Absorption
John Meaney
407 pages
published in 2010
Absorption is the first volume in John Meaney’s new Ragnarok trilogy. It seems to be set in the same future as most of his novels, from his first book To Hold Infinity onwards, have been set. You don’t need to have read those to understand this book, but if you have you’ll know roughly what to expect and will get certain references quicker than a new reader would. In general however it is enough to know that John Meaney is of the same generation of British writers like Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds and Neal Asher and writes the same sort of widescreen “hard space opera”, though a bit more cyberpunky.
But Absorption is more than just another space opera novel. You could in fact say that this is not science fiction at all, but fantasy dressed up as space opera. Because while one of the three main storylines is set in Meaney’s standard future of Mu-space pilots with jet black eyes and the computer upgraded Luculenti upperclasses of Fulgor around 2603 AD, the two other storylines are set in 777 AD and 1926 AD and both feature things that look a lot like magic… And with flashes of an even father future in which the main characters of all three storylines meet, as well as hints of magic in the main future storyline as well, who knows what’s really going on?
Not the poor reader I’m afraid. This very much is the first book of a trilogy and it’s mostly setup. Which means a lot of questions are raised, but none are answered so far. In the 2603 storyline we follow Roger Blackstone, son of a pilot family undercover as spies on the Luculenti ruled planet Fulgor. Roger is enrolled in a scholarship/research programme for non-Luculenti people, where he gets involved with one of his classmates, Alisha Spalding and through her with the Luculenti Rashella Stargonier. Stargonier has found an obsolete memory capsule and was so dumb as to integrate its contents in her own mindspace, leading to a remarkable shift in personality and a desire to absorp other people’s personalities…
Meanwhile, in 777 AD, a viking warrior called Ulfr is one of the few people who can see patches of darkness, of evil and who has had a very personal brush with the magic behind these patches, as his best friend was tortured almost to death by his neighbours, through the emotional and personality manipulation of a wandering poet. Ulfr was forced to kill him, which didn’t do wonders for his relationship with his friend’s sister.. Ulfr crosses paths with the same evil later, during a gathering of the Norse tribes while dreaming of the far future.
In 1926 AD Gavriela Wolf is a German Jewish physics student in Zurich, exited about the new possibilities in physics Einstein et all had opened up. As you expect, Gavriela also comes face to face with evil, evil wearing a familiar moustache. Yes, of course Hitler and the nazis are involved here, which I’m not too keen about. This was the weakest of the three main storylines as I got the impression Meaney hadn’t quite gotten a grip on the proper history of this period and I’m always wary of using the very real horror of historical Nazi Germany in science fiction; it’s a cheap way to add unearned menace and gravitas and it can trivialise real history. A shame really, because of the three main characters, Gavriela is the most interesting.
Absorption is a flawed but still entertaining read. As the first novel in a trilogy it’s incomplete, setting up questions to be answered in later volumes, it has some historical flaws and I dislike the use of Hitler, but on the whole this was enjoyable. Not quite Meaney’s best novel, but I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve read the follow-up volumes.