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Book Description
Lila Black, half robot, all attitude, returns in her fifth all-action adventure.
Product Description
Lila Black faces her greatest challange yet as she takes herself, her dead lover and the AI in her head into death's realm. The Quantum Gravity series, set in a world where our reality mixes with other dimensions that are the homes to Faeries, elementals and demons, is unique in modern SF - a series that is willing to incorporate legend, myth and magic while maintaining a rigorous approach to scientific and pyschological reality. And in Lila Black Justina Robson has created an enduringly strong yet quirkily human and flawed heroine.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've really enjoyed this series from Justina Robson, in Lila Black she has created one of the most complex and interesting heroines in science fiction and her easy blend of traditional sci-fi tropes with those of the more complex fantasy novels has provided an intriguing set of concepts for her to play with as well as a fascinating series of worlds to explore and interlink.
In this volume Robson overturns some of the assumptions she has let you build over the previous four volumes as well as delivering a pacey and thoroughly enjoyable conclusion to the series. The narrative drags you around the three primary protagonists as they confront their own specific fates and offers a degree of closure as to the less well sketched out elements of their origination and back stories. If I have any complaints it's that towards the end of the narrative the pace accelerated to almost breathless pace and parts of the cohesive nature of the story fell to the wayside as Justina strove towards the end. A great read all round though and recommended without hestitation.
In this volume Robson overturns some of the assumptions she has let you build over the previous four volumes as well as delivering a pacey and thoroughly enjoyable conclusion to the series. The narrative drags you around the three primary protagonists as they confront their own specific fates and offers a degree of closure as to the less well sketched out elements of their origination and back stories. If I have any complaints it's that towards the end of the narrative the pace accelerated to almost breathless pace and parts of the cohesive nature of the story fell to the wayside as Justina strove towards the end. A great read all round though and recommended without hestitation.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As it states in the foreword (entitled 'Final Thoughts'), this is the fifth and final volume in the 'Quantum Gravity' series. It has been a quite remarkable series and the final volume does not disappoint.
The series has slowly changed over time, although the characters have remained constant. The first volume struck me as a 'fun' cross between, if you like, 'The Terminator' and 'Lord of the Rings'. But even in that first volume, it seemed that the elves, demons, faeries and all were metaphors for beings from different dimensions ('realms') opened up to Earth ('Otopia') after the Quantum Bomb. There was always a 'hard-science' edge to it all that stopped it sliding into typical fantasy.
The second volume slowly got more serious as travel between the realms and some needed character development fleshed out the bright ideas of the first.
The third continued straight off from where the previous stopped. But then the fourth, starting fifty Otopian years later, almost lost me. It is one of the most hallucinatory, trippy novels I've ever come across. Enjoyed it hugely but struggled to keep up with the twists, turns, multi-dimensional universe and multi-manifesting characters. I ended up just 'going with the flow', hoping that it would start to make some kind of sense somewhere along the line.
And, in this final volume, it just about does. After the serious weirdness of the previous book, this perhaps seems almost mundane in comparison. But there are subtle and careful explanations and reminders woven into the first third or so of the story. And after the more overtly 'magical' previous volume, we return to a sort of 'hard science' base again. For example, here's Xaviendra, drunk on faery beer, describing dragons:
'Dragons are archeotypal subdeic elementals, pre-dating the actualisation of the seven worlds and instrumental in their creation, by virtue of being organising principles and generative structures within which any amount of conscious realisation of the infinite may occur at any time. Persistence in material form occurs as a necessary process of becoming baryonically bound. Personality and etcetera accrue after this manifestation into linear temporal planes according to the usual principles.' (P36)
I hope you followed that. There's a good one for angels, too. And it is all relevant.
At first maybe it seems a little slow but then, curiously, in the middle third or so, on the surface it becomes faster, with Lila zooming off in her jet boots, facing down gangsters and vigilantes, drinking beer with Malachi in his yurt, cruising on her motorbike. And you kind of think 'yes, but what has this got to do with the plot?'. But underneath all this action, the main story is building slowly, in a sort of subterranean way, until in the last third, it surfaces like an iceberg. There's not really a big, final shoot-'em-up. Because of the slow build, it's much more satisfying than that, as all the threads (just about) tie up, all the surprises, twists, bluffs, double-bluffs - and all the games - come together into a worthy final scene.
It is, of course, well written. But it is also, now, complete. I've had my doubts in previous volumes, but I am very glad I stuck with it. This final volume is more than adequate reward. But, at the same time, I'm kind of glad that it's all over. Now I have new worlds of Justina Robson's to look forward to.
The series has slowly changed over time, although the characters have remained constant. The first volume struck me as a 'fun' cross between, if you like, 'The Terminator' and 'Lord of the Rings'. But even in that first volume, it seemed that the elves, demons, faeries and all were metaphors for beings from different dimensions ('realms') opened up to Earth ('Otopia') after the Quantum Bomb. There was always a 'hard-science' edge to it all that stopped it sliding into typical fantasy.
The second volume slowly got more serious as travel between the realms and some needed character development fleshed out the bright ideas of the first.
The third continued straight off from where the previous stopped. But then the fourth, starting fifty Otopian years later, almost lost me. It is one of the most hallucinatory, trippy novels I've ever come across. Enjoyed it hugely but struggled to keep up with the twists, turns, multi-dimensional universe and multi-manifesting characters. I ended up just 'going with the flow', hoping that it would start to make some kind of sense somewhere along the line.
And, in this final volume, it just about does. After the serious weirdness of the previous book, this perhaps seems almost mundane in comparison. But there are subtle and careful explanations and reminders woven into the first third or so of the story. And after the more overtly 'magical' previous volume, we return to a sort of 'hard science' base again. For example, here's Xaviendra, drunk on faery beer, describing dragons:
'Dragons are archeotypal subdeic elementals, pre-dating the actualisation of the seven worlds and instrumental in their creation, by virtue of being organising principles and generative structures within which any amount of conscious realisation of the infinite may occur at any time. Persistence in material form occurs as a necessary process of becoming baryonically bound. Personality and etcetera accrue after this manifestation into linear temporal planes according to the usual principles.' (P36)
I hope you followed that. There's a good one for angels, too. And it is all relevant.
At first maybe it seems a little slow but then, curiously, in the middle third or so, on the surface it becomes faster, with Lila zooming off in her jet boots, facing down gangsters and vigilantes, drinking beer with Malachi in his yurt, cruising on her motorbike. And you kind of think 'yes, but what has this got to do with the plot?'. But underneath all this action, the main story is building slowly, in a sort of subterranean way, until in the last third, it surfaces like an iceberg. There's not really a big, final shoot-'em-up. Because of the slow build, it's much more satisfying than that, as all the threads (just about) tie up, all the surprises, twists, bluffs, double-bluffs - and all the games - come together into a worthy final scene.
It is, of course, well written. But it is also, now, complete. I've had my doubts in previous volumes, but I am very glad I stuck with it. This final volume is more than adequate reward. But, at the same time, I'm kind of glad that it's all over. Now I have new worlds of Justina Robson's to look forward to.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a sad end to this series as it seems to run out of steam. The story is OK but the writing is not as engaging as the earlier books. That's all I can say really. I read it to the end, so not a complete waste of time but don't expect the same level as book 1 or 2.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A satisfying conclusion
Having been an avid fan of the early books in this series I felt that the previous book (book 4) had become a bit stodgy and inwardly focused - too much philosophy and internal... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Sean Fox
The Walking Dead meets Lila Black
The Quantum Gravity worlds are close to disaster, the dead walks again and the veil between the worlds are so thin that you may pass on by mistake. Read more
Published 14 months ago by cybermage.se
Justice and a happy ending?
This is the fifth book, and the conclusion, to Robson's "Quantum Gravity" sequence. And it is the best. Read more
Published 15 months ago by D. Harris
Not the end I wanted
I have followed Lila Black avidly through the first four books, but I feel this last one hasn't done her justice. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Tu Fu
Losing its fascination
I originally fell in love with the characters within Justina's writing when I read the first title in the Quantum Gravity Series, Keeping it Real. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog
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