Sheffield, Charles
RESURGENCE
Charles Sheffield
BAEN 2002
Hb 374pgs
ISBN#
0-7434-3567-2
Welcome back to Sheffield's Heritage Universe.
RESURGENCE was, I believe, Dr. Sheffield's last installment to that
series before his death. [What I want to know is, was TRANSCENDENCE,
published by Del Rey in 1992, the same story as TRANSVERGENCE put out by
BAEN, or am I missing an installment in this series?]
After the weird effects from the Anfract in
TRANSCENDENCE, Julius and Steven Graves have melded their personalities
into one Julian Graves. Now Counselor Graves has to reassemble his team
of Builder artifact experts and galactic troubleshooters--for a
space-ship has arrived from the Sagittarius Arm with everyone on board
dead; and Counselor Graves is convinced that -1- this problem is Builder
related, and -2- if they don't solve it, whatever killed those aliens
from the Sag Arm could very easily come into our arm of the galaxy and
kill us!
But when they get to the Sag Arm, all they find is
a whole lot of nothing. And of course, they disagree on how to approach
the next step. So Darya gets her way and takes Rebka and a couple of
green trouble-shooters provided by Councilor Graves over to inspect one
of the nearby planets. Louis Nenda, Atvar H'sial, their slaves and pet
Zardalu go off in search of a Chism Polypheme to pilot them through this
foreign space. And E.C. Tally takes his own shuttle in another
direction--but ends up falling into a Builder artifact instead.
Meanwhile, Counselor Graves and two more of his hand-picked new
trouble-shooters travel an unknown Bose Transition Point (FTL
capability) in hopes of finding the home of the corpses that started
this whole quest. Though traveling through different means and
directions, they all end up in the same place after a lot of trouble and
even someone's death. What's happening on the planet Marglotta is
weird--but then Sheffield never ceased to amaze with his physics.
RESURGENCE is a good read. The characterization is
full, and the adventure is grand!
Return to Reviews