I think this is the best novel John Meaney has written to date. It resonates with echoes of some of his earlier novels and short fiction, but while the reader's experience of this book might benefit from having read To Hold Infinity, Paradox, Context, and Resolution, I'm certain that won't be necessary to enjoy it. And if you like science fiction with fascinating characters, exotic yet believable settings, excellent writing, and lots of layers of meaning and action, you will enjoy it a great deal.
Absorption is a richly interwoven narrative that navigates time and space with as much ease and style as one of Meaney's legendary Pilots. It immerses you in elegant complexities of character and story and scene, uniting the lives and destinies of beings from far-flung localities in a cause that leaves the familiar limitations of space and time behind, because the enemies of life are not bound by them. Meaney's villains are powerful, mysterious, well-conceived and downright scary in their ability to infiltrate and twist any reality, including our own.
The overall story is necessarily incomplete until the final volume, but Meaney manages to pause each thread in a satisfying place, while also spinning up new ones to whet the reader's appetite for what's to come. And if what's to come is as good as the first book, it's going to be worth waiting for.