and ancient mysteries? Add to all these a bit of steampunk, space pirates, two badass sisters as captains, a crew like no other, one hell of a ship - the sunjammer Revenger - and you’ve got yourself a picture.

Despite the slow and somewhat dull start, it picks up pace in the last half and we get some of the answers which we’re craving for, along with some gape-mouthed twists and revelations.

In the acknowledgments at the end, AR says: “I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters. Whether they are done with me, remains to be seen.” I do hope he will return for a novella in this universe and focus on the Ghosties, which is still one of the greatest and unsolved mysteries.

* Excerpt from the ARC; it may be changed in the final version.

>>> ARC received thanks to Orion Publishing Group / Gollancz via NetGalley <<<

[Annemieke / A Dance with Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Gollancz and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

CW/TW: Graphic Violence / Mutilation / Talk of Dead Bodies / Physical Abuse / Loss of Limb / Death of Characters

One of my most anticipated reads for the start of 2020 was Bone Silence. While not a lot of people talk about it, the Revenger trilogy has been a highlight to my sci-fi reading life. It kind of falls into the cracks because it got written as YA (It won the locus award for best young adult book in 2017) but a lot of people see it as Adult. You all are missing out.

Bone Silence had a lot more pages than the first two installments for me. The others were around 300 if I remember correctly and the e arc edition I had was over 600 pages. That is a big increase. Even so it needed that to set up the playing field for the ending. We also get the point of view of both sisters where in the previous installments it was from just one of their point of views (Revenger was Fura, Shadow Captain was Adrana). Each of their story lines needed more space.

For a while I thought I was going to be rating this book 5 stars. However as we neared the ending and started wrapping up the story lines I did not get out of the ending what I think should have come out of the ending. It is the end of this trilogy and the author has said that for now he is done with our sisters. But there are still a lot of questions left to answer. There is nothing wrong with leaving some things open but in this case I feel that we got too little for the questions that were asked by the sisters in the previous book. Especially as it concerns the world building. I docked a whole star for this. It left me feeling unsatisfied.

Even so I did enjoy the whole of the book outside of that. It was a joy to see old favorites and having new people on board the mess that is the Ness train. Both sisters grew. Fura turned very differently because of what happened in Revenger. She became cold hearted but in this book I saw her slowly opening up again to those around her. Adrana on her end realized some of her own flaws.

All in all this is a trilogy that is well worth your time.

[Africandreamer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is an exemplar of what happens when a writer loses their mojo.

Alastair Reynolds' early works are some of the best sci-fi I have read - hard, gritty stories that almost define space opera. He should seriously think about going back to the setting of Revelation Space, as these are easily his best works and there are so many good stories in there.

This latest trilogy...just awful. If he could bring back the style of RS, he might have had a good series. Here, he has shifted his style to one that is primarily dialogue-based and it just doesn't work. The language is folksy and really irritating; like too many other sci-fi writers, there are far too many references to the characters drinking tea (who cares? Ann Leckie is the arch exponent of the tea plot prop and her books are contenders for the most dismal sci-fi I have read); indeed, there is so much dialogue that it crowds out the plot almost completely, in the process removing pretty well any tension. The main protagonists...likeable...dislikeable...no idea really. Ditto the main villain in this book...I couldn't really pin down what was so villainous about him. The whole story just seemed so contrived. In a word, this book was just boring.

So, this is another book (series?) where I ended up resorting to reading the first few words of each paragraph in order to get through it and very nearly called it quits with a couple of hundred pages to go.

Space opera this is surely not.

Alastair Reynolds, please have a really deep think about your next book. You have written some amazing books and you need to rediscover what made them great sci-fi, because you have truly lost your way with your Poseidon and Revenger trilogies.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A year ago, I reviewed Shadow Captain, the second part of this trilogy of Space Pirates stories, which made my ‘Best of’ list for 2019. With the arrival of the third book in the series, does it still hold water?

There are clearly changes afoot with this third book. Whereas the first book Revenger is told from the perspective of pirate captain Arafura Ness (aka Fura) and Shadow Captain from the perspective of her sister, Adrana, in Bone Silence the narrative is mainly third-person focused, and this means that with a wider perspective the novel can look at the bigger issues that have been hinted at in the earlier books.

We have been gradually told previously that the thousands of worlds of the Congregation have been through a series of boom and bust cycles over thousands of years. Known as Occupations, there is evidence that there had been twelve before and this has led to the baubles – secret sources of objects from previous Occupations – which the pirates spent their time finding and looting, if possible.

As the characters discovered in Shadow Captain, a number of events are happening that suggest that the Congregation may be heading towards the fall of civilisation in the Thirteenth Occupation. More importantly, it is conceivable that the Revenger crew may have even inadvertently hastened the decline. Their discovery that a mysterious object exists that might explain the origin of the Congregation, have led to the creation of the baubles and may even be something that is connected to what happened with quoins (the interplanetary currency) at the end of Shadow Captain. Much of Bone Silence is about the journey to this object.

As if this wasn’t enough to put the crew into hiding, Adrana and Arafura are now being pursued by a fleet under the leadership of psychopath Incer Stallis who are determined to hunt them down as justice for their crime. To monitor communications and stay hidden, at the beginning of Bone Silence the crew attempt to buy a new ‘Bone’, that weird Alien skull used to communicate in some sort of secret neural network, before travelling on to the mystery object.

At the same time, they have to avoid the fleet searching for them, whilst not giving away their objective. They find themselves now recognised as criminals across the planets because despite their not knowing what they did to make it happen in Shadow Captain, the crew of the Revenger find at the beginning of Bone Silence that they are being blamed for the universal devaluation of the quoins, which has caused bankruptcy and misery throughout the Congregation. It’s not going to be easy.

As the third book in a trilogy (so far, at least) Bone Silence shows how far these characters have come. Whereas Revenger was a deceptively simple ‘teenagers-on-the--run’ kind of story, Bone Silence shows us that there has always been an intriguing detail behind the main plot, and it is this that the book brings to light.

That’s not to say though that our main characters are pushed to the background. In Bone Silence much of the story is how Adrana and Fura become competent adults, able to bond with a growing set of crewmates and working together in times of peril as well as deal with the difficulties along the way. They have clearly become leaders, who have built a loyal (well – mainly loyal) team around them and are running a pirate ship as if they were born to it (even when they make mistakes.) The pirate leaders are some distance away from the teenagers we saw back in Revenger.

This is further confirmed when the two Ness sisters end up running two ships in an attempt to mislead the fleet and avoid Incer Stallis. Adrana has to take command of a ship they pirated, the Merry Mare, whilst Fura continues to run Revenger and her crew guided by Paladin, their family robot who is a relic from the Twelfth Occupation. They have to make difficult decisions and deal with life-changing choices that reflect their transition into adulting. By the end of the novel the sisters’ transformation into adults is complete and their future beyond space captaincy just beginning.

Alastair in his acknowledgements at the end of the book writes “I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters” and this seems the right decision to make. As much as it would be interesting to see further, there’s enough in Bone Silence for many readers to be satisfied to leave it there. I must admit that I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of the answers to the universal questions at the conclusion, but they do draw things to an end.

There is scope for other stories and other ideas to be pursued should Alastair or his publishers wish to do so, but if this is the end of our journey with Adriana and Fura, then the distance travelled by the Ness sisters over the three books, taken as a complete story, is impressive. If you’ve enjoyed the journey so far, Bone Silence should not disappoint.

[Gintautas Ivanickas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paskutinė trilogijos knyga.
Ir vėl turiu tą patį priekaištą, kurį turėjau antrajai knygai. Bėda su kompozicija. Pernelyg anksti ištinka kulminacija. O paskui viskas nuslūgsta ir realiai paskutinį trečdalį damušinėji (atsiprašau už tokią taisyklingą lietuvių kalbą, bet tikslesnio žodžio nėr). Ir iš principo aišku, kodėl taip nutinka. Reynoldsas bandė sumaišyti veiksmo ir idėjų kokteilį, bet pasirinko ne tas skysčių proporcijas – jie nesusimaišė taip, kaip norėtųsi, o atsiskyrė. Ir rezultatas – degtinė sau, pomidorų sultys sau.
Va, jei būtų sugebėjęs kažkaip tą mišinį išlaikyti vientisesnį, būtų geriau. Ne tai, kad dabar būtų labai blogai, bet.
Na, bet ir nuotykio nestinga. Norit kosminių mūšių, šnipų intrigų, mįslių? Visko bus. O apie siužetą nesiplėsiu, nes taip jau su tom trilogijom – bandysi kažką papasakot, tai jau užuomazga kažkiek spoilins ankstesnes dalis tiems, kas neskaitęs.
Kažkur tarp trijų ir keturių. Panašiai gaunasi ir visam ciklui. Tegul bus tas ketvertas, bet skystokas toks.

[imyril is not really here any more · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well that was... something. If I’m honest, it felt a muddle of a middle book, not the climax of a trilogy. The first half drags, the second half is split into acts that cut this way and that through concerns introduced in previous books without necessarily concluding any of them satisfactorily. I’m rather grumpy about the ‘shocks’ at the end, which feel unsubstantiated (Adrana leaping to anthropocentric conclusions on the basis of far too little evidence). The hoard on the Miser - which ought to figure in Adrana’s grand plan by her own logic - is simply left unmentioned, resulting in a rather local revolution. Realistic perhaps, but unsatisfying.

And at the end I find myself clawing back at other loose threads, such as just where do the worlds get their food, anyway?

Full review

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

[Lasu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's start with the obvious question: Is this YA?
The quote on the Wikipedia page for this book points to a review by the Starburst Magazine and this is the related paragraph:

Which raises the fair point - is this a Young Adult novel or not? I suppose my answer would be kind of, sort of, not sure really, but what it is - I hope - is a straightforward SF novel that also happens to be accessible, and perhaps accessible to somewhat younger readers, in the same way that I was able to approach books like NOVA and DUNE when I was in my mid-teens.

You won't find that part on the page of Starburst Magazine anymore. Probably because someone actually read those books and realised:

YES. It is a Young Adult novel.

And not only that. It's target audience seems to be not only young adults but those young adults which are struck by a short attention span and therefore tend to also forget easily.
To even put any of those books in the same sentence with DUNE is an insult to Frank Herbert.

I was stranded for weeks with the audiobook version of those books and it was a horrible experience. Not only have I been told that this would be a pretty adult version of YA, I expected good space opera because of the author.

What I got was a village sized bubble universe (reminding me of Sun of Suns several times) where adults seem to decay intellectually with time and therefore there is nothing strange about having a child as a captain of a pirate operation or even a squad of ships because those intellectually retarded adults not only need them to read bones but to manage everything around them.
Unfortunately this is just my explanation for something that is just a result of bad writing.

The one consistent trope of this book was: nothing matters.
Something that was important for pages once, will turn out not to be worth more than a sentence (if at all) next time. Seriously, how does nobody realise that those little girls pretending to be captains are THOSE little girls everybody is looking for? Despite the miserable attempts to justify that how many little girls run ships there and why is this not mentioned? All side characters are mere decoration. Used once will be thrown away afterwards while the two main characters are presented to us as some superfast learning children pretending to be adults.
Everything else is inconsistent and carelessly written junk with no pay off that would be worth the trip.

It starts with the small things like the choice of names and vocabulary.
It's not only the ridiculous "ghostly stuff" word choice that reminds one of the current president of the USA but also the assumption that people who remember what a horse is won't remember the 3-letter word "air" and therefore choose to use "lung stuff" instead.
Hearing the name "Fura" being read like the usual Americans way to read Führer, made me cringe every single time. How can one be so careless?

Than there is the great idea:
Space Pirates in a far far future in a strange universe with many mysteries to be uncovered.
Sounds intriguing.
Sounds like it might be something.
But it's not.
There is nothing there. We merely get those things passed by us as a kind of teaser for a book that never came or maybe for some other author who'd pick that up and actually do something useful with it.

I've read better written fan fiction.

Now in the end I'm left with some questions:

- has this book been maybe written by Mr. Reynolds daughters (does he have any?)
- why would any author risk his reputation writing so bad or didn't he see that? Doesn't he have to care anymore?
- where are those good reviews and overall rating here coming from and will I ever trust reviews on this page again?

In the end it was a waste of time and I doubt I'll touch any new material by Mr. Reynolds anytime soon.

[MadProfessah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Silence is the third and final book in Alastair Reynolds' Revenger trilogy, a dark, steampunk-inspired, YA space opera series centered around Adrana and Arafura Ness. The two teenaged Ness sisters have adventures together and separately that are dangerous and diverting, in a reimagined dystopian solar system where humanity exists on twenty thousand habitats formed from the materials of the Eight Original Planets.

The most compelling aspect of the books is, unsurprisingly, the Ness sisters. Although, somewhat surprisingly, they are not completely likable characters. In retrospect, this is a strength and a weakness of the books. They are often placed in complicated situations, interacting with people who often have complicated allegiances and motivations and thus they often have to make complicated decisions. In Bone Silence, the sisters are co-captains of Revenger, a technologically advanced ship which was previously owned by Bosa Sennen, the most notorious (and ruthless) pirate in the System. In fact, due to actions that occurred in Book 2's Shadow Captain (which I won't recap here because spoilers!), many people believe that either Arafura or Adrana (or both) are either in alliance with Bosa Sennen or have taken her place and are continuing her reign of terror (after all, the Ness sisters are using Bosa's ship).

Another important aspect of the Revenger books is the setting. I'm generally not a fan of steampunk or YA and these books haven't changed my mind. I am a huge fan of Reynolds, though, so that's what made me start these books. He is an experienced author who has previously created brilliant, captivating space opera tales. Although initially skeptical, I did get caught up in the story and following the fortunes of Adrana and Arafura made me want to continue the series to its conclusion. The setting of the books is in a galaxy where technology is both advanced (it takes place on space ships after all) and backwards (even though it is millions of years in our future there’s no technology they have which we currently don’t have). The primary source of locomotion of ships is the harnessing of solar radiation through the use of huge solar sails, and the language of space travel is described in such a way that it could be referring to nautical journeys of the 1800s. The units of distance are "leagues." Although there are aliens, they are referred to by infantilizing names such as "Clackers," "Crawlies" and "Hard Shells." The form of currency are "quoins" and the provenance of quoins is one of the key mysteries of the series. The backwardness of the technology is reflected in the fact they refer to the air that is in the ships as "lungstuff" and there is almost no automation of any task. (Although there are robots who most humans treat unseriously as toys or amusements.) Everything is done by hand, by "sailors" who have specialized skills. Navigation is by using star maps and observations of the stars. Communication from ship to ship is done primarily by "squawk" (the equivalent of radio) and by "bone." Bones are ancient alien technology which uses "twinkly" to allow certain individuals to communicate telepathically with other individuals using bones, with relativistic effects ignored. It's somewhat amazing that as a (former) physicist, Reynolds has written a series where modern physics is almost entirely absent.

Overall, I liked the series as a whole more than I liked this last book, but I am glad I read it because I really wanted to know what happened to Arafura and Adrana in the end! Bone Silence seemed overly long, as numerous plot threads that had developed over the first two books needed resolving in the third. Generally, most of these were resolved in a way that was relatively satisfying. Additionally, many of the characters that we had come to know for at least one book and sometimes two, did not make it to the end of the third book. Hey, I said it was dark! While this is a YA book and there are absolutely no sexual situations in the book, there is lots of violence and cruelty and death. It is a dark, dystopian solar system the Ness sisters are in, and they have to adapt and reflect their surroundings in order to navigate through it. Bosa Sennen was the main villain in Book 1 and Book 2 but in Book 3, a new villain is introduced and the narrative tension and suspense created by the struggle for dominance between the new villain and the Ness sisters, and sometimes between the Ness sisters themselves, animates the last book just enough to sustain interest to the very end. However if you haven’t read any Reynolds before I would recommend starting with Chasm City first and only attempt the Revenger trilogy after completing the Revelation Space books.

OVERALL: 3.5-4 STARS,

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Silence is the third and final volume in the Revenger series, and it is a fitting and compelling conclusion to the whole saga. This epic space opera series is best read in chronological order as many of the overarching questions about how everything came to be the way it now currently is requires some knowledge of the preceding books for full enjoyment. Many of the curious questions readers were concerned about in the first and second instalments are answered in Bone Silence. Usually, books are either plot or character-driven but the two are not mutually exclusive here as both have been attended to with precision detail.

What is impressive is Mr Reynolds’s ability to create spiky and less-than-affable main characters who you actually continue to care about; granted I often prefer this type of characterisation as I find those characters a damn sight more intriguing than tedious goody-two-shoes types but still. They also have plenty of reason as to why they act the way they do further emphasising the need to read these chronologically. The writing continues to be dark and atmospheric creating a tension that hooks you into the story from the initial stages.

Despite this nothing is taken too seriously, and you are in for a fun, entertaining and truly raucous ride through this stellar, sprawling universe. Reynolds never forgets that most people read for escapism and provides us with just that. It blends his well-established hard sci-fi elements with drama-filled narrative and the complex sisterly relationship between Arafura and Adrana. Not forgetting the space pirates and some outstanding technological advancements. There were even a few earth-shattering twists in the tale and revelations I had not predicted.

In the acknowledgements at the back of the book, Reynolds states: “I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters. Whether they are done with me, remains to be seen.” I must say that I really am quite bereft to be leaving this world, but I look forward to whatever Reynolds has coming next with eager anticipation. Many thanks to Gollancz for an ARC.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Silence is the third Revenger book, and it provides answers to the questions that have been growing throughout the first two books. Although I enjoyed this one, I’ll be honest and say it’s not quite a full four-star rating. It was enjoyable enough to round up, but it wasn’t my favourite in the series.

Although Bone Silence gives us a lot of information and plenty of things happened, I do feel it was a wee bit slow in places. There were some points where I felt things were dragging, and I was hoping we would jump back into the action. When the action did happen, I feel there were some points where it wasn’t as hard hitting as I would have liked it to be.

Nevertheless, it was interesting to see the way in which everything came together. There were some details that were left a bit open, and I’d be willing to read more in the series if the author decides to cover those aspects, but even without extra books it was interesting to see how everything came together.

All in all, an enjoyable read. I’ll certainly be reading more Alastair Reynolds in the future.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give the third star only for scope. I hope this was meant as a YA. That would excuse a few things.

One giveaway would be 2 teenage girls running a ship and no one thinks they might be THOSE teenage girls; another might be Marty Stu Incer, who might be 20 and is a squadron leader. At least with Ender Wiggin we got a back story.

So, we continue with the wildly inconsistent science. We don't have computers, navigation seems to be based on telescopes, but we can put on new limbs in any handy clinic. We have artillery battles at distances in the thousands of miles (OK, it's easier with no air and no gravity but still ..)

"lungstuff" - really?

Three "oh, FFS" items:
(1) The glow was obviously going to kill her, except we knew it wouldn't, and she forced a crisis, and .... not much happened.

(2) Has any death in all of fiction been more telegraphed than Prozor's?

(3) at the Big Dumb Object near the end, of COURSE the key discovery is JUST beyond the maximum rope length. It's never in the first room, and never in the one they didn't find.

I say, chaps, am I alone in wondering how the young ladies came to converse as if they were at Miss Havisham's Finishing School for Ladies? Except that both often say "ain't". Or how some of the crew seem to have gone to the Gabby Hayes School of Overdone Character Acting, arr, we likes that, doesn't we matey?

All too often this got speechy, or took 1000 words when 200 would have done, and I admit I skimmed a lot.

Saldy, Reynolds hasn't thrilled me since the disaster that was Absolution Gap [my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...]. I really didn't care for the Poseidon series either. We all change, and I guess AR and I have grown apart.

[Adela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reynolds is one of my favorite scifi authors. The first book in this series, The Revenger, was grippingly awesome and it's the only reason I suffered through the next two. Such a shame. The story concept is great but the execution terrible - terribly boring that is, lacking in action and character development and the ending is very rushed. We are given some very cursory answers to questions it took two very ploddingly boring books to get to. Reynolds is really one of my favorite authors, I cried over his House of Suns it was so beautiful, and the Revenger was unputdownable ... so these two sequels in the series were a huge disappointment, and that's even by less sophisticated scifi/fantasy standards. They really were just ... mindbogglingly dull.

[S.J. Higbee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, I’d recommend that if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading at least one of the previous books in this series, then don’t start with this one – put it back on the shelf and go looking for Revenger instead. While this story is still full of space battles, weird aliens fighting amongst themselves, and struggles to overcome peculiarly horrible diseases – a fair chunk of the book is taken up with resolving some of the big mysteries regarding the world and how it has come to be the way it is. If you haven’t read at least one of the previous books, not only will you find it difficult to understand what is going on – at least initially – you also won’t care as much as you should about the ongoing chaos and how to resolve it. I think Reynolds has managed to pull off a difficult balancing act – providing plenty of action and adventure with two spiky but ultimately sympathetic protagonists and yet also giving us a complicated world where the initial rules don’t actually apply. It is in this book we learn exactly what the dynamic is.

I am impressed at how much I still cared for both girls, given they aren’t particularly nice, which isn’t a surprise, given what they’ve gone through, and their own conflicted feelings about each other. There is a fair amount of sibling rivalry that causes friction and distrust, particularly at times when things are getting tricky. The characterisation is well handled throughout and I particularly liked the truly horrible antagonist Reynolds managed to produce in this book. After the horrors of Captain Bosa, I had thought that any other baddie in this series would be something of an anti-climax, but nasty Incer managed to be someone I loved to hate.

One of the outstanding aspects of this series is the dark, brooding Gothic quality of the writing which is sustained throughout all three books particularly effectively. This is a dystopian world where bad things happen to good people, however, there are enough shafts of light that it didn’t become too overwhelmingly grim, which is a tricky balance to accomplish. The ending worked, tying everything up satisfactorily, but without making it too tidy, which would have jarred in this universe. Highly recommended for fans of space opera with a bit of a difference. The ebook arc copy of Bone Silence was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10

[Patrick Mcnelis · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters."

Thank gawd for that. This series has never been my favorite, but this 3rd in the series felt so forced. I don't get the sense Alastair Reynolds had any fun writing it, and I think he ran out of decent ideas around the 4th chapter. Passage after passage throughout the book was tedious. And the sheer number of coincidental plot devices made this read like a mediocre fanfic piece instead of a novel written by a pro. If Alastair never writes about the Ness sisters again, it will be too soon. Even with what was supposed to be a cliff hanger near the end, I'm not interested in finding out more. And the whole bit about the aliens in the end...and how the Ness sisters came to such a conclusion based on literally no evidence to support it...it was like Reynolds threw a dart at a board while blindfolded and however ridiculous the idea to be speared that was what he was going with.

Please, Alastair, leave it be.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this; not great, not terrible, not focused on the most interesting things, suffering from Reynolds' problem with unsympathetic protagonists. That guy really wants to write about psychopaths...

[Brian Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the best modern SF writers, Alastair Reynolds is arguably the supreme successor to the writers of the golden age. He gives us wide-ranging vision, clever concepts and rollicking adventure - never more so than with his concluding book of the Ness sisters trilogy.

Neatly, after the first title, Revenger was written from the viewpoint of one sister, Arafura and the second, Shadow Captain, had the other sister Adrana as narrator, this book is in the third person. It neatly ties up many of the loose ends from the previous books, but also leaves vast scope for revelations to cover in the future if Reynolds decides to revisit this world (he comments in his acknowledgements 'I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters. Whether they are done with me remains to be seen.')

As with the previous books, the feel here is in some ways reminiscent of the excellent TV series Firefly, but with pirates rather than cowboys transported into a space setting. Set millions of years in the future, the technology is fascinating, and there are a couple of very effective twists in a narrative that has the full force of Reynolds' unparalleled ability to produce an SF page-turner. Although the book is a sequel, unlike some other series books I've read, I never felt confused by not remembering what came before - Reynolds handles the balance of updating the reader without lots of exposition masterfully. We start with the Ness sisters and their crew acting reluctantly as relatively conscientious pirates - but an encounter with another ship changes things forever, not just for them, but the whole solar system.

As before, the only two small moans are the language - it seems a little forced that they use some strange words, given they would hardly be speaking current English, to 'translate' what they say into occasional oddities - so air, for instance, becomes 'lungstuff' - they might as well refer to a ship as a 'floaty Mcboaty'. And there is never much in the way of character development - but with ideas and adventure like this, you really don't care.

A great way to finish the trilogy.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this final part of the Revenger series more than I did. In all truth, it just dragged on and on and on. So many pages of descriptions with such little happening. It barely added anything to the storyline. The characters don't have any satisfying growth in this final and the ending really left me underwhelmed.

On top of that, the sudden POV change threw me off. The first two books were in first person and then this final part switched to third person. It felt quite jarring and less personal, I kind of couldn't settle in to it.

Bone Silence gets a meager 3 out of 5 stars from me. It's not terrible and I did enjoy certain scenes, but I would not pick up the Ness sisters' trilogy again.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Will review at www.fantasyliterature.com.

[Squirrel · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first I rolled my eyes - a Swiss-cheese permanent space habitat made from materials with no apparent source - where do they mine the raw materials for a glass tube? A tram? But the writing is fun, the characters promising, so I read on. It becomes hard to miss that this book is part of a trilogy (yep, this is the first installment I encountered) from the multiple overt references to adventures and names laced into the telling, with no background or other explanation.

In all a fun enough read, if you can get past the steam-punk stupid elements and the clueless sexist writing. Apparently in this universe pirate captains in low-G wear ... skirts and boots. Apparently in this universe the low gravity and air currents don't float the fabric up in front of the wearers' arms or faces, dropped tools don't tangle up in skirts, the fan in the decompression chamber doesn't suck the loose clothing to it...

Too many annoying affectations: 'air' or 'oxygen' is called 'lungstuff' even though this universe is populated with various aliens, do they all have lungs? The term "monkeys" indicates humans - are other species misidentified as well? Would wolves be called pugs, space ships called scows?
Here exposure to vacuum is apparently not linked to quick death, embolisms, etc. ... and medicine hasn't advanced much past 'bleeding', except for providing cool prosthetic body parts. A good doctor doesn't know or have the ability to isolate an unknown infection. ~sigh~ Here, people working with steam wear NO protective gear. A person's head can be bolted to and integrated with a space ship, but cannot shut off a broken steam valve. A ship is designed to cool with water, when it has an unlimited supply of vacuum? Put the hot bits exposed to vacuum, and cooling is no longer a challenge. This would be like setting up next to a river, and seeing rain barrels as the only possible source for water.

My interest degraded further with the lazy choices of words - something in a space-faring society "looking like something a cat played with", "The Glimmery", "the tinkly". The only surprise about the 'ghostie nubbins' is how little knowledge or imagination the characters have about what it is. This reads to me like its written as a YA novel, so much turned fanciful that could readily be practical. Your position in 4D space has been identified by a distant adversary. Why not move and regroup?

Nothing in this makes me want to know more about the characters, or the construct they occupy. The author spins a good enough tale, but bombs out so often on the details and the credibility, I found it quite hard to stay focused on the tale.

I did finish it finally, slogging through to the you've-got-to-be-kidding ending, an abridged sci-fi discovery sequence filling 100-plus pages, with details and leaps to conclusions on a cursory glance of a wreck. Not a great reveal, a clunky finish, more glad to have finished this than to have read it.

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 3rd book was an enjoyable and well crafted read. To me it felt somewhat „engineered“ and „pushed“ to finish the trilogy. The result benefits from Reynolds‘ professional experience - it’s still a solid novel - but I missed the special energy I found in his more inspired stories.

[Aoife · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fura and Adrana Ness may have catapulted the current Occupation of the world into an economic free fall, and now they're being pursued by an enemy that seems even more ruthless than themselves. As each sister struggles with her own mission and secrets, the fate of everything may come to lay at their feet. But who can they trust other than each other?

This was a great conclusion to what has been an action packed, feminine fuelled adventure full of moments that genuinely left me wide-eyed, and always eager for more. This book provides a lot of answers around the previous Occupations Adrana has been investigating, as well as the other species of monkey and alien out there plus the outer planets. For most of this trilogy when it came to the more complicated business of the quoins, the alien bankers and what it all meant, it went a little bit over my head but I was satisfied with the answers we ended up getting about everything.

This book was action packed and tense, with a majority of time spent in a bloody, and ferocious space battle between the Revenger, and another fleet of ships who had no mercy when it came to anyone in their way. I wasn't ready for some of the losses experienced on the Revenger, but the retaliation of Fura was very satisfactory.

I really feel like there is a lot more potential for more books set in this particular space world, and maybe even more books following the Ness sisters or at least providing them with a cameo. I look forward to that maybe book in the future.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. What a disappointing ending on such a great series from Al Reynolds. This one went out with a whimper. Despite that, I am looking forward to more adventures of the Ness sisters.

[Rusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

To continue my thoughts about walking to work every day, since I was writing about that in my last review, which I know means nothing to no one, I have something else I want to bring up.

You know how people will often take their dogs out for a walk and then not pick up their dog shit and you’ll find it when you’re walking around in your own damn yard or whatever and it’s all over your shoes? I mean, of course you don’t realize it at the time, no, it’s more likely to be after you’ve gone inside, walked all over your nice clean rugs and and then wandered what that smell was.

Well, out here, people more or less clean up after their dogs. Good on ‘em. What they don’t do, however, is clean up after their horses. I assume it’s horseshit I see every other day when I’m walking. If it isn’t then someone has smuggled an elephant to the island and is walking that giant thing around the trails and letting is shit all over the place.

The only thing that makes me doubt it’s horseshit is that I’m not sure a horse can produce that much of it. I mean, it’s so much shit. I’ve had to run off of the trail completely on occasion because it’s too big to step over or around, just have to run away and come at it from another angle.

Ridiculous. I do like the idea of seeing someone trying to take a snow shovel and a 40 gallon trash bag to clean up after one of those giant shits.

Anyhow, I think I’ve hit my quota of shits for one post. It makes me angry to think about but I’ve not told anyone about my frustration walking around some of the most scenic views on planet earth and being forced to contend with the mountains of shit blocking my path.

Speaking of horseshit, let’s talk about this book.

I’m kidding. It was pretty good. Ended up being a third person POV this time around, I’d wondered what was gonna happen after spending the first two novels dealing with first person POV from one sister in book 1, then the other sister in book 2.

It worked just fine. It was a bit more lengthy than the other books in the trilogy, but that was also fine, I enjoyed it all. Most of the mysteries brought up in the previous books were answered, but not the biggest of them, which bugged me.

Another thing that bugged me is that as best as I could tell, our heroes had game changing tools they picked up in the first book that they sort of forgot they had and a lot fo their plot issues could have been resolved if they’d remembered what they had.

Sigh. That doesn’t make sense. So... SPOILERS

Ready? Not sure it matters. But again. SPOILERS

Okay, in Book 1, our heroes uncover a cache of super advanced armor and weapons from a previous epoch that are destabilizing in how much they give an advantage to the keepers of such weapons.

In book 1, they use said weapons to win the day. In book 2 they, I think, futz around with them and leave them outside their ship (again this is personal armor and personal weapons, so these aren’t sterilizing-civilization level items), and, best I can tell, except of a single blade or two, they forget about those things for the rest of the series.

I was thinking about it the whole damn time I was reading about all their misadventures. I was like, ‘get your damned ninja weapons out and kick some ass!’ But they wouldn’t listen to me.

It bugged me, even if I think Alastair Reynolds sort of tried to address it, I still didn’t quite buy what I was told.

So, still satisfying to read, I enjoyed the series, I liked this particular book, I hate wading through horseshit. Just had some issues.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bone Silence is the third of the 3 Revenger series books by Alastair Reynolds, and continues the story of Arafura and Adrana Ness, and their rag-tag crew aboard the Revenger.

After the unfortunate event with the quoins during Shadow Captain, Fura and Adrana Ness are now on the hunt for answers. Just what exactly have they set in motion, by bringing all of those quoins together in one place? Meanwhile, Revenger is still a wanted ship, pursued by those with a bone to pick with the Ness sisters. Can they get their answers, before their past catches up with them?

First off, at about 600 pages Bone Silence is a long, long, seemingly endless book. The story itself isn’t very engaging and the narrative plods along at a rather repetitive snail’s pace, full of unnecessary dialogue and description.

Secondly, character points-of-view switch regularly between Arafura and Adrana, and with no discernible difference between them, which causes some confusion. It sometimes took me a little while to figure out which ship we were following, which sister was in control of the current piece of narrative, and also which crew members were on which ship, especially since there were some similarities in the names.

I found some aspects of the story interesting, such as the behaviour of the quoins and the different races of aliens, but there were a number of plot holes leaving me scratching my head in frustration. Along with a number of spelling and grammar errors, such as missing words and double spaces in the middle of sentences, slightly more than what I found while reading Shadow Captain.

All in all, at just 1 out of 5 stars, I found Bone Silence to be an extremely poor conclusion to a very mediocre trilogy, especially since the ending doesn’t really resolve the questions raised in the earlier books, leaving us with more questions than it does answers. Having read other novels by Alastair Reynolds, I know he can write much better sci-fi than this, and if he does ever decide to revive his interest in the Ness sisters and write more in this series, I most definitely won’t be bothering to read them. My advice, stop reading after book 1: Revenger.

[Rekov · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the surface, this book is a decent if imperfect conclusion to this trilogy. Much of the first act felt like a rehash of the first act of "Shadow Captain:" A prolonged chase sequence with tension, clever tactics and exactly the same stuff as the last two books. It's fine.

The remaining acts of the book are a little disjointed, with lots of info dumps which bring Revenger's setting much more in line with Reynolds' other settings. It's cohesive and readable enough, if a little bit of a let down. What you see behind the curtain is never quite as shiny as you imagined it would be.

It really isn't the plot or the characters that got on my nerves as I read this, no. They're actually quite well done. It's the niggling feeling (followed by dismayed certainty) that IRL social commentary is shoving its hammy fist in.

Social/political commentary isn't even a bad thing, necessarily. It's only bad when characters suddenly start acting like they're from our world, today, and no longer make sense within the carefully crafted and distinctly different setting of this sci-fi novel.

Revenger is basically Treasure Island. It's 17th-18th century types but set in space instead, and for the first two books, this is exactly how Adrana and Arafura act: as if 18th century aristocrats went on an adventure and became hardened and coarsened for it, but generally grow as people. Unfortunately, that ceases to be the case with "Bone Silence." Adrana in particular begins espousing views which are increasingly at odds with her character as portrayed in the previous books, and unexplained by any of the events which since interceded. A quick glance at Reynolds' blog shows me that Adrana's new-found politics are remarkably similar to the author's. What a shame.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad that I finished this book and the whole trilogy, but not because I was yearning to see what happens and what mysteries will be revealed or how will the characters evolved, but just to be done with the Ness sisters.

If this wouldn't have been written by Reynolds, I would have probably dropped it after the first book. But it is my favourite writter and I love his ideas and the worlds that he creates, so this made me read the books with some kind of interest. I liked the sci fi stuff, the technologies, the Baubbles, the mystery of the quoins and Occupations and the interaction between different species (even though the latter had a feeling more of fantasy that sci fi). What I really disliked was the pirate part of the serries. The language and the dialogues felt very immature and the characters weren't really contoured (after 3 books I still didn't know which was Surt, Strambli, Prozor or Tindouf or which one is the male). The problem for me was that I went into the books with my mind set (unintentionally) that the characters are Ultras and they just didn't live up to that expectation.

All in all was not a bad read, it was just different from all of the author's other books (which I absolutely loved).

I give the trilogy 3.5 stars and hope that AR is done with the Ness sisters and that they are also done with him, because if other books in the serries do appear, I will feel compelled to read them.

[Xeddicus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reynolds must be letting his politics get into the story- oh no, 20 zillion years ago humans made aliens as slaves. Who gives a shit now? Especially since it was literally 20 zillion years ago or whatever and the aliens are fucking over humans now.

The sisters got stupid (good thing a crew member went Ghosty to cut the the bad guys all up, since they forgot about the ghosty armor and weapons for no damn reason), the space combat makes no sense, it's more and more the 1800's sailing in space (telescopes! Robots, but they have no computers..ooook) which just gets a bit more annoying the more it happens and the story doesn't end.

Guess I'll never know what the aliens masters want with the coins or if the coins will ever heal the sun.

I will give the book credit for executing the bad guy by filling his pockets with the coins that want to fly away to the sun.

[Steph Bennion · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the way Shadow Captain ended, this final instalment unfolded in a way that threw me a little. I liked the shipboard stuff of earlier books - there is a major space battle in this one, but a hell of lot of what goes on is back in civilisation and my word, this is a hefty tome compared to the other two. The ending itself seemed rather rushed and unfinished (I got the same feeling from Reynolds' Terminal World). This trilogy is still a cracking read.

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm grateful to Gollancz for a free advance copy of Bone Silence.

The final part of the Revenger trilogy (after Shadow Captain), Bone Silence returns to the universe of Captains Arafura and Adrana Ness. In this far-future solar system, the planets themselves have been dismantled, yielding the material for the construction of tens of thousands of "worlds" - habitable structures a few kilometres across, built in all shapes and sizes (discs, spheres, spindles...) This is where humanity lives now, although civilisation has waxed and waned, with thirteen distinct "Occupations" - phases when people were expanding and settling. The history of this is mysterious, with plenty of powerful artifacts to be recovered from abandoned "baubles".

In this setting the Ness sisters - two young women who ran away from home world Mazarile seeking adventure, but found piracy, fighting and death with Fura ultimately rescuing Adrana from captivity - now scour the spacelanes in their ship the sunjammer Revenger, captured from the dread pirate Bosa Sennen. Unfortunately a bounty has been set on their heads, and they're pursued by a squadron of the Congregation's most ruthless thief takers who believe they are in league with Sennen, or perhaps that they are Sennen (it's complicated).

I love the setting for these books. In Reynolds' hands, the manoeuvrings of the great sail-driven craft, the hazards of calling at unruly and fractious port world, the glory a of a fight, the the salty language, and above all the loot up there for the taking - for me all these evoke the never-was pirate-ridden world of Stevenson and Robinson Crusoe. It's an advanced world with advanced tech but all the familiar themes are there - the long pursuits, the scanning for sight of a sail, the ferocious broadsides (here, delivered with electromagnetic coil guns). And the crew members we meet wouldn't be out of place lurking in a corner of the Admiral Benbow.

If that was all these books had, they might be fun, but no more than a jeu d'esprit (albeit a good one) on Reynolds' part. But there's much, much more than that. Under the surface of this book are serious SF themes: the fate of humanity in the far future, the origins of civilisations, our relationship with alien races. And big human themes: the sisters are coming of age, finding their place in this strange universe, making friends (and enemies) and losing them. Those themes are explored rather more thoroughly in this book than in the previous ones, the Ness sisters having now found one another and constructed some form of relationship again after the traumas they suffered before.

Indeed, solving these mysteries has become more than a matter of casual curiosity. Fura and Adrana have now become convinced that it's key not only to the future of the human race but to their own more immediate survival. There's also a desperation to this book that marks it out from the others. We have had hints before that outside forces may be manipulating events but here it seems there are two sides, rival factions of aliens pursuing some conflict and bringing an even tighter sense of danger to events. It's not clear who can be trusted, or even what is to be gained from those can.

Bone Silence felt to me more focused, basically an extended chase sequence, than the earlier books, and more sober: the sisters are growing up, there's less sheer exuberance and a greater awareness of consequences (as when someone who lost money because of what Fura and Adrana did at the end of the last book plunges to his death. before their eyes). The stakes are higher now - it's not just a question of being dragged back home, and they have enemies with deep pockets and an even longer reach. There is an edge to the battles, a sense of the gloves being off.

It is, though, not all action. I enjoyed the shipboard sections when nothing much seemed to be going on, but the two sisters - and their ragged crew - were learning to trust each other. There are many, many reasons why they wouldn't, and Revenger herself holds dark memories, especially for Adrana. Shudder at what went on in the "kindness room"! Revisit the Bone Room, where the twinkling, alien skull allows communication - at a price - across great distances. In this book the process carries a more deadly edge than ever - there is the prospect of discovery for one thing, and other, darker dangers as well. (The exact origin and nature of the bones and the "twinkly" inside them is never made clear: like many aspects of the Revenger universe, that remains a dark secret, perhaps to be revealed one day, perhaps not). And Reynolds' portrayals of the crewmen and women are rounded and fully formed.

All in all great fun, though this is one trilogy you really do need to read in order.